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- A Collection of Verses Being One of the Canonical Books of the Buddhists

Dhammapada means "The path of Dharma." The Pali word Dhamma corresponds to the Sankrit word Dharma. It is a collection of the teachings of the Buddha. These verses, compiled by Buddha's students in the years following his final Nirvana, were culled from various discourses given by the Buddha in the course of forty-five years of his teaching, as he travelled in the valley of the Ganges and the sub-mountain tract of the Himalayas. These 423 verses are often terse, witty, and convincing. Whenever similes are used, they are those that are easily understood even by a child, e.g., the cart's wheel, a man's shadow, a deep pool, flowers. Through these verses, the Buddha exhorts one to achieve that greatest of all conquests, the conquest of self; to escape from the evils of passion, hatred and ignorance.