Often, however, the translator, whatever his weaknesses may have been, had before him a text differing in bulk and arrangement from the Pali and Sanskrit texts which we possess.  Thus, there are four Chinese translations of works bearing some relation to the Dhammapada of the Pali Canon.  All of these describe the original text as the compilation of Dharmatrata, to whom is also ascribed the compilation of the Tibetan Udanavarga.[765] His name is not mentioned in connection with the Pali text, yet two of the Chinese translations are closely related to that text.  The Fa-chu-ching[766] is a collection of verses translated in 224 A.D. and said to correspond with the Pali except that it has nine additional chapters and some additional stanzas.  The Fa-chu-p’i-yu-ching[767] represents another edition of the same verses, illustrated by a collection of parables.  It was translated between 290 and 306.  The Ch’u-yao-ching,[768] translated in 399, is a similar collection of verses and parables, but founded on another Indian work of much greater length.  A revised translation containing only the verses was made between 980 and 1001.[769] They are said to be the same as the Tibetan Udana, and the characteristics of this book, going back apparently to a Sanskrit original, are that it is divided into thirty-three chapters, and that though it contains about 300 verses found in Pali, yet it is not merely the Pali text plus additions, but an anthology arranged on a different principle and only partly identical in substance.[770]

There can be little doubt that the Pali Dhammapada is one among several collections of verses, with or without an explanatory commentary of stories.  In all these collections there was much common matter, both prose and verse, but some were longer, some shorter, some were in Pali and some in Sanskrit.  Whereas the Chinese Dhammapada is longer than the Indian texts, the Chinese version of Milinda’s Questions[771] is much shorter and omits books iv-vii.  It was made between 317 and 420 A.D. and the inference is that the original Indian text received later additions.

A more important problem is this:  what is the relation to the Pali Canon of the Chinese texts bearing titles corresponding to Dirgha, Madhyama, Samyukta and Ekottara?  These collections of sutras do not call themselves Nikaya but A-han or Agama:  the titles are translated as Ch’ang (long), Chung (medium), Tsa (miscellaneous) and Tseng-i, representing Ekottara rather than Anguttara.[772] There is hence prima facie reason to suppose that these works represent not the Pali Canon, but a somewhat similar Sanskrit collection.  That one or many Sanskrit works may have coexisted with a somewhat similar Pali work is clearly shown by the Vinaya texts, for here we have the Pali Canon and Chinese translations of five Sanskrit versions, belonging to different schools, but apparently covering the same ground and partly identical.  For the Sutra Pitaka no such body