Dhammapada. (S. Dharmapada; T. Chos kyi tshigs su bcad pa; C. Faju jing; J. Hokkugyo; K. Pŏpku kyŏng 法句經). In Pali, “Verses of Dharma”; the second book of the KHUDDAKANIKAYA of the Pali SUTTAPITAKA. The Dhammapada is an anthology of verses, arranged topically, many of which are also found in other books of the Pali canon, although it is unclear whether the Dhammapada was compiled from them. Some of the same verses are also found in JAINA and Hindu sources. The current Pali text contains 423 verses divided into twenty-six chapters; the verses are broadly associated with the topic of each particular chapter, which have predominantly ethical themes. The verses and chapters are sometimes arranged in pairs, e.g., “The Fool” and “The Sage,” “The World” and “The Buddha,” etc. As possible evidence of the popularity of the collection, there are several extant recensions of Dharmapadas in languages other than Pali, including a GANDHARI version and several in Chinese translation that derive from Sanskrit or Middle Indic versions of the collection. The chapters and verses of these other recensions often bear little resemblance to the Pali version, some having alternate arrangements of the chapters and verses, others having many more total verses in their collections. These differences suggest that such anthologies of gnomic verses were being made independently in disparate Buddhist communities throughout India and Central Asia, often borrowing liberally, and haphazardly, from earlier recensions. A version of the UDANAVARGA compiled by Dharmatrata, a larger work containing all the verses from the Dhammapada, became a basic text of the BKA’ GDAMS sect in Tibet; the Pali version of the Dhammapada was translated into Tibetan by the twentieth-century scholar DGE ’DUN CHOS ’PHEL. The Dhammapada has long been one of the most beloved of Buddhist texts in the West. Since its first translation into a Western language (Latin) in 1855 by the Danish scholar Victor Fausbøll (1821–1908), it has been rendered numerous times into English (well over fifty translations have been made) and other languages. (The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism)
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