The Udānavarga, with its 33 chapters and (in this edition) 1061 verses, is by far the largest extant collection of Dharmapada-type verses now available. It vastly outnumbers the other major collections that we have, such as the Pāḷi Dhammapada , the Patna Dhammapada and the Gāndhārī Dharmapada. There are also Tibetan and multiple Chinese editions of the text, but this is the first translation from the Sanskrit text that I am aware of.
I first worked on the Udānavarga while preparing A Comparative Edition of the Dhammapada in 2004. Later I published the text along with two studies in 2006. After completing my translation of the Patna Dhammapada in 2017, I had intended to make a translation of the Udānavarga. That intention was stalled when I learned that my good friend and colleague at the International Buddhist College, Prof. Lobsang Jamspal, was undertaking a translation from the Tibetan, referenced against the Sanskrit. Tragically, his work was never completed, and he passed away in 2024, and so I have taken up and now completed that work.
I have collected and translated all the Pāḷi parallels which had at least a pādayuga in common. They span a wide variety of texts in Pāḷi, besides the Udāna (nearly all the Udānas, including the prose Udānas, have verse parallels giving a total of 101) and Dhammapada (451 parallels), we also find verses from the following collections: Aṅguttaranikāya (10), Dīghanikāya (1), Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā (1), Itivuttaka (32), Jātaka (25), Majjhimanikāya (8), Nettippakaraṇa (5), Saṁyuttanikāya (47), Suttanipāta (48), Theragāthā (43) and Therīgāthā (1).
I discussed each translation with DeepSeek AI , which has very good knowledge of Pāḷi, Sanskritised Prakrit, as well as classical Sanskrit (accessed from July–December 2025). This often led to corrections and emendations, but I also sometimes had to hold my ground and show it why I believed my translation was correct.
I used DeepSeek AI also to generate the initial grammatical analysis, which was then discussed and corrected where necessary. Overall it was an instructive experience, and I learned a lot through it, it was like having a benevolent, polite and well-read teacher always available on hand.
I am very grateful to Prof. Mattia Salvini with whom I discussed some difficult points. Despite his being both Rector and Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and his busy schedule having teaching work at the International Buddhist College, he dedicated much time looking at points I needed help with.
During the course of this work, I also noticed around a dozen mistakes in the original transcription of my text and study of the Udānavarga. These have been corrected now, and are online.
I am currently working on a simplified version of the work, which will be published in the Simplified Translations section of my website, but that in itself requires rewriting and reformatting the work, and it will not be published for a couple of weeks more. I will update again when that work in ready.
