After nearly two years I have finally finished the first revision of Mingun Sayādaw’s magnum opus: The Great Chronicles of the Buddhas, which details all that is known about the previous 24 Buddhas, and most of the life details about our Buddha Gotama and his disciples in the Theravāda tradition.
There was a lot of work to do for reasons explained in the Preface to the Revised Edition, but basically the whole work had to be rewritten in terms of both English and Pāḷi and references needed to be updated to normal standards in English language works.
Making this revision required me to read and reread the work maybe five times, and endlessly check references, dates, etc. But by doing so I have gained a lot of understanding of the early tradition in this area of studies, so I am grateful to have had the chance to work on it.
Sayādaw’s work in this revised edition is almost 3,000 pages long, and it is hard to expect many people to read it all the way through from start to finish. But it is also an encyclopedia of knowledge about the subjects it treats, so it can be used in that way also. For instance, it is one thing to get the story of one of the Foremost Disciples from one commentary, and quite another in this work, which draws on all the sources known to the author.
Of course, as it is such a large work, I am expecting there to be some mistakes still lingering in the text and I would be grateful to anyone – whether they read a section, or the whole work – if they would point them out so corrections can be inserted.
I am hoping that this work will make Mingun Sayādaw’s work more accessible to an English speaking and reading public, and that it will fulfil its purpose in unfolding all that is known in this tradition about its various subjects. The work is now available in PDF, EPUB, and online in HTML.
Ciraṁ tiṭṭhatu Buddhasāsanaṁ!
May the Buddha’s Dispensation last long into the future!
Link to the Great Chronicles of the Buddhas
Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu, bhante! It makes it now so much easier to read this great work. I was reading some of it a while ago, and I think it was written there that from the time of taking the vow to become a Buddha, a bodhisatta cannot tell lie, although it is possible he might occasionally break other four precepts (like killing, etc) in the long sequence of lives until he finally reaches enlightenment. I was trying to locate this place in this book but wasn’t able to. It is also possible it comes from the Jatakas, on which you also were working recently. Do you remember reading something like this? Many thanks for your work _/\_.