A Handbook of Pali Literature.

• Author: Bond, George

By OSKAR VON HINUBER. Indian Philology and South Asian Studies, vol. 2. New York: WALTER DE GRUYTER, 1996. Pp. 257.

The author has produced a rich, comprehensive survey of the Pali Buddhist literature. Although it is a handbook and necessarily has a somewhat restricted size, its treatment of Pali literature is very wide ranging and complete. It complements the most significant previous surveys of Pali literature, such as Wilhelm Geiger's Pali Literature and Language, and K. R. Norman's Pali Literature Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of all Hinayana Schools of Buddhism. This book immediately assumes a place of importance alongside these works as an essential tool for specialists and students of Buddhism, as well as South Asian literature, history, and religion.

The major sections of the book deal with the following categories of Pali texts: Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka, Abhidhamma Pitaka, paracanonical texts, chronicles, commentaries, handbooks, subcommentaries, anthologies, cosmological texts, poetry, collections of stories, Pali literature from Southeast Asia, letters and inscriptions, and "Lost Texts and Non-Theravada Texts Quoted in Pali Literature." For each text in these categories the author enumerates all of the known editions, translations, and commentaries. He also discusses the relevant research on each text and provides an extensive bibliography. The treatment of the texts focuses on their literary form and addresses questions about issues such as dating, structure, provenance, order, and redaction. In a concise fashion the author explores these texts in detail offering excellent introductions to them and to the various scholarly issues surrounding them. The author also offers important suggestions about profitable directions for future scholarship.

Von Hinuber argues that although the Pali texts represent the oldest surviving Buddhist texts, they had a lengthy and complex development. The Pali language of the texts cannot be equated with Magadhi, as the Theravadins have traditionally held. Rather, Pali "is rooted in a language spoken in western India far away from the home land of Buddhism," although certain features of the texts indicate that they may derive from earlier eastern versions. He says that Pali was "created as some kind of lingua franca presumably used in a large area at a time considerably later than the Buddha" (p. 5).

Of the many interesting sections of the book, one of the most...