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A Study of the Uraga Verses

1: Placing

The Uraga verses do not appear in the Pāḷi Dhammapada, but they do occur in the three major parallels to that collection; in Pāḷi, however, the verses have been preserved in the Suttanipāta, the fifth collection in the present Khuddakanikāya. The Pāḷi Dhammapada is the second collection in the same Nikāya. Although many of the texts in the Suttanipāta are found to have parallels in Sanskrit (and also in Chinese and Tibetan translations), there is no sign that this collection as such ever existed outside of the Theravāda tradition.⁰¹

When we examine the placing of the Uraga verses in the various versions, we find the situation is very revealing: in the Pāḷi they form the first sutta of the first vagga of the Suttanipāta; in Patna they appear as the last vargga of the Dharmapada; in the Gāndhārī they come at the end of the Bhikhuvaga; and in Udānavarga they occur in two places - at the end of Puṣpavarga, and at the end of Bhikṣuvarga. It is true that there are two verses after the Uraga Verses in the Bhikṣuvarga, but that would only seem to indicate that those verses have been added to the collection even later that the Uraga Verses.⁰²

From this it is clear that the verses must have originally been preserved as a separate collection and then added in to already existing collections. This would seem to indicate that the material only came to light at quite a late stage. In the Patna, Gāndhārī, and Udānavarga, they have been added on at the end of the relevant chapters; while in the Pāḷi they are found at the beginning of a separate collection. Whether this collection existed before the Uraga Verses were added in at the beginning, or whether a redactor made the collection all at one time is impossible to answer on the evidence available.⁰³ The choice of exactly where the verses could best be fitted in must have been made by the redactors and reciters who were passing the material on in the various schools.

That two groups have seen fit to include the material in their Dharmapada Bhikṣuvargas is no surprise as the word bhikṣu appears in each of the verses, and, as I have shown in the Study of the Dhammapada Collection, one of the ways material was collected was through keyword collocation.

On the other hand, that the verses must have been established as a separate collection is shown by the Pāḷi gathering them into a Uragasutta on the one hand, and the Patna redactors, despite having a Bhikṣuvarggaḥ in their Dharmapada, which might have attracted them, have instead formed an entirely new chapter out of them.

2: Contents

I now present tables showing in abstract how the verses in the four versions relate to each other. They are accompanied by notes to highlight the most important aspects that this presentation brings out.

1: Pāli Uragasuttaṁ (beginning of Suttanipāta)

• There is a very close correspondence in the sequence of verses in the Pāli, Patna, and Gāndhārī versions of the verses.
• The only major difference between the editions is the placing of the 5th verse in the Pāḷi, which in Patna and Gāndhārī, and also in the Udānavarga, stands at the beginning of the series; it very much seems, therefore, that the Pāḷi verse 5 is misplaced, and should come at the beginning of the sutta, with Pāḷi verse 1 following it.
• There are no parallels to Pāḷi verse 6, and indeed nothing like a parallel in the other versions either, which makes me think it must be an interpolation.
• After Pāḷi verse 9 we have a sequence of verses with no parallels in the other editions. When we look at the sequence, it is clear that what we have here is a substitution series, with ñatvā loke, which has good parallels in all three versions, being replaced by vītalobho, -rāgo, -doso, and -moho. As there are no parallels in the other editions, it would seem that the latter are additions to the original text.

2: Patna Uragavarggaḥ (conclusion of the Dharmapada)

• The table doesn't show this, but the Patna sequences 399-403 & 404-408 are in fact substitution series, which are similar to ones found in the Udānavarga. The sequence in Patna is: rāgaṁ, doṣaṁ, mohaṁ, krodhaṁ, mānaṁ.
• These substitution series account for the gaps to be seen between the parallels in Pāḷi and the Gāndhārī, which otherwise are sequentially similar.

3: Gāndhārī Bhikhuvaga (conclusion of the chapter)

• In contradistiction to the other editions, there are no substitution series in the Gāndhārī; all the verses show at least two parallels, and 6 of them are paralleled from all three editions.
• As mentioned above, the sequence of the verses is also strikingly similar in the Gāndhārī, Pāḷi, and Patna editions.
• These two factors together would seem to suggest that we have, preserved in the Gāndhārī, the original core of verses, out of which variations have arisen in the other versions through keyword substitution.

4: Udānavarga Puṣpavarga & Bhikṣuvarga (conclusion of both chapters)

• There are seven Uraga verses in the Puṣpavarga, but six of them have been attracted into the section through keyword collocation. The first verse in the series mentions puṣpa, and so do the following six verses. As they are repeated verbatim in the Bhikṣuvarga, they have been omitted from the table at this point, so as not to confuse the statistics.

• There are three separate substitution series: 32.56-61; 32.62-67; 32.68-73. The substitution is always the same sequence of terms: rāgam, dveṣam, moham, mānam, lobham, tṣṇāṁ.
• This has given rise to there being a much greater number of verses in the Udānavarga than in the other parallels.
• Even though there is a greater number of verses, it is noticeable that only 5 of them have parallels in all the other versions.

3: Summary

When we examine the tables above, it is clear that the Gāndhārī collection has preserved the verses in a comparatively primitive state. The other versions each show that their redactor(s) have expanded the material available to them through substitution series, and possibly through interpolation also.

The Uraga verses are a collection of verses having the same concluding simile, comparing the way a bhikkhu leaves off various defilements and attachments to the way a snake sloughs its skin. The fact that defilements are often enumerated in lists in the teaching probably enticed the redactors to engage in expanding their material by substituting keywords in the verses.

The series employed are different in each of the collections: Pāḷi has vītalobho, –rāgo, –doso, and –moho; Patna has the sequence: rāgaṁ, doṣaṁ, mohaṁ, krodhaṁ, mānaṁ; and in the Udānavarga it is: rāgam, dveṣam, moham, mānam, lobham, tṣṇāṁ. The disimilarity seems to indicate that these series have arisen independently of each other.

If we take the Gāndhārī collection as representative of the original collection of verses, we can see that the substitution series has resulted in a 66% increase in the number of verses in the Pāḷi and Patna versions; and about three times the number of verses in the Udānavarga (more or less, depending on whether we count the verses in the Puṣpavarga).

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