The text of Dhammapadapàëi presented here is substantially a transliteration of the Sinhala version of the text as printed in the Buddha Jayanti Tripitaka Series, Volume XXIV. In preparing this edition the corrigenda (èuddhi patraya) as printed on page xxx-xxxi of that volume have been taken into account. Other corrections, made by the present editor while preparing this edition of the text, have been noted in the appropriate place.

In this edition I have regularized the spelling of certain words in order to achieve consistency; e.g. before -k & -g BJT sometimes prints ü- and sometimes ï-, here we always print ï-. Similarly before -c & -j BJT sometimes prints ü- and sometimes ÿ-, here I print ÿ- before c when the words are in close syntactical proximity (e.g. sàraÿ-ca), but otherwise -üc-, and -üj- (e.g. abhàvitaü cittaü). BJT's normal practice was to write -üy- in certain words, but occasionally spelt them -ÿÿ- (e.g. visaüyutta- at 385c, 402c, 410c, 417c but visaÿÿutta- at 397c) here the practice has been to normalize the spelling as -üy-. These changes are merely orthographical, and affect neither the pronunciation, nor the sense, and have therefore not normally been noted.

In the original edition there were many cases where BJT was inconsistent in its use of punctuation. Here an attempt has been made to present a more standardized version of the text in this regard, but as the matter is trivial on the one hand, and extremely numerous on the other, these sort of changes have not been noted.

The original edition of the text included Sanskrit & Prakrit parallels to the Dhammapada verses drawn from various sources. The transliteration of these parallels as printed in BJT had many mistakes, and in many cases were based on old and incomplete editions of the texts concerned. Because of that they have been withdrawn from this edition of the text. I am hoping to publish a corrected and improved edition of this material in the next edition of this website.

This work has been produced in order to assist in making known the teachings of the Buddha, please remember that many people have contributed their time and energy to this gift of the Dhamma.