The Dhammapada is the Quintessence of the Buddha’s teachings, i.e. man’s misery is caused by his ignorance and craving; there is no panacea for his misery either here or elsewhere; he has to strive and overcome ignorance and craving, then he shall be liberated. It forms part of Khudda Nikaya, one of the five divisions of Tipitaka (three flowers), the Buddhist canon. It is an anthology of 423 verses of different authors, whose names are not mentioned. The verses, mostly concerned with Buddhism, but a few with Mahabharata and Manusmrti, are arranged in 26 groups. Nikunja Vihari Banerjee has furnished in this book, The Dhammapada, the complete Pali text in both Devanagari and Roman characters. As the 26 groups dealing with the subject matter of Dhammapada are concerned with things or persons, moral phenomena and miscellaneous items, he has rearranged them in three divisions. A,B and C and brought out the spirit of the message succinctly. In the last chapter he has shown how the Dhammapada echoes the message of the great religions of mankind and thus is universal in character and relevant to people at all times. This is a great book by a dedicated and devoted savant written especially for the benefit of all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nikunja Vihari Banerjee
N.V. Bajerjee (1897-1984) was an alumnus of Calcutta University, and subsequently took a Ph.D. from London University. He taught at University of Delhi for over 42 years and was the first Professor of Philosophy to be appointed in that University. He was much in demand as a Visiting Professor abroad and his travels included a visit to Germany under the auspices of the German Academic Exchange Service. He also lectured at the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands. As a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Monash University in Australia in 1965 he also had the opportunity to lecture in most of the Australian universities. He later toured Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland as a nominee of the Government of India, and visited U.K. as a guest of the British Council. In 1969 he was invited to attend the inaugural session of the World Universities' Conference held under the auspices of UNESCO. His academic career included three years at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study as Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Religion. For this reason the Institute is happy to include in its publication programme this seminal work from an author who has already published widely and whose reputation as a philosopher has lost none of its luster over the years.
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