Hermann Oldenberg

The Dipavamsa Hermann Oldenberg

The Dipavamsa, an edition of which I here lay before the public, is a historical work composed in Ceylon by an unknown author. George Turnour, who first drew the attention of European scholars to the Dipavamsa,2 declared it to be identical with a version of the Mahavamsa to which the Mahavamsa Tika occasionally alludes, the version preserved in the Uttaravihara monastery. This is certainly wrong. We must undertake, therefore, a research of our own as to the origin of the Dipavamsa and its position in the ancient literature of the Ceylonese.