Source: Strickmann 2002

Strickmann writes: "Properly speaking, many of [Amoghavajra's 167 'translations'] were not translations at all. Instead, they might better be called 'adaptations’; essentially, he refurbished them in line with his own terminology and ritual practice. This becomes even more striking in those cases where texts 'translated' by Amoghavajra are known to have been written in China centuries earlier, and directly in Chinese. A substantial part of Amoghavajra’s output thus comprises revisions of books already known in China, rather than new materials. Among the remaining, a good many cannot be found either in corresponding Sanskrit manuscripts or in Tibetan translation – at least not in the form in which Amoghavajra presents them. Much of what his texts tell us unquestionably goes back to Indian sources; he was clearly working fully within the Tantric Buddhist tradition, but often more as an author or compiler than as a translator in our sense of the term."

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229

Strickmann discusses the final section of T620, characterising the text as a whole as "a manual on [meditation sickness] written in fifth-century China".

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120-122

Strickmann dates T1238 to the first half of the sixth century, but says of the nature of the text only that "a further set of instructions for therapeutic sealing was written down in another proto-Tantric scripture"; he thus seems to suspend judgement about whether the text is a translation from an Indic source, or a Chinese composition.

Later, however, he seems to be less certain of the date. "If the text can truly be dated to the first half of the sixth century....Unfortunately, though there seems to be no intrinsic improbability in this early date, the work has not survived in any continental Chinese Buddhist canon. It is known only from Japan (whither it is supposed to have been imported in the ninth century), and the printing on which the current edition is based dates only from 1753" (151).

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143-151

As Strickmann notes, T1268 is supposed to have been translated by Bodhiruci 菩提流支 (of the Tang/Zhou). However, he also notes that the text contains "a puzzling addition, relating how the text was originally translated by a brahman from Central India at the end of the sixth century, and informing us that a variant form of the image comprises one elephant's head and one pig's head". 陳隋之間。中天竺婆羅門為譯此本。是依朝人從西國將來。各行用多不同驅自。又一本是陀羅尼集經諸天部卷出。若作佛部及菩薩部。一為猪頭象頭二身各自胡跪。形本各別同此行用, T1268 (XXII) 302a12-16.

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254

Strickmann characterises T1331(8) as a "reworking of" T1393. He regards Huijian as the known author, saying that Huijian "appears to have been a specialist in expanding older works, often genuine translations, and adapting them to the conditions of his time and the needs of the community that he aimed to establish". He discusses the content of T1331(8) in some detail, 114-119.

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114-119

Strickmann discusses a "classic Chinese incantation" appearing in T1336, which he characterises as "a bulky Chinese anthology of dhāraṇīs compiled in the first half of the sixth century".

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106-107

Strickmann characterises T1420 by saying that it "seems to have been written in North China during the sixth century." He notes that the text "appears to survive in only a single manuscript copy, made in Japan probably in the eleventh or twelfth century and preserved there in a monastic archive." Strickmannn discusses the content of the text in some detail. He notes that the text includes a passage in which "the chief concern of [a group of] converted brahmans is with the writing of talismans---and talismans of a familiar Chinese sort". He also notes the presence in the text of the twelve hours of the Chinese day.

A note added by the editors [probably Faure], 321 n. 76, gives several references on this text, including Osabe Kazuo, Tō Sō mikkyōshi zakkō 唐宋密教史雑考 (Kyoto: Nagata bunshodō, 1982): 234-247.

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170-178

Striickmann mentions T2904 as an example of the appearance in the context of a Buddhist text of a "basic Chinese incantatory pattern....a litany, droning and repetitive, [that] takes the form of successive lines, each running 'noun-noun-verb-me'".

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107-108