Itivuttakapàëi Home Page

Editor's Preface

The text of Itivuttakapàëi 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 (÷uddhi patraya) as printed on page xxvi 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 the original edition there were many cases where BJT was inconsistent in its use of punctuation, layout, and entering of notes. 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 normally been noted.

One change of this sort does need to be mentioned here however: the original edition of Itivuttaka included paragraph numbers. On the one hand as most of the suttas are very short they hardly added anything useful to the text (and are not found in the PTS or ChS editions). On the other hand the way they were entered meant that normally the 1st verse in the sutta was preceded by number 2 (occassionally 3 or 4 etc.); and the 2nd verse by the number 3 etc. To avoid the confusion that this entails I have removed the numbers from this edition.

As can be seen a number of the abbreviations are rather vague, no indication is given as to which palm leaf books have been consulted, for instance, or exactly which edition of the commentary (though here we may assume it to be the Simon Hewavitarne Bequest Series edition).

Two versions of the text have been prepared here. The first (Pàëi 1) presents the text by itself; in the second (Pàëi 2) the metrical markings have been put in above the verses, and there is a short commentary on the metre for those who are interested in such matters, and as a guide for editors who may wish to establish a better version of the text later on. The metre and variations are normally noted alongside the verse, but the normal form of the Vatta metre, being so numerous, has to be presumed when no further identification has been provided.

There are two complete word indexes to the text, one giving the BJT page number, and the other the sutta number; there is also an index to the first lines of the gàthàs. Note that there are also two versions of these indexes - those to Pàëi 1 lead to that version of the text; those to Pàëi 2 to the other. An index to the metres have also been compiled.

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. Anyone with similar aims who wishes to use the document or its database is welcome to do so, provided that no fees are charged for its distribution or use. If you use this document in any way please make an acknowledgement to the Sri Lanka Tipitaka Project.

ânandajoti Bhikkhu
Sept 2001

End Note