" Dhammapada" as a Source of Morals and Edifications

"Dhammapada" is studied as a masterpiece of ancient Indian and early Buddhist ethics and world belles-lettres being a source of morals and edifications. The author dwells on Buddha's edifying utterances reflecting Buddhist wisdom criticizing negative traits of disposition: yoke and violence, avidity and jealousy, haughtiness and presumptuousness, verbosity and gluttony , lie and scandal, perfidy and maliciousness. Buddha being convinced that only kindness and reason impart fineness to human being eulogizes these qualities and also such ones as honesty, justice, modesty, valiance and other positive traits in "Dhammapada". The author comes to the well-grounded conclusion that Buddha's utterances occupy a special place in the history of the ancient Indian literature as they preserved their significance for our time as well, both from the point of view of thematics and content and in the plane of artistic aspects too.