Harrison, Paul. The Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present: An Annotated English Translation of the Pratyutpanna-Buddha-Saṃmukhāvasthita-Samādhi-Sūtra. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1990.
| Assertion | Argument | Place in source |
|---|---|---|
|
Harrison argues that the Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經 (in three juan) T418 (BZSMJ) can be tentatively attributed to Lokakṣema, with some reservations. According to Harrison, the text is preserved both in the Korean edition of the canon ("K") and the “printed editions” of the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties ("SYM"). Harrison summarises the differences between K and SYM as follows [“chapter” refers to divisions based upon the Tibetan, rather than pin 品 divisions in the Chinese]: 1. The opening paragraph of the nidāna demonstrates a “redactional difference” between K and SYM. Harrison suggests that this may be the result of an insertion into SYM of a “well known śrāvaka-guṇa formula,” without reference to the Indic manuscript of the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvastitasamādhi-sūtra (PraS). However, because the nidāna of SYM corresponds with that of T416 and the Tibetan version, Harrison considers it likely that the nidāna does go back to the Indic, and is not a “formulaic application by a Chinese writer of the nidāna as it appears in K.” 2. The gāthās at the end of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are “clearly independent translations of an original text”. Harrison bases this conclusion on comparison to T416, T419 (which is closer to K than SYM), and the Tibetan version. 3. There are roughly 235 variant readings between the two versions, which Harrison regards as “of minor importance”. They usually involve no more than a single character. Approximately half of these variants are to be found in the “first third of the text.” Chapters 1-6 of K show significantly more deviation in transmission from SYM than Chapters 7-26; and the opening section of the nidāna and the gāthās of these chapters are “clear proof of an independent textual tradition”. From Chapter 7 onwards, K and SYM are “virtually identical”. We can therefore conclude that “all the prose of the BZSMJ (excluding 1A) and all the gāthās from Chap. 7 onwards in both K and SYM go back to the same original text. Because the variant readings contained therein are almost totally artefacts of transmission, we can also conclude that the only significant redactional differences between K and SYM lie, in fact, in the gāthās of Chapters 4-6 and in the nidāna of Chapter 1 (i.e. in Chapter 1-6 of K). In view of this, “we are justified in designating K 1-6 as a separate redaction of the BZSMJ.” Thus Harrison divides the texts into Reaction A (K Chapters 1-6), and Redaction B (all of SYM and Chapters 7-26 of K). He offers the following hypotheses to explain the existence of these two separate redactions: 1. Lokakṣema translates a complete version of the PraS with his customary “shortened nidāna” and “prose rendition of the gāthā”. This translation is Redaction A. 2. (a) “A later translator”, with a different Indic manuscript, redoes the nidāna and the gāthās, but “leaves the prose of Redaction A virtually unchanged”, thus producing Redaction B. Or: 3. (b) “A later translator”, with a different Indic manuscript, creates an original translation of the PraS (which Harrison terms “X”). Subsequently the gāthās and nidāna of this translation are conflated with the prose of Redaction A”, thus producing Redaction B. 4. Redaction B becomes the “standard edition of the large BZSMJ in China and is printed in the standard editions of the Chinese Canon (=SYM)”. 5. At some point, “either at the redaction of the Korean edition of the Canon or – more probably – on the occasion of some earlier edition, a version of the BZSMJ is produced which combines Chapters 1-6 of A with Chapters 7-26 of B”, yielding the present K. Harrison notes that T419 (which consists of six chapters) and Redaction A end at the same point. This would appear to suggest that Lokakṣema’s original translation consisted only of Chapters 1-6. However, Harrison argues that the “homogeneity of prose” in both versions of the BZSMJ suggests that the prose portions of Chapters 1-6 and 7-26 are the work of the same person or persons. In what follows, Harrison attempts to establish this homogeneity, and to determine the authorship of the text by comparison to T224 ("DXJ" = Daoxing jing), as DXJ is “the only text which can be regarded with certainty as a genuine product of his [Lokakṣema’s] translation work.” Harrison concludes that features common to BZSMJ and DXJ prove that both are the work of the same person or school. Thus, in the two extant versions of the BZSMJ in three juan, Chapters 1-6 of K go back to Lokakṣema’s original translation, as does, “with some hesitation”, the prose of Chapters 7-26 in both K and SYM. However, the gāthās of SYM 1-26 and K 7-26 “are the work of another translator.” To illustrate his point, Harrison presents a list of terms which are common to both the BZSMJ and DXJ. He finds that the majority of translation terms in the two texts exhibit a close affinity, especially those which are considered “particularly characteristic of Lokakṣema … [e.g. terms for] tathatā, Buddha, bhūta-koṭi etc.” Harrison considers small discrepancies in the treatment of these terms to be “minor alterations” made “during the course of a later revision.” While the prose portions of both Redactions agree with Lokakṣema’s style, the verse gāthās of Redaction B are not in the style of Lokakṣema, “who is known to render gāthās in prose.” Therefore, Harrison considers these verses to be the work of another hand. He thinks it most likely that at some point in the third century, someone with access to an Indic manuscript revised Lokakṣema’s translation and replaced its gāthās with verse, while also making certain other adjustments. While he does not himself investigate the author of these adjustments, Harrison suggests Zhi Qian and Dharmarakṣa as possible candidates. Harrison then examines external evidence. Sengyou’s catalogue indicates that Dao’an attributed a text entitled Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經 to Lokakṣema, as did the Jiu lu 舊錄, and both indicated that Lokakṣema either translated or published the translation on the “eighth day of the tenth month, 179 C.E.” (which, as Harrison points out, is the same date on which he released DXJ!). In addition, a colophon to the BZSMJ (by an unknown author) tells us that Lokakṣema translated the text along with Zhu Foshuo 竺佛朔, an Indian who was also involved in the translation of the Aṣṭa (which, according to Harrison, raises the possibility that the PraS was brought from India at the same time). Zhu Foshuo is said to have “recited the text in the original language, while Lokakṣema translated it orally into Chinese for his Chinese assistants to take down in writing.” Fei Changfang attributed an additional translation of the PraS to Zhu Foshuo, but Harrison considers this to be improbable. Additional evidence for the text’s attribution to Lokakṣema can be found in another colophon (written by Zhi Mindu 支愍度). Thus, Harrison concludes, “The attribution of a work entitled BZSMJ to Lokakṣema is well established in the earliest sources.” Harrison adds that “since Sengyou does not mention any other extant works with this title, we can assume that there were only two works of that name;” the longer version popularly attributed to Dharmarakṣa, and the shorter to Lokakṣema (T417). Fajing attributed a two juan version to Dharmarakṣa, and lists a separate and partial translation in one juan by Lokakṣema. However, after its appearance in the Fajing lu, Lokakṣema’s version in one juan disappears. It is not mentioned by LDSBJ, and the Renshou lu (Yancong), Jingtai and DZKZM list it among lost texts. The text did not appear in the Song, Yuan or Ming editions of the Canon, nor the Qisha 磧砂 edition. Yet it surfaced in the Korean edition, and has since found its way into the Taishō as T417. How it did so, Harrison writes, remains a mystery. Returning to the larger BZSMJ, Harrison makes two main points: the extant two or three juan version (most likely Redaction B) “was ascribed to Dharmarakṣa until the eighth century”; “Lokakṣema came to be credited for his own two juan version, along with the temporarily lost one juan text.” The first extant catalogue after Sengyou (CSZJJ) to attribute a two juan version to Lokakṣema was Fei Changfang’s “notoriously unreliable” LDSBJ, in which he takes the alternative date and title from Sengyou's CSZJJ. Harrison is unsure where Fei got the variant juan count; it possibly derives from another source. In KYL, Zhisheng “overturned the attribution of the complete version of the PraS” to Dharmarakṣa. Zhisheng lists Dharmarakṣa’s version as lost, and attributes the three juan version to Lokakṣema. According to Harrison, this reattribution was most likely based on internal evidence, the “testimony of Nie Daozhen’s catalogue,” and the “Wu lu 吳錄 recorded by Fei Changfang”. The text is listed as fifty pages long, “which tallies exactly with the number of columns in the Taishō edition.” Zhisheng’s assertion has been regarded as final “down to the present day”, and Harrison believes this to have been “borne out by an examination of [the text’s] style”. However, he also notes that for the existence of Dharmarakṣa’s translation, we only have Sengyou’s word (based on Dao’an’s), which all subsequent catalogues followed. Although Dao’an is considered to be reliable, Harrison wonders if such a translation existed in the first place. He writes that it is possible that Dao’an was referring to Dharmarakṣa’s revision of a previous translation, rather than an original. As discussed above, based on his examination of stylistic cues, Harrison does not consider Dharmarakṣa to have been involved, because “the relevant portions of B are closer to Lokakṣema’s A than Dharmarakṣa’s translation style.” In view of these facts, Harrison argues that Redaction B was created by a revision which (according to the colophon to the BZSMJ) took place in 208, “in the Han capital of Xu(chang).” He reasons that if the original translation had taken place in 179, a revision so long afterwards "would not have been the stylistic touching up which usually occurred after a translation”. Therefore the revision in 208 appears to have been a “major overhaul”, which Harrison suggests was undertaken by students of Lokakṣema’s school with a slightly different manuscript. Those students would have been more familiar with Chinese and thus able to “convert gāthās into unrhymed Chinese verse” and utilise a more “sinicised vocabulary”. Harrison concludes that Dharmarakṣa’s part, if he ever was involved, “remains unknown”, but “as far as the origins of Redaction B of the BZSMJ is concerned, I doubt we ever need to look further than the revision of 208 C.E.” |
223-249 |
|
Harrison argues that the Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經 (in three juan) T418 (BZSMJ) can be tentatively attributed to Lokakṣema, with some reservations. According to Harrison, the text is preserved both in the Korean edition of the canon ("K") and the “printed editions” of the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties ("SYM"). Harrison summarises the differences between K and SYM as follows [“chapter” refers to divisions based upon the Tibetan, rather than pin 品 divisions in the Chinese]: 1. The opening paragraph of the nidāna demonstrates a “redactional difference” between K and SYM. Harrison suggests that this may be the result of an insertion into SYM of a “well known śrāvaka-guṇa formula,” without reference to the Indic manuscript of the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvastitasamādhi-sūtra (PraS). However, because the nidāna of SYM corresponds with that of T416 and the Tibetan version, Harrison considers it likely that the nidāna does go back to the Indic, and is not a “formulaic application by a Chinese writer of the nidāna as it appears in K.” 2. The gāthās at the end of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are “clearly independent translations of an original text”. Harrison bases this conclusion on comparison to T416, T419 (which is closer to K than SYM), and the Tibetan version. 3. There are roughly 235 variant readings between the two versions, which Harrison regards as “of minor importance”. They usually involve no more than a single character. Approximately half of these variants are to be found in the “first third of the text.” Chapters 1-6 of K show significantly more deviation in transmission from SYM than Chapters 7-26; and the opening section of the nidāna and the gāthās of these chapters are “clear proof of an independent textual tradition”. From Chapter 7 onwards, K and SYM are “virtually identical”. We can therefore conclude that “all the prose of the BZSMJ (excluding 1A) and all the gāthās from Chap. 7 onwards in both K and SYM go back to the same original text. Because the variant readings contained therein are almost totally artefacts of transmission, we can also conclude that the only significant redactional differences between K and SYM lie, in fact, in the gāthās of Chapters 4-6 and in the nidāna of Chapter 1 (i.e. in Chapter 1-6 of K). In view of this, “we are justified in designating K 1-6 as a separate redaction of the BZSMJ.” Thus Harrison divides the texts into Reaction A (K Chapters 1-6), and Redaction B (all of SYM and Chapters 7-26 of K). He offers the following hypotheses to explain the existence of these two separate redactions: 1. Lokakṣema translates a complete version of the PraS with his customary “shortened nidāna” and “prose rendition of the gāthā”. This translation is Redaction A. 2. (a) “A later translator”, with a different Indic manuscript, redoes the nidāna and the gāthās, but “leaves the prose of Redaction A virtually unchanged”, thus producing Redaction B. Or: 3. (b) “A later translator”, with a different Indic manuscript, creates an original translation of the PraS (which Harrison terms “X”). Subsequently the gāthās and nidāna of this translation are conflated with the prose of Redaction A”, thus producing Redaction B. 4. Redaction B becomes the “standard edition of the large BZSMJ in China and is printed in the standard editions of the Chinese Canon (=SYM)”. 5. At some point, “either at the redaction of the Korean edition of the Canon or – more probably – on the occasion of some earlier edition, a version of the BZSMJ is produced which combines Chapters 1-6 of A with Chapters 7-26 of B”, yielding the present K. Harrison notes that T419 (which consists of six chapters) and Redaction A end at the same point. This would appear to suggest that Lokakṣema’s original translation consisted only of Chapters 1-6. However, Harrison argues that the “homogeneity of prose” in both versions of the BZSMJ suggests that the prose portions of Chapters 1-6 and 7-26 are the work of the same person or persons. In what follows, Harrison attempts to establish this homogeneity, and to determine the authorship of the text by comparison to T224 ("DXJ" = Daoxing jing), as DXJ is “the only text which can be regarded with certainty as a genuine product of his [Lokakṣema’s] translation work.” Harrison concludes that features common to BZSMJ and DXJ prove that both are the work of the same person or school. Thus, in the two extant versions of the BZSMJ in three juan, Chapters 1-6 of K go back to Lokakṣema’s original translation, as does, “with some hesitation”, the prose of Chapters 7-26 in both K and SYM. However, the gāthās of SYM 1-26 and K 7-26 “are the work of another translator.” To illustrate his point, Harrison presents a list of terms which are common to both the BZSMJ and DXJ. He finds that the majority of translation terms in the two texts exhibit a close affinity, especially those which are considered “particularly characteristic of Lokakṣema … [e.g. terms for] tathatā, Buddha, bhūta-koṭi etc.” Harrison considers small discrepancies in the treatment of these terms to be “minor alterations” made “during the course of a later revision.” While the prose portions of both Redactions agree with Lokakṣema’s style, the verse gāthās of Redaction B are not in the style of Lokakṣema, “who is known to render gāthās in prose.” Therefore, Harrison considers these verses to be the work of another hand. He thinks it most likely that at some point in the third century, someone with access to an Indic manuscript revised Lokakṣema’s translation and replaced its gāthās with verse, while also making certain other adjustments. While he does not himself investigate the author of these adjustments, Harrison suggests Zhi Qian and Dharmarakṣa as possible candidates. Harrison then examines external evidence. Sengyou’s catalogue indicates that Dao’an attributed a text entitled Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經 to Lokakṣema, as did the Jiu lu 舊錄, and both indicated that Lokakṣema either translated or published the translation on the “eighth day of the tenth month, 179 C.E.” (which, as Harrison points out, is the same date on which he released DXJ!). In addition, a colophon to the BZSMJ (by an unknown author) tells us that Lokakṣema translated the text along with Zhu Foshuo 竺佛朔, an Indian who was also involved in the translation of the Aṣṭa (which, according to Harrison, raises the possibility that the PraS was brought from India at the same time). Zhu Foshuo is said to have “recited the text in the original language, while Lokakṣema translated it orally into Chinese for his Chinese assistants to take down in writing.” Fei Changfang attributed an additional translation of the PraS to Zhu Foshuo, but Harrison considers this to be improbable. Additional evidence for the text’s attribution to Lokakṣema can be found in another colophon (written by Zhi Mindu 支愍度). Thus, Harrison concludes, “The attribution of a work entitled BZSMJ to Lokakṣema is well established in the earliest sources.” Harrison adds that “since Sengyou does not mention any other extant works with this title, we can assume that there were only two works of that name;” the longer version popularly attributed to Dharmarakṣa, and the shorter to Lokakṣema (T417). Fajing attributed a two juan version to Dharmarakṣa, and lists a separate and partial translation in one juan by Lokakṣema. However, after its appearance in the Fajing lu, Lokakṣema’s version in one juan disappears. It is not mentioned by LDSBJ, and the Renshou lu (Yancong), Jingtai and DZKZM list it among lost texts. The text did not appear in the Song, Yuan or Ming editions of the Canon, nor the Qisha 磧砂 edition. Yet it surfaced in the Korean edition, and has since found its way into the Taishō as T417. How it did so, Harrison writes, remains a mystery. Returning to the larger BZSMJ, Harrison makes two main points: the extant two or three juan version (most likely Redaction B) “was ascribed to Dharmarakṣa until the eighth century”; “Lokakṣema came to be credited for his own two juan version, along with the temporarily lost one juan text.” The first extant catalogue after Sengyou (CSZJJ) to attribute a two juan version to Lokakṣema was Fei Changfang’s “notoriously unreliable” LDSBJ, in which he takes the alternative date and title from Sengyou's CSZJJ. Harrison is unsure where Fei got the variant juan count; it possibly derives from another source. In KYL, Zhisheng “overturned the attribution of the complete version of the PraS” to Dharmarakṣa. Zhisheng lists Dharmarakṣa’s version as lost, and attributes the three juan version to Lokakṣema. According to Harrison, this reattribution was most likely based on internal evidence, the “testimony of Nie Daozhen’s catalogue,” and the “Wu lu 吳錄 recorded by Fei Changfang”. The text is listed as fifty pages long, “which tallies exactly with the number of columns in the Taishō edition.” Zhisheng’s assertion has been regarded as final “down to the present day”, and Harrison believes this to have been “borne out by an examination of [the text’s] style”. However, he also notes that for the existence of Dharmarakṣa’s translation, we only have Sengyou’s word (based on Dao’an’s), which all subsequent catalogues followed. Although Dao’an is considered to be reliable, Harrison wonders if such a translation existed in the first place. He writes that it is possible that Dao’an was referring to Dharmarakṣa’s revision of a previous translation, rather than an original. As discussed above, based on his examination of stylistic cues, Harrison does not consider Dharmarakṣa to have been involved, because “the relevant portions of B are closer to Lokakṣema’s A than Dharmarakṣa’s translation style.” In view of these facts, Harrison argues that Redaction B was created by a revision which (according to the colophon to the BZSMJ) took place in 208, “in the Han capital of Xu(chang).” He reasons that if the original translation had taken place in 170, a revision so long afterwards "would not have been the stylistic touching up which usually occurred after a translation”. Therefore the revision in 208 appears to have been a “major overhaul”, which Harrison suggests was undertaken by students of Lokakṣema’s school with a slightly different manuscript. Those students would have been more familiar with Chinese and thus able to “convert gāthās into unrhymed Chinese verse” and utilise a more “sinicised vocabulary”. Harrison concludes that Dharmarakṣa’s part, if he ever was involved, “remains unknown”, but “as far as the origins of Redaction B of the BZSMJ is concerned, I doubt we ever need to look further than the revision of 208 C.E.” |
223-249 |
|
Harrison records three texts listed in the catalogues “which may or may not be related to the [Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi-sūtra],” none of which have survived. Among these is the Xiao-an banzhou sanmei jing 小安般舟三昧經 (in one juan). This text first appears in CSZJJ among the “lost works,” and is accompanied by the notice “Listed in the Jiu lu.” Harrison claims that the “Jiu lu” may refer to Zhu Daozu’s catalogue, which would date the text “to the fourth century or earlier”. Subsequent catalogues assign the text to the Wei-Wu period (220-277). It is sometimes listed as “a lost Mahāyāna work” and sometimes as “a lost ‘Hīnayāna’ work”. Harrison does not know of any catalogue which has attempted to relate this text to the Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經. However, Hayashiya argued that this text is related to T417. Hayashiya reasoned that “if the Jiu lu had a Da banzhou sanmei jing 大般舟三昧經… it ought by rights to have had a Xiao banzhou sanmei jing (the an 安 being a scribal blunder)” (Hayashiya 1945: 564-567). Harrison considers this “plausible” but is not convinced due to “insignificant evidence”. He adds, “We would do well to view with suspicion any conclusion to which even cataloguers like Fei Changfang refused to jump.” Harrison adds that any three of these texts may be the source for the passages in T417 which are not based on the Banzhou sanmei jing in three juan. |
268-269 |
|
Harrison records three texts listed in the catalogues “which may or may not be related to the [Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi-sūtra],” none of which have survived. Among these is the Fatuo pusa bai’ershi nan jing 颰陀菩薩百二十難經 (in one juan) [sic for Fatuo---dictionaries give bá or fú for 颰, 颰陀 Skt *Bhadra---MR]. The text first appears in CSZJJ, listed as a lost, anonymous text. Harrison suggests that this could be an “alternative title” of one of the earliest translations of the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi-sūtra. Harrison adds that any three of these texts may be the source for the passages in T417 which are not based on the BZSMJ in three juan. |
269 |
|
Harrison records three texts listed in the catalogues “which may or may not be related to the [Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi-sūtra],” none of which have survived. Among these is the Banzhou sanmei nianfo-zhang jing 般舟三昧念佛章經 (in one juan). This text first appeared in CSZJJ “newly compiled supplementary catalogue of miscellaneous anonymous sūtras;” Harrison claims that we can infer from this description that the text was not known to Dao’an. It then appears in Fajing, where it is described as a “separate translation” of the large edition of the Xing pin 行品, and entitled (Fo-shuo) banzhou sanmei nianfo-zhang jing 般舟三昧念佛章經. “It must therefore have been available to one of Fajing’s sources.” Subsequent catalogues record it as lost, and record no new information about it, apart from some “unfounded guesses as to its date in the [LDSBJ]” (which assigns it to the Han and the Eastern Jin). Harrison infers that since the text did not appear to be known to Dao’an, it may have been produced “as late as the fifth century.” Harrison claims that the title and “the evidence of the Fajing lu” confirms that this text contains the portion of the PraS which corresponds to the Xing pin 行品 of the Banzhou sanmei jing (BZSMJ). He notes that scholars have attempted to “identify the work” with T417 or T419, but in view of the evidence discussed above, these arguments “remain totally unconvincing.” These scholars also “fail to take into account the fact that all three texts appear side by side in the Fajing lu, which suggests Fajing’s source, to whom they were presumably available, was unable to identify any one of them with any other” (citing Hayashiya 1945: 573-574). Harrison adds that any three of these texts may be the source for the passages in T417 which are not based on the BZSMJ in three juan. |
268 |
|
In his discussion of the stylistic characteristics of T418, Harrison takes the Daoxing banruo jing 道行般若經 T224 as a touchstone because “it is the only text that can be regarded with certainty as a genuine product of his [*Lokakṣema’s] translation work.” |
236 |
Harrison argues that the 般舟三昧經 T417 (BZSMJ in one juan) is a “later abridgement” of the 般舟三昧經 T418 (BZSMJ in three juan), rather than an independent translation. In his discussion of T418, Harrison divides the text into Redaction A, corresponding to chapters 1-6 of the Korean edition, and Redaction B, which consists of chapters 7-26 of the Korean edition as well as all chapters of the version belonging to the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties. T417 follows Redaction B of T418; wherever B differs markedly from A, T417 follows B. According to Harrison, T417 appears to be the result of a “scissors-and-paste job” which is most evident in the gāthās, where the author has selected pādās from different verses of redaction B and recombined them to form new verses. Within T417 there appear to be occasional misunderstandings of the original text, which have also been noticed by Zürcher. (Zürcher, Erik. “A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts”, with Appendix: “Buddhist Texts of the Later Han Period” (unpublished paper delivered at the Symposium on State, Ideology and Justice in Early Imperial China, Leiden, Sept. 1975), 14, n. 19. The author of T417 appears to have updated many of Lokakṣema’s renderings: in T418 Amitābha advises bodhisattvas that they must “call me to mind repeatedly” if they wish to be reborn in Sukhāvatī, whereas in T417 the bodhisattvas are told to “call to mind my name;” in T418 the bodhisattvas should think of Amitābha preaching to an “assembly of bhikṣus,” while T417 it is to a group of bodhisattvas. According to Harrison, these differences indicate the influence of Pure Land theory and terminology; and rather than reflecting the original text of the PraS, betray the use of the abridged sūtra as a “support for Pure Land practice.” These alterations make the attribution to Lokakṣema illogical. Furthermore, given the “modern” terminology, we can date its composition to around 300 or later. Harrison then examines external evidence. Sengyou’s catalogue indicates that Dao’an attributed a text entitled Banzhou sanmei jing to Lokakṣema, as did the Jiu lu, and both indicated that Lokakṣema either translated or published the translation on the “eighth day of the tenth month, 179 C.E.” (which, as Harrison points out, is the same date on which he released the DXJ!). In addition, a colophon to the BZSMJ (by an unknown author) tells us that Lokakṣema translated the text along with Zhu Foshuo, an Indian who was also involved in the translation of the Aṣṭa (which, according to Harrison, raises the possibility that the PraS was brought from India at the same time). Zhu Foshuo is said to have “recited the text in the original language, while Lokakṣema translated it orally into Chinese for his Chinese assistants to take down in writing”. Fei Changfang attributed an additional translation of the PraS to Zhu Foshuo, but Harrison considers this to be improbable. Additional evidence for the text’s attribution to Lokakṣema can be found in another colophon (written by Zhi Mindu). Thus, Harrison claims, “the attribution of a work entitled BZSMJ to Lokakṣema is well established in the earliest sources.” Harrison adds that “since Sengyou does not mention any other extant works with this title, we can assume that there were only two works of that name;” the longer version popularly attributed to Dharmarakṣa, and the shorter to Lokakṣema (T417). The Fajing lu attributed a two juan version to Dharmarakṣa, and lists a one juan, separate and partial, translation by Lokakṣema. However, after its appearance in the Fajing lu Lokakṣema’s version in one juan disappears. It is not mentioned by LDSBJ, and the Renshou lu, Jingtai lu and DZKZM list it among lost texts. The text did not appear in the Song, Yuan or Ming editions of the Canon, nor the Jisha edition. Yet it surfaced in the Korean edition, and has since found its way to the Taishō as T417. How it did so, Harrison writes, remains a mystery. |
250-254, 264-266 |
|
Harrison prefaces his discussion of the Bapo pusa jing 拔陂菩薩經 T419 by stating that there is little that can be identified with T419, and thus the origin and authorship remain unknown. In what follows he assesses the little external evidence which is available to us. The text can be traced back to an entry in CSZJJ, among a list of texts which were marked in the Dao’an lu as guyijing 古譯經 “ancient versions of sūtras;” a term which, Hayashiya has argued, was reserved for sūtras produced in the “Later Han (25-220 C.E.) and Wei-Wu (220-227) periods.” We also know that the text was lost by the time Sengyou compiled his catalogue. Dao’an considered the text of the Vaipulya [Mahāyāna] class. Harrison notes that the fact that T419 is anonymous means that even Dao’an was unable to assign it to a translator. Given the little information available to us, Harrison writes that “the customary identification of the Popituo pusa jing with the PraS is, although highly likely, still by no means completely certain … However given that the only other known sūtra of which Bhadrapāla is the chief figure is of relatively late date, the traditional identification is in all probability correct, and should be allowed to stand.” This assertion is based on three points: In the Fajing lu T419 is listed as one of three partial translations of the same text as the Banzhou sanmei jing, i.e. placed in context as a version of the PraS; although the catalogue does not note whether the text is extant, the description of it shows that the text must have been available, if not to Fajing, then to one of his sources; the title given, although it accords with standard Chinese transliteration of Bhadra has as little to do with the transliteration of that name in the text itself as the title given by Sengyou. Harrison concludes that by the time of the Kaiyuan lu all of the foregoing information is combined and “there can be no doubt that the present T419, the Bapo pusa jing, is identical with the text under discussion, by virtue of its title, its length, and the fact that it does indeed correspond to the greater part of pin I-IV of the Banzhou sanmei jing” T418. Furthermore, the lack of a proper ending, i.e. “a series of ordinary gāthās,” militates against our regarding it as a “complete text,” thus the text “has every appearance of being a fragment.” Finally, Harrison claims that (although space does not allow for a detailed examination of the styles of the text) the style of the Bapo pusa jing “confirms the testimony of the catalogues,” and scholars have been “virtually unanimous” in dating the text “sometime around the first half of the third century C.E.” |
216-220 |
|
|
Harrison writes that the 大方等大集經賢護分 T416 is “the only Chinese version of the PraS concerning which we know definitely when, where, and by whom it was translated.” The catalogue in which it first appears was published two years after the text, and Fei Changfang’s association with the translator (Jñānagupta) leaves little room for error. Changfang lists T416 as Jñānagupta’s sixth translation among thirty-one (at the time of the compilation of the catalogue), and his attribution has been accepted by all subsequent catalogues. Harrison considers the strength of the external evidence to outweigh the need for internal evidence, but for good measure adds that T416 “exhibits all the characteristics of the later Chinese Buddhist translations:” standard terminology, fidelity to the text, consistency in the use of formulae. He concludes that T416 was translated in the “early months of the year 595 at the Daxingshan-si in Chang’an.” |
212-215 |