Source: Demiéville 1924

Demiéville critically reviews information about three Chinese versions of the Milindapañha in the traditional catalogues, with the aim of sifting out misleading or inaccurate information, and arriving at an accurate picture of the history of these texts in China.

Specht and Lévi claimed in 1893 that there were two different versions of T1670, one in the Korean edition of the canon (K) = T1670A, and one in the Song, Yuan and Ming editions (SYM) = T1670B. Pelliot subsequently showed that both versions are based on one and the same original text, a claim which Demiéville supports. K is much shorter, but this is due to a loss of some folios.

In order to determine which of these two versions is closer to the original, Demiéville compares them with evidence in three ancient glossaries, viz. the two versions of the Yiqie jing yin yi by Xuanying and Huilin, and the glossary of Kehong. He finds that these glossators must have consulted a text corresponding to the extant text, which was divided into two fascicles, like T1670A. None of the glossaries address any terms from the parts missing in K.

The two extant versions have been modified independently, and depart from the version seen by the lexicographers, whose readings substantially agree. The modifications differ between the two current versions, and older readings are retained sometimes in one of the extant versions, and sometimes in the other, so that neither could be identified as being a more ancient or exact version of the original. Comparison with Pali shows a tendency to expansion in T1670B, and to abbreviation in T1670A.

Demiéville adds that the original on which the Chinese version is based was itself probably in bad condition and characterises the original translation as stylistically clumsy and perhaps “vulgar” (vernacular?). Terminology is not translated systematically, but rather, varying translations are taken for the same terms.

In CSZJJ, T1670 is treated as anonymous, and not as an excerpt from another work, but as a complete (independent) and authoritative text 全典 (5). Sengyou records the text as extant. This version was in two fascicles, but Sengyou also mentions elsewhere a version in one fascicle, which he moreover classes as a re-translation 異出本. This second version must therefore have been incomplete. It, too, is treated as anonymous. Demiéville rejects the possibility that the text might have been known to Dao’an, on the grounds that Sengyou reproduces elsewhere lists of texts Dao’an regarded as anonymous, but T1670 is not included among them. Demiéville suggests that this may mean that T1670 did not yet exist in 374. Another record in CSZJJ records a similar title, the Naxian piyu jing 那先譬喻經, and gives the Jiu lu as the source. Sengyou treats this text as anonymous, and “missing”.

The only one of these titles treated in Fajing is the Naxian piyu jing. There, it is classified as a derivative or offshoot text 別生, i.e. an extract from another work (pp.6-7). Yet Demiéville doubts this categorization, since in the CSZJJ it was in no way described as an extract. Furthermore, one does not know if the compilers had access to this text, since CSZJJ already categorized it as missing. Fajing is also criticized in Zhisheng’s KYL for similar errors.

LDSBJ speaks again of the Naxian piyu jing. LDSBJ dates this title to the Three Kindoms period. Demiéville explains that this classification is questionable because Fei Zhangfang only based his dating on the anonymous Jiu lu and Gu lu, which he only knew through quotes from Dao’an and Sengyou. Demiéville proposes that this Naxian piyu jing should have been produced in the third century at the latest, because for later periods, Fei Zhangfang uses different earlier catalogues as his sources when discussing anonymous translations.

Demiéville then considers the question of whether or not this supposed Naxian piyu jing could have been an earlier version of the extant Milindapañha. He refuses to draw such a conclusion, partly because the term piyu is too ambiguous, as a genre label, to allow us to draw any firm inferences about the content of the text (being used for avadānas, parables, etc.).

Fei Zhangfang classifies another version of the Naxian jing among the anonymous texts of the Eastern Jing dynasty, a list that he expanded compared to the previous one by Sengyou. Demiéville argues that this classification by Fei is plausible since he possessed a diverse range of catalogues where he could have found proof for this classification. Fei also consulted, other than the anonymous versions, catalogues from the W. Jin and N. Liang (p.10).

The LDSB mentions a third version of the Naxian jing, and treats it as an alternate translation. Sengyou previously classified this version as anonymous, and yet Fei ascribes it to Guṇabhadra. While Sengyou only gives a rather sparse list of Guṇabhadra’s translations, Fei claims to complete that list by consulting “all the the catalogues” in his possession (p.10). He refers for this attribution of the Naxian jing to Zhongjing bielu of the (Liu) Song dynasty.

Demiéville asks whether Guṇabhadra could have brought the original of this *Nāgasena-sūtra from Central Asia or Ceylon, and rejects this hypothesis on the grounds that on the one hand, Guṇabhadra based his translation of the Saṃyuktāgama on an original brought by Faxian from Ceylon, and on the other hand, according to Fei and Sengyou, Guṇabhadra’s original was identical to that for the extant version from the Eastern Jin. He concludes that since Guṇabhadra would have been incapable of translating a central Asian language, this original must have been written in an Indian Prakrit (“dialecte”).

Two versions of the Naxian are again mentioned in the 14th and 15th fascicles of the LDSB, and Demiéville highlights that for the second title, the number of juan given differs from the entry for the same title elsewhere in LDSBJ. Demiéville explains this difference in suggesting that Fei Zhangfang copied information about the text from Fajing without noticing that he already mentioned the same title before, with different details: the classification methods of the table in the 14th and 15th fascicles categorize translations not by epochs and names of the translators, as in earlier parts of LDSBJ, but by vehicles; this mode of classification was first employed by Fajing. Here we confront two common methodological difficulties in the critical use of the catalogues, according to Demiéville. First, it is often unclear if information in the catalogues is based on first-hand examination of texts that the bibliographers possessed, or if they are copying previous catalogues. Second, the number of fascicles often varied in practice, but cataloguers nonetheless used length, measured in fascicles, as a criterion by which to distinguish between different versions of a text or title.

Based on a calculation of the average number of characters per folio in the traditional catalogues (p.14), Demiéville proposes that the version of Naxian biqiu jing as mentioned in Jingtai was already incomplete in 663, and contained the same gap as K.

Demiéville points out that in DZKZM, it seems as if only Guṇabhadra’s version of the Naxian biqiu jing is mentioned, and it is classified as a text without parallels (i.e. a sole exemplar, among “versions uniques”, in Demiéville’s terms; p.18). Yet according to the DTNDL, that text had been lost since 664. Demiéville further criticizes the information of DZJZM on the anonymous version, which is, against all previous catalogues, categorized under the Mahāyāna, dated to the Han dynasty, and declared independent from Guṇabhadra’s version. Demiéville counters this new information with the fact that the anonymous version was not even extant. He further argues that the numerous points of confusion in DZKZM are due to the unscientific methods of the scholars who compiled the catalogue, as described by KYL (p.18). Therefore, Demiéville concludes that none of the information given by the DZKZM can be relied upon, not even the number of folios.

In KYL, Zhisheng criticizes the sections about the anonymous versions in CSZJJ and LDSBJ: from the 53 anonymous titles dated to the Eastern Jin by LDSBJ, Zhisheng retains only two, of which one is the Naxian biqiu jing. Demiéville suggests that this judgement about the date of the text by Zhisheng must be accorded a certain value.

Demíeville concludes, on the basis of this extended analysis, that there did indeed exist three versions of the Milindapañha in China, or of some analogous work: (1) a Naxian piyu jing translated in the third century at the latest, but not necessarily any earlier, which was lost in the fifth century; (2) a Naxian biqiu jing, translated under the E. Jin, which was anonymous, and probably based upon a Prakrit original; this version appears to have still been accessible to bibliographers of the Tang and the Five Dynasties, in a witness in two fascicles which sported the same lacuna as the version transmitted to us via the Korean canon; at the same time, a complete version, in three fascicles, has been transmitted to us via the “Southern” line of transmission starting with the Song edition, and Demiéville speculates that this complete version might have been rediscovered somewhere in the South. (3) A “separate version” of (2) was executed, Demiéville believes, in present-day Nanjing or Hebei by Guṇabhadra, between 435 and 455, by Guṇabhadra, but lost by 664.

Edit

1-21