Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991.
| Assertion | Argument | Place in source |
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Nattier characterises the text as it has come down to us as “garbled”, and notes a number of features that may point to a “possibility of a Chinese locus for the final recension of this version of the story”: the use of the placename Jin 晉 (also referring to a language, 晉言), though she also considers the possibility that 晉土 could be for Skt. Sindhu; the use of Chinese terminology, such as tianzi 天子; and reference to “250 precepts”, a number which is unique to the Chinese Dharmaguptaka version of the Vinaya. |
165-168 |
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“The entire Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra is sometimes listed as having been translated during the Northern Liang dynasty. The Candragarbha section, however—together with a companion work title the Sūryagarbha-sūtra (Ch. [Rizang fen] 日藏分) and two other short texts—was translated in the middle of the 6th century by Narendrayaśas, and only subsequently (in 586, according to Tao-hsüan [Daoxuan 道宣]) incorporated into the preexisting Chinese translation of the Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra.” A fragment of the text in Sanskrit included in the Hoernle collection was identified by Judith Boltz as corresponding to T397(14) (XIII) 306a-c, thus apparently showing that the text could not have been composed out of whole cloth in China. |
171-172, 174 n. 70 |
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Nattier notes: “The entire Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra is sometimes listed as having been translated during the Northern Liang dynasty. The Candragarbha section, however—together with a companion work title the Sūryagarbha-sūtra (Ch. Jih-tsang fen 日藏分) and two other short texts—was translated in the middle of the 6th century by Narendrayaśas, and only subsequently (in 586, according to Tao-hsüan [Daoxuan 道宣]) incorporated into the preexisting Chinese translation of the Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra.” A small Sanskrit fragment has been preserved, which corresponds to part of Skt., and proves that at least part of the text once existed in Sanskrit; transcription and translation in A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature Found in Chinese Turkestan (London: Oxford University Press, 1916): 103-108, corresponding to T397(15):13.306a15-c1. There also exist Chinese and Khotanese versions of the text, but the Chinese preserves a much greater portion of the text--"(apparently) the text as a whole"--spanning nineteen chapters on a wide range of topics. The introduction to the Chinese version of the text is also entirely different from that of the Khotanese and Tibetan versions, and the closing sections are similarly unique; but the core of the Kauśāmbī story is "reasonably consonant in all three recensions". At its close, however, the version of the Kauśāmbī story features "a long concluding section that has no parallel in any other version". Nattier "tentatively suggests" that this material may have been added "in a Chinese context, in response to Chinese conditions", for the following reasons: 1. It features a dhāraṇī which does not appear to be a genuine transcription of Indian words; 2. It refers to people looking upon their parents as "field deer" 麞鹿, which is a Chinese and not an Indian image; 3. One of the disastrous consequences of the decline of the Dharma is said to be decrease in sexual power and pleasure, where "one would expect an Indian Buddhist to see this as a positive value, not a negative one"; 4. The text refers repeatedly to "three essential life-forces" 三精, which does not seem to correspond to any Indian Buddhist term; 5. The text also refers to "white Dharma" and "black Dharma", which also do not seem Indic; 6. A reference to people being "unfilial to their parents" 不孝於父母 "sounds suspiciously Chinese"; 7. The text contains "unabashed advertising of 'long life, fame, and wealth' and 'never being poor'as...benefits [of] listening to the sutra"; 8. The text exhibits a strong concern for the financial support of the Buddhist community and exhortation to rulers to punish rule-breaking monks, which are common concerns in China, but not in India (Natter here compares the text to the Ren wang jing 仁王經 T245 (and T246). |
171-172, 174-177, 182-185, 279 |
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Nattier argues that the text was probably composed in China, for the following reasons: 1. The content of the prophecy of decline of the Dharma is unusual---decline is attributed to restrictions imposed on the Samgha by the government on monastic ordinations, stupa-building, and the crafting of images, which seems to jibe with concerns current in fifth-century China. 2. The term ren 仁 in the title is important in Chinese thought, but it is hard to think of an Indian antecedent. 3. The text betrays concerns atypical of Indian texts, such as mention of the "hundred families" 百家, the arrangement of a series of items in groups of nine, and reference to sutras being kept in boxes. Nattier refers to further work by Yoritomi Motohiro, |
128-129 |