This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc 4.0 license. chapter 3... more This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc 4.0 license. chapter 3 Assembled in China A Study of the Shi'er toutuo jing 十二頭陀經 Jonathan A. Silk, with an appendix on dating by Michael Radich In Memory of Enomoto Masaaki 榎本正明 ∵ 1 Introduction1 Chinese Buddhist traditions have transmitted, from remote times, a treasure-trove of scriptural documents, many of which were, from early on, given various types of official statuses, among which was the acceptance that the work in question presented genuine teachings of the Buddha, and was therefore worthy of acknowledgement as a Buddhist classic, jing 經, a title element often paired, at least in later representations, with a prefixed foshuo 佛説, 'preached by the Buddha.'2 At the same time, the tradition itself was aware, again from early times, that not all works claiming such a status equally merited recognition as translations of works that had been sanctioned in their Indic regions of origin as buddhavacana, that is, as sacred writ. Some, in fact, were quite plainly Chinese creations, and various catalogues and other works sometimes classify these as 'questionable' or 'false' scriptures, respectively yijing 疑 經 and weijing 僞 經. One sort of text, 1 I could not have written this alone. Most basically, this study took its inspiration from the work of the late Enomoto Masaaki 榎本正明, who first discovered the debt of the sūtra to the Da zhidu lun. I was offered valuable clues to understanding the text many years ago by Funayama Tōru 船山徹, and the much missed Stefano Zacchetti. Also many years ago Florin Deleanu was kind enough to send me photocopies of images of several manuscript sources, for which I again thank him. More recently, I am grateful as well to Zhang Meiqiao 張美僑 for her kind assistance. Most recently, I have a profound debt to my friend and colleague Rafal Felbur, whose numerous corrections, especially to my translation, have greatly improved the study in a number of places. Thereafter, I received invaluable comments from Eric Greene and Antonello Palumbo. Only someone who has similarly received suggestions from Michael Radich can fully appreciate what a rich mine of gems and precious substances his observations offer. I am delighted to be able to include his Appendix on dating of the text. My debt to all of the above is deep. 2 On foshuo, and its clearly secondary status, not reflective of any Indian antecedents, see Funayama 2022. Likewise, Chinese sources reflexively attach jing to works they considered "scripture," and lun 論 to those they considered treatises or, more broadly, anything other than scripture as such. The all too common practice of 'reconstructing' lun as śāstra is almost entirely baseless; among Buddhist works in Sanskrit, the only exception I know of is the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, a title attested in the colophon of the unique Sanskrit manuscript of that text. (I do not mean that śāstric texts were not explicitly recognized as śāstras by Indian writers, only that the term śāstra is not a normal part of a title, although sūtra, while also not common, is more frequently attested in Indic sources as part of a title.
Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana: A Festschrift for Paul Harrison, 2024
Indian Buddhist texts are full of stock expressions and shared ma- terials. How might we best beg... more Indian Buddhist texts are full of stock expressions and shared ma- terials. How might we best begin to think about the intention with which such expressions were deployed by those responsible for the composition of the texts in which they are found? With a focus on the depiction of Sukhāvatī in the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras, this paper offers a summary overview of ex- pressions of a perfect realm. It argues that only by keeping in mind the breadth of usages of particular expressions will we be able to approach a bet- ter understanding of their intended meaning.
The Śrīmālādevīsiṁhanādanirdeśasūtra is preserved in toto in one Tibetan and two Chinese translat... more The Śrīmālādevīsiṁhanādanirdeśasūtra is preserved in toto in one Tibetan and two Chinese translations, in addition to which we have access to a fragmentary Sanskrit manuscript and a considerable number of Sanskrit quotations, contributing to a sizable amount of the text now being available in Sanskrit. The present contribution takes as its impetus a recent contribution on the sūtra and its ideas about tathāgatagarbha, offering a survey of the state of the field of study of the text in its Indian context, and several suggestions for improved understandings.
The *Kāśyapaparivarta, an early Mahāyāna sūtra, has a complex history. Sanskrit and Tibetan ver... more The *Kāśyapaparivarta, an early Mahāyāna sūtra, has a complex history. Sanskrit and Tibetan versions, and some of its Chinese translations, have been available to scholars for almost a century, thanks to Staël-Holstein's 1926 editio princeps. Yet no comprehensive survey of available sources, or critical appraisal of their antecedants, has been published, and most importantly, essential Chinese materials have long been overlooked. The present contribution focuses most centrally on the Chinese translations of the scripture. In addition, the relation of the sūtra to the Mahāratnakūṭa collection of forty-nine texts and the possible Indic origins of the latter are explored.
Many issues are raised by thinking about "The Idea of Text in Buddhism." This paper concentrates ... more Many issues are raised by thinking about "The Idea of Text in Buddhism." This paper concentrates on scriptures of Indian Buddhism, and considers some of the questions raised or inspired by the papers presented at the 2019 Jerusalem conference on "The Idea of Text in Buddhism." Consideration is given among other topics to multilingualism, in which context a comparison is offered with the traditions of the Targums in Jewish literature.
The Lalitavistara is one of the most influential hagiographies of the Buddha. It has been known i... more The Lalitavistara is one of the most influential hagiographies of the Buddha. It has been known in Sanskrit since the early days of modern studies of Buddhism, but was long available only in inadequate editions. That has now changed with the publication of the edition of K. Hokazono, now complete in three volumes. The present paper discusses something of the history of the study of the text, Hokazono's edition, and another recent book by G. Ducoeur that deals with the text, as well as touching on a contribution by Xi He on the poetics of the text. It includes a concordance of a recent translation from Tibetan published by the 84000 project, aligning its sections with the Sanskrit editions of Lefmann and Hokazono.
When the past looks up at the heavens this is the raising up of life itself, all of it, even the ... more When the past looks up at the heavens this is the raising up of life itself, all of it, even the life of the very faraway past.
Heart Sūtra, readers familiar with the dhāran ī literature will find much that is common knowl ed... more Heart Sūtra, readers familiar with the dhāran ī literature will find much that is common knowl edge, and vice versa. I hope that I may be forgiven if as a result I have fallen between two stools. 2) Perhaps the most comprehensive appraisal of this literature is that in Watanabe and Takahashi 2016. 99 In loving memory of my dearest friend Stefano Zacchetti (1968-2020), who forgot far more about Prajñāpāramitā than I will ever know Many consider the Prajñāpāramitāhr daya, the famous "Heart Sūtra," to be one of the most important Buddhist scriptures, and the attention given the text in a variety of traditions might seem to support such a claim. 1) But it seems to me meaningless to speak even of relative importance without clear delineation of a frame for such a judgement. We must, then, in the first place ask how, by whom, and why the Heart Sūtra was treated in ways which suggest its importance. One way to try to answer such a question is to compare the way(s) the Heart Sūtra has been treated with the manners of treatment of other texts. As the title of this essay suggests, I here propose that the Heart Sūtra was, in some contexts, as a whole treated as a dhāran ī, a treatment which invites comparison with the broader genre of dhāran ī sūtras. This cannot, of course, entirely explain the valuation placed on the Heart Sūtra in every circumstance. Rather, the goal here is much more modest: to account for some of the ways in which the text has been used. Modern scholarship has primarily approached the Heart Sūtra in the context of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. This stance is amply vindicated in an Indian context by the extensive commentarial literature the text has generated, which approaches it from a Madhyamaka or a Yogācāra standpoint. 2) The scripture has also been con sidered, at least in a Tibetan context, as tantric, though it should be stressed that this in no way indicates per se that the text as a whole was seen as a dhāran ī. Tibetan sources, which naturally do classify the Heart Sūtra as a Perfection of Wisdom text, debate whether it also belongs among the tantras, namely as a kriyā tantra, a The Heart Sūtra as Dhāran ī
The past decade has seen the appearance of a number of Chinese publications relevant to the reade... more The past decade has seen the appearance of a number of Chinese publications relevant to the readership of the Indo-Iranian Journal. This article briefly introduces some of those publications, dealing mostly with Buddhist sources, primarily in Sanskrit, Khotanese and Middle Indic.
Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University (ARIRIAB), 2021
The works attributed to Homer, folktales, Rabbinic literature and Buddhist scriptures share the f... more The works attributed to Homer, folktales, Rabbinic literature and Buddhist scriptures share the feature that they all lack an Ur-text, an originary core. How are we to understand the nature of such literature, and how are we to edit it in a fashion that does not impose a unitary perspective onto what is inherently diverse and fluid? The ERC-funded Open Philology project is building a digital environment within which to edit Buddhist scriptures. This paper introduces the problem of fluid texts, sketches how reflections on Rabbinic and Biblical literature shed light on it, and outlines the approach being taken by our team to our multilingual corpora of Buddhist materials.
A new volume, Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism (2018), collects es... more A new volume, Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism (2018), collects essays on questions related to the origins of the Mahāyāna Buddhist movement. This review article considers the contributions, and offers a few observations on the state of the field.
A review article on Willem Bollée, A Cultural Encyclopaedia of the Kathāsa- ritsāgara in Keywo... more A review article on Willem Bollée, A Cultural Encyclopaedia of the Kathāsa- ritsāgara in Keywords: Complementary to Norman Penzer’s General Index on Charles Tawney’s Translation [Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis 8]. Halle an der Saale: Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, 2015, 513 pp. isbn 978-3- 86977-123-6. € 98,00. Supplemented by Willem Bollée, “Addenda et Corrigenda to ‘Bollée, Willem B., Cultural Encyclopaedia of the Kathāsaritsāgara.’” Zeit- schrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien 32/33 (2015/2016): 175–202.
Indian Buddhist literary sources contain both systematic and casual rejections of, broadly speaki... more Indian Buddhist literary sources contain both systematic and casual rejections of, broadly speaking, the caste system and caste discrimination. However, they also provide ample evidence for, possibly subconscious, discriminatory attitudes toward out-castes, prototypically caṇḍālas. The rhetoric found in Indian Buddhist literature regarding caṇḍālas is examined in this paper.
Pelliot tibétain 153 is a short Tibetan document containing a poem of 155 lines, being a prayer ... more Pelliot tibétain 153 is a short Tibetan document containing a poem of 155 lines, being a prayer for the rebirth of a deceased person in the Pure Land of Amitābha. In so far as is known, it is a unique manuscript. It is here edited, provided with an English translation and a Commentary, in which some of the possible sources of the work are suggested. The work seems to be indebted to Chinese conceptions and formulations, although there is no evidence that it is a translation. It thus constitutes part of the body of materials, probably composed in Dunhuang, related to what much later and far away became understood as Pure Land Buddhism.
ARIRIAB), published annually since 1997, contains papers on a wide range of Buddhist studies, fro... more ARIRIAB), published annually since 1997, contains papers on a wide range of Buddhist studies, from philological research on Buddhist texts and manuscripts in various languages to studies on Buddhist art and archaeological finds. Also, by publishing and introducing newly-discovered manuscripts and artefacts, we aim to make them available to a wider public so as to foster further research.
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