Source: Gao 1983

Using the example of An Shigao, Gao observes a pattern of reascription in LDSBJ, whereby Fei Zhangfang takes batches of titles from lists of anonymous scriptures in LDSBJ, and assigns them to a single translator. In CSZJJ, such anonymous works are grouped by theme, as evidenced by the title. Gao notes that multiple titles on the themes of wealthy householders 長者 [see e.g. T2034 (XLIX) 50c12-17, 51a2-5 --- MR], renunciation 出家 [51a8-11, 51b14-20], brahmins 婆羅門 [51b10-c7], hells 地獄 [51c13-18], and samādhi 三昧 [esp. 52b10-18] are thus reassigned to An Shigao. This entry lists all extant An Shigao texts with those keywords in their titles [note: Gao does not provide a list of texts he regards as affected by this pattern, and I have not checked whether all of the texts associated with this entry were treated as anonymous in CSZJJ, or whether, alternatively, some were already assigned there to An Shigao --- MR.]

Gao also cites Okabe Kazuo 岡部和雄. "Shitsuyaku zakkyōroku kenkyū no kadai." IBK 21, no. 2 (1983): 66-71. Okabe had reportedly also noticed this pattern of reassignment of thematically grouped batches of anonymous titles from CSZJJ in LDSBJ.

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56 n. 24

Gao/Grohmann argues that the 慧印三昧經 T632 (Tathāgatajñānamudrā[samādhi]-sūtra), ascribed in T to Zhi Qian, the 三曼陀跋陀羅菩薩經 *Samantabhadrabodhisatva-sūtra T483, ascribed in T to Nie Daozhen 聶道真, and the 菩薩受齋經 T1502, also ascribed to Nie Daozhen, are in fact by Dharmarakṣa.

Gao's argument for T632 rests in part upon his treatment of the 佛印三昧經 T621, ascribed in T to An Shigao, as a neglected alternate translation of the Tathāgatajñānamudrā (cf. also T633, T634). Gao argues on the basis of comparison with T632 that T621 is in fact by Zhi Qian (see separate CBC@ entry). This leads him to observe that it is highly unlikely that Zhi Qian would have translated the same text twice, and to critically reassess the ascription of T632.

Gao's argument for the reassignment of these texts to Dharmarakṣa is complex and subtle. His main focus is T632, and his arguments for the reascription of T1502 and T483 follow in part as consequences of his critical consideration of the ascription of T632.

Gao first notes that Zhi Qian supposedly avoided transcriptions, even in translation of material such as dhāraṇī, but T632 uses them.

Gao then cites the 慧印三昧及濟方等學二經序讚 by Wang Sengru 王僧孺, preserved in CSZJJ (T2145 [LV] 50b11-51b3; Gao cites T2145 [LV] 50c2-51a2) [cf. also discussion and partial translation in Boucher 1996: 86-88 --- MR]. This document contains a detailed story of a certain He Gui 何規, who was gathering medicinal herbs on Mt Huyi 胡翼山 in Yuzhang 豫章 when he encountered a mysterious old man, who threw across a stream to him a scroll containing two texts: a 慧印三昧經, and a 濟諸方等學經 (cf. *Sarvavaipulyavidyāsiddha-sūtra T274). According to Wang's account, the scroll also contained a colophon 軸題 stating that the texts it contained were issued 出 by "the Dunhuang bodhisatva-śramaṇa Zhi Fahu 支法護 (Dharmarakṣa), with Zhu Fashou 竺法首 acting as amanuensis 筆受. Gao notes that some details regarding the content of the text, as mentioned in Wang's document, match the content of T632, including the precise wording 羅閱 for Rājagṛha and 陀隣尼 for dhāraṇī, which he correctly says do not appear in either of the other two canonical parallel translations to T632 (T633, T634).

Gao notes that in CSZJJ, Sengyou treats the other text mentioned in this document, T274, as a Dharmarakṣa translation, but treats T632 as by Zhi Qian. He argues that there are nonetheless reasons to believe that Sengyou actually preferred the ascription of T632 to Dharmarakṣa, and further, that such an ascription may have been current in earlier times.

As in the modern canon (T), Dharmarakṣa is ascribed in CSZJJ with a text entitled 聖法印經 T103. A postface to this text preserved in CSZJJ (colophon carried in K only, according to the T apparatus) gives the information that the text was translated by Dharmarakṣa, with Fashou acting as amanuensis: 元康四年十二月二十五日，月支菩薩沙門曇法護，於酒泉演出此經，弟子竺法首筆受，令此深法普流十方大乘常光; T2145 (LV) 51b4-7, repeated at T103 (II) 500b11-13. These are the same details reported by Wang Sengru for the text he calls the 慧印三昧.

Sengyou, Gao argues, saw that these two sets of information did not match with one another --- the same circumstances of translation could not be associated with both texts. Consequently, Sengyou added a cautionary note of his own at the end of Wang's document (T2145 [LV] 51a23-b3). However, he hesitated to completely overturn the ascription of T632 as he had received it. (Gao cites the Stein 2872 fragment of the Zhongjing bie lu 眾經別錄, which he identifies with the Liu Song catalogue of the same name, in which a short list of texts is ascribed to Zhi Qian, among them a 慧印三昧經 (54-55 n. 24); he argues that the "Bie lu", therefore, was the source of the Zhi Qian ascription.) Instead of going against the tradition he had received, Sengyou, Gao contends, despite his doubts, preferred merely to record the anomalies he had noticed for consideration by future scholars. Gao believes that two further details in CSZJJ hint that Sengyou nonetheless preferred the ascription to Dharmarakṣa for T632.

First, Sengyou places the very brief postface, attached to and supposedly concerning T103, immediately after Wang Sengru's document (perhaps Gao means to imply that Sengyou was encouraging critical comparison between the two documents). Gao also notes that this brief document states that the purpose of translating the text was to "promote the Mahāyāna", but that elsewhere in CSZJJ, Sengyou says of T103 that Dao'an regarded it as part of the Saṃyuktāgama 安公云出雜阿含, T2145 (LV) 8a16, which is not compatible with the characterisation of it as a Mahāyāna text. This note would therefore fit much better with T632.

Second, although Sengyou is in the habit of giving dates of translation where he has them, and though the postface supposedly attaching to T103 clearly gives a date, Sengyou does not attach that date to T103 when he lists it in the catalogue portions of CSZJJ. Gao regards this as a sign that Sengyou did not believe the information really pertained to that text.

Gao then notes that there is a chaotic set of conflicting information about the various alternate titles for T632: in CSZJJ, 實用慧印三昧經 (K), 寶網慧印三昧經 (SYM); in LDSBJ, 寶田慧[v.l.惠]印三昧; later even 寶由~, 寶恩~, or 寶思. He proposes that this profusion of alternate titles is explicable on the basis of graphic confusions, with the root form most probably being 罔 or some similar form, meaning "net", with the resulting title corresponding to a (separate) *Ratnajāla-sūtra. He cites Sengyou's famous complaint about the difficult at times of interpreting the terse manner in which Dao'an presented the titles of texts in his catalogue: Dao'an usually abbreviates titles to two characters, does not note the number of fascicles, and presents the data without line breaks. On this basis, Gao speculates that in fact, Dao'an's catalogue listed in immediate sequence two texts ascribed to Dharmarakṣa, a 寶網 = *Ratnajāla [indeed extant, cf. T433] and a 慧印 = Jñānamudrā, and at some point, the tradition conflated these as a single title, and then took the resulting ghost title as an alternate way of referring to T632. Thus, this reconstruction of the probable provenance of the confused traditions about alternate titles also supports the idea that an older bibliographic tradition ascribed Dharmarakṣa with a 慧印三昧經 alongside a 寶網 T433.

Gao then considers internal evidence, which he holds also supports the ascription of T632 to Dharmarakṣa.

On the basis of a computer-assisted analysis, Gotō Gijō 後藤義乗 once argued that T632 was in fact by Lokakṣema. Gao rejects this argument (more or less out of hand) on the basis of the understanding that translations were produced by groups, the composition of which changed over time, and the final wording of the Chinese was usually not determined by the foreign "translator", but by Chinese collaborators.

Gao next points to the following line in T632: 生須摩訶提[v.l. 須呵摩提, SYMP]/見阿彌陀佛, T632 (XV) 465a15. He states that the transcription 須呵摩提 for Sukhāvatī (which he traces to Gāndhārī *suhamadi, citing de Jong's translation of an article by Fujita Kōtatsu; 65 n. 93), in conjunction with 阿彌陀 Amitābha, is extremely distinctive, otherwise appearing only in two other texts, the 三曼陀跋陀羅菩薩經 *Samantabhadrabodhisatva-sūtra T483 (ascribed in T to Nie Daozhen 聶道真) (relevant passage at T483 [XIV] 668a16-17, Gao 74 n. 95), and the 菩薩受齋經 T1502, also ascribed in the present canon to Nie Daozhen (with the orthography 須訶摩持, T1502 [XXIV] 1116b3-4).

Treating T1502 and T483 as Dharmarakṣa translations (see below for his reasons), Gao then lists a set of transcription and translation terms that they share with T632 (48-49): 阿耨多羅三耶三菩提, 阿僧祇, 阿須倫, 漚惒拘舍羅, 迦留羅, 陀隣尼, 泥洹, 跋陀, 比丘僧, 摩竭提, 文殊師利, 摩休勒 [only attested in SYMP, v.l. 摩睺勒 K]; 聞如是一時佛在, 整衣服, 罪蓋, 願樂, 飯食床臥具病瘦醫藥, 各得其所, 聞經(皆)大歡喜前為佛作禮而去. He also points to the widespread use of 曉, 曉了, and 猗 as characteristics of Dharmarakṣa's works shared by this trio of texts, and especially, the use of 菩薩道 as a kind of "double translation" for *bodhicitta.

On this basis, Gao concludes that both internal and external evidence dovetail in supporting the reascription of T632 to Dharmarakṣa, and that the abovementioned postface must have originally belonged to T632, but been associated in error with T103. Further, on the basis of the postface, he argues that we can know that T632 was translated in T295.

Gao gives his arguments in favour of reascription of T483 and T1502 to Dharmarakṣa in a very long footnote (65-74 n. 94). He shows that these titles were first ascribed to Nie Daozhen in LDSBJ. There, they are part of a pattern of ascription of batchwise reassignment of previously anonymous titles to translators like Nie Daozhen (Gao documents parts of the same patttern as it affects An Shigao; 56 n. 24). Implausibly, this pattern sees Nie Daozhen suddenly assigned thirty titles grouped around the theme of bodhisatvas. Gao concludes that ascriptions to Nie Daozhen first appearing in LDSBJ, including these two texts, are therefore unrelilable.

Gao discusses his reasons for reascription of T1502 in the greatest detail [note that Gao twice erroneously gives the T no. of the text as T1205, which could lead to confusion; 67, 70). Here, Gao in part follows Antonino Forte, "Il P'u-sa cheng-chai ching: E l'origine dei tre mesi di digiuno prolungato," T'oung Pao 57, no. 1/4 (1971): 103-134, but also goes beyond Forte's arguments. He notes that this text has been transmitted in an especially chaotic state, and shows that this disorder can already be documented under the Tang, through quotes in the Fa yuan zhu lin 法苑珠林 T2122 and the Zhu jing yao ji 諸經要集 T2123, and also the Dunhuang manuscript Stein 5665, which special characters date to the rough period of Wu Zetian, sometime after 689. The format in which the text is presented in S. 5665, with frequent gaps between sections of texts, may account for some of the reason that the text was prone to this sort of disorder. The text as presented in S. 5665, as noted by Ōno Hodō, is not in fact a sūtra, but rather a liturgical manual, that is to say, a kind of handbook for the conduct of various rites associated with the 菩薩齋. Gao trancribes the full text (68-70). He shows that it contains several different rites. This means that its content does not match the transmitted title of T1502 (菩薩受齋經) on two scores: it is not a 經, and it gives instructions for more rituals than just the 受齋 ritual. He then shows that in fascicle 12 of CSZJJ, describing his own works, Sengyou twice refers to a 菩薩受齋經, but draws from it content that is not found in the transmitted T1502.

On this basis, Gao proposes that the 菩薩受齋經 seen by Sengyou was not in fact T1502, so that the information he gives for the ascription of that title (he treats it as anonymous) in fact has no bearing on the extant T1502. He then proposes that the extant T1502 is more likely to be the text that Sengyou calls 菩薩齋法, T2145 (LV) 9b26-27, which he ascribes to Dharmarakṣa, but treats as "missing" 闕. This resolves the difficulties described above, because T1502 better matches this title in content.

[Gao also notes that further confusion about this text appears in Fajing T2146, where T1502 appears to be confused with a Madhyamāgama text with parallels in T87-T89, evidencing the ease with which this title could lead to mistaken conflation of different materials.]

In the CSZJJ list of Dharmarakṣa's works, the title 菩薩齋法, which Gao argues should be identified with T1502, carries a note giving two alternate titles: 舊錄云 菩薩齋經 或云 賢首菩薩齋經. Gao notes that the second of these titles makes no sense, in terms of content or meaning, in association with T1502 --- but it does fit perfectly with T483, 賢首 = 三曼陀跋陀羅菩薩經 = Samantabhadra. He notes that this would fit with Dharmarakṣa's known habit of giving both translation and transcription of proper names in titles. Reasoning in a similar manner to his treatment of the odd alternate titles of T632 discussed above, Gao then proposes that these two titles must have followed one another in one of the catalogues used by Sengyou as his sources, e.g.

三曼陀跋陀羅菩薩經 賢首 菩薩齋經

and that the gloss 賢首 ended up associated, incorrectly, with the 菩薩齋~ title, rather than the title of T483. This clue, however, hints that T483, like the title 菩薩齋法, was ascribed to Dharmarakṣa in a list in an earlier catalogue, which must have served as source (promixate or mediated) of Sengyou's work.

On this basis, and on the basis of similarities in style and content, Gao concludes that all three works --- T632, T1502, and T483 --- are in fact by Dharmarakṣa, despite the fact that none are directly ascribed to him in any of our extant secondary sources.

Gao finally notes that if this surmise is correct, and it implies that S. 5665 was also a product of the Dharmarakṣa milieu, it means that the text is significant for the history of Pure Land thought and practice in two respects. First, it shows that refuge-taking in Amitābha, resident in Sukhāvatī, was an integral part of early "bodhisatva fast" 菩薩齋 practice. Second, the verses with which S. 5665 concludes rhyme, which he argues (following Zürcher, whom he understands to have stated that rhymed verse never appears in any authentic translation text) means that the liturgy was actually composed in China, which in his view would make this one of the earliest native documents relating to Pure Land.

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42-50, 54-56 n. 24, 65-74 n. 94.