Page:The Mahāvaṃsa or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon.djvu/10

vi in 1908; and added the necessary introduction, appendices, and notes. Mrs. Bode has translated the German into English ; and Professor Geiger has then revised the English translation.

The plan has been to produce a literal translation, as nearly as possible an absolutely correct reproduction of the statements recorded in the Chronicle. It is true there is considerable literary merit in the original poem, and that it may be possible hereafter to attempt a reproduction also, in English unrhymed verse, of the literary spirit of the poem. But a literal version would still be indispensable for historical purposes. For similar reasons it has been decided to retain in the translation certain technical terms used in the Buddhist Order. In a translation aiming at literary merit some English word more or less analogous in meaning might be used, regardless of the fact that such a word would involve implications not found in the original. Thus bhikkhu has often been rendered 'priest' or 'monk'. But a bhikkhu claims no such priestly powers as are implied by the former term, and would yield no such obedience as is implied in the other; and to discuss all the similarities and differences between these three ideas would require a small treatise. There are other technical terms of the same kind. It is sufficient here to explain that when such terms are left, in the present translation, untranslated, it is because an accurate translation is not considered possible. Most of them are, like bhikkhu, already intelligible to those who are likely to use this version. But they are shortly explained in foot-notes; and a list of them, with further interpretation, will be found at the end of the volume.

The Ceylon Government has defrayed the expense of this, as it did of the previously published translations of the Mahāvaṃsa.

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.