The Dhammapada

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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.