Iwamatsu Asao 岩松浅夫. “Daihatsunehan gyō ni okeru ichi ni no mondaiten: Nehan gyō shōhon no honden o megutte 大般涅槃経における一二の問題点 涅槃経小本の翻伝をめぐって.” IBK 24, no. 2 (1976): 154-155.
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Iwamatsu points out that the information in the catalogues about translations of the so-called “small” 小本 Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra is extraordinarily confused. This confusion extends not only to the ascriptions of various texts, but also to considerable variation in titles and reported content. Between them, the different catalogues report a total of seven such texts by different translators, though no single catalogue reports all the different versions. Only four texts are now extant: 佛般泥洹經 T5, ascribed in the Taishō to Bo Fazu白法祖; 般泥洹經 T6, which the Taishō treats as anonymous; 大般涅槃經 T7, ascribed to Faxian法顯; and 方等般泥洹經 T378, ascribed to Dharmarakṣa. (Iwamatsu notes that T378 is fundamentally different in content to the other three texts.) In addition, the catalogues ascribe similar titles to *Lokakṣema, Faxian 法賢, and Zhi Qian. Iwamatsu states that no scholars have ever studied these supposedly lost texts, or ascriptions of a Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra to these figures, as a problem in its own right. The conclusion of Iwamatsu’s first study is that there only ever existed four such texts, and the apparent multiplication of texts stems from errors in LDSBJ; the supposedly separate text ascribed to Faxian 法賢 was none other than a ghost text created by an erroneous report about T7, and the text ascribed to Zhi Qian was a ghost created by erroneous information about T378. |