Harrison, Paul. "The Ekottarika-Āgama Translations of An Shigao." In Bauddhavidyāsudhākaraḥ: Studies in Honour of Heinz Bechert on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Petra Kieffer-Pülz and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, 261-283. Stisttal-Odendorf: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1997.
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Harrison discusses this as another possible An Shigao EĀ text. |
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Harrison discusses T792 as another possible An Shigao EĀ text. |
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Harrison presents a groundbreaking new model of the history of T150A, (a) to argue that most of the discourses contained in it probably derive from an *Ekottarikāgama tradition known to An Shigao; (b) to restore the text to its original order; and (c) to argue that the collection as received includes three extraneous texts of a different origin and character than the rest. According to Harrison, the extant T150A is a "complete and utter jumble". Indeed, the contents of the collection are even jumbled differently in the “Three Editions” lineage (SYM) and the Korean lineage. Harrison demonstrates that prior to the introduction of this confusion into textual history, the collection must have been ordered as follows (roman numerals are used to indicate the number that discourses currently carry in the Taishō): A. 七處三觀經Qi chu san guan jing: i(a) 875b4 – c16 & iii(b) 876b1 – c7 Harrison was able to reconstruct this order by producing a complete xerox of the current Taishō version, and identifying three points where a sutra is interrupted in mid-sentence by another (he shows these rupture points, as reproduced here, with a second point indicating where the interrupted text is resumed—usually mid-sentence): 875c16 何當[sic! > 等]為思-> 876b1-2想盡識栽 In addition, one also needs to introduce two more cuts for the rearrangement to be complete: one at 876c7 (the end of iii in T) to identify the end of A [the other side of this cut begins the entirety of the second half of the collection, beginning at Harrison's §19 = T "iv"]; and one at 880b19 (the end of xxx in T) to mark the end of D (which in Harrison's reconstruction is the end of the whole collection). Harrison then literally cut his xerox at the points, rearranged, and pasted back together to reproduce a more plausible original ordering of the text. As Harrison reconstructs the history that led to the "jumble" we have received, in the course of transmission, the original order suffered from both hapless reshuffling and, in the case of the lineage of the Korean edition, the loss of some discourses: B and parts of C (1-10a; 12b-18). Then the Taishō editors took these missing discourses from the Ming edition and tacked them to the end of the extant Korean edition, i.e. after the end of discourse D. Harrison gives a diagram (264), which allows readers to visualise the project of reordering he proposes. Additional support is lent to both Harrison's restitution of the original order of the text, and his reconstruction of the process that led to the "jumble", by the fact that the chunks he identifies and moves around are either the size of a plausible single folio, or a multiple of such folio-sized textual units. Thus, the original folios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, for instance, wound up in the order 1, 5, 2, 3, 4. A second unit, covering Harrison's §§12b-18, comprised three folios, the original folios 6-8 (this was one of three chunks, comprising five folios in all, lost in K). After restoring the discourses to their original order, Harrison also attempts to better understand what kinds of texts represented by the collection, by examining parallels found in Pāli, Sanskrit, and Chinese. First, discourses A, B, and D stand out from the rest (C) because they all bear titles and they are supposedly drawn from the Saṃyuktāgama rather than the Ekottarikāgama. By contrast, Harrison is inclined to attribute the 44 discourses in C to an Ekottarikāgama. Harrison suggests that A, B, and D might have been merged with C because these three also exhibit “a similar numerical principle of arrangement”. In their correct order, the 44 discourses of C follow the classic EĀ pattern: sets of 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 dharmas in ascending order. In contrast to A, B, and D, all of the 44 discourses in C do not have titles. Harrison also follows Hayashiya in identifying C as the missing Zajing sishisi bian mentioned in CSZJJ [the exact title in CSZJJ is actually 雜經四十四篇 Za jing sishisi pian, T2145 [LV] 6a13 --- SC]. Dao’an’s note indicates that this collection is taken from the EĀ, but the lack of titles make it hard to identify which exact sūtras are at issue. Sengyou marks this collection as missing in his time. Based on the fact that there are separate CSZJJ listings for a Qi chu san guan jing in 2 juan an Jiuheng jing in 1 juan, Harrison deduces that the Zajing sishisi bian had most likely already been merged with Qi chu by Sengyou’s time, as Qi chu alone could never have amounted to 2 juan. Of the 44 texts from the Zajing sishisi bian, 36 have close parallels to the Pāli Aṅguttara-nikāya, and five have parallels in the Chinese EĀ (T125). Harrison points out that this cements the "canonical status" of the collection. At the same time, Harrison cautions that these texts do not necessarily cover the whole extent of the EĀ tradition known to An Shigao, and we also cannot assume that these texts belonged to An Shigao’s EĀ just because they have parallels in the Aṅguttara-nikāya and T125. Nonetheless, the parallels increase this probability. On similar grounds, Harrison further proposes that the following translations also probably stem from An Shigao’s EĀ tradition: T31, T32, T36, T57, T792, and T605. Furthermore, Harrison argues that An Shigao’s EĀ texts come from the Sarvāstivādin tradition. He gives the following reasons: 1. An Shigao’s has a connection with the Sarvāstivādin master Saṅgharakṣa. |
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In his study of T150A, Harrison argues that 44 of its 47 discourses very likely stem from a larger EĀ tradition known to An Shigao. In addition to these 44 discourses, he further identifies six other extant texts as possibly sharing this provenance: T31, T32, T36, T57, T792, and T605. Harrison also points out that if we accept the association of these texts with EĀ, there will only be five sūtra translations left in the conservative corpus ascribed to An Shigao, for which we lack external evidence of an association with EĀ: T13, T14, T48, T98, T112. |
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Harrison studies the received T150A, to determine the original order and contents of the collection it represents. Key to this study is the contention that the received 150A includes several texts originally independent from An Shigao's core collection of *Ekottarikāgama sūtras. Harrison notes that the title Qi chu san guan jing 七處三觀經 is used (e.g. in T) for the entirety of the received collection, but in fact only belongs to one of these originally independent texts. On Harrison's analysis, the entire collection represented by the extant T150A consists of: (roman numerals are used to indicate the number that discourses currently carry in the Taishō) A. 七處三觀經Qi chu san guan jing: i(a) 875b4 – c16 & iii(b) 876b1 – c7 As can be seen, only the text Harrison labels "A" actually fits the title Qi chu san guan jing. Based on the records in Sengyou’s CSZJJ, Harrison deduces that these various texts were already collated together by his time since Sengyou marks the collection Zajing sishisi pian 雜經四十四篇 as missing and indicates the length of Qi chu as 2 juan and Jiuheng as 1 juan even though Qi chu alone could never have amounted to 2 juan. Like the other originally separate discourses in T150A, each bearing its own title, Harrison identifies Qi chu as belonging to a Saṃyuktāgama tradition (in contrast to the EĀ tradition of Zajing sishisi pian). Harrison proposes the Sanskrit title *Sapta-sthāna-sūtra and identifies the following parallels: 1. Chinese: T99(42); T101(27). T101(27) is identical. The sutra “teaches seven ways of knowing the skandhas, and three ways of investigating one’s experience”. |
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Harrison notes that T101 includes two discourses that are completely identical with discourses from An Shigao’s T150A: T101(27) with the 七處三觀經 Qi chu san guan jing and T101(11) with the 積骨經 Ji gu jing. |
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The extant 九橫經 Jiu heng jing has been transmitted as part of the received T150A. In his study of that collection, Harrison restores the original order of the collection as follows (roman numerals are used to indicate the number that discourses currently carry in the Taishō): A. 七處三觀經Qi chu san guan jing: i(a) 875b4 – c16 & iii(b) 876b1 – c7 Based on the records in Sengyou’s CSZJJ, Harrison deduces that these texts were already collated together by Sengyou's time, since he marks the collection Zajing sishisi pian as missing, and indicates the length of Qi chu as 2 juan and Jiuheng as 1 juan --- even though Qi chu alone could never have amounted to 2 juan. Harrison tentatively suggests for the Jiu heng jing the Sanskrit title *Navākāla-maraṇa-sūtra, ‘The Nine Untimely [Deaths] Spoken by the Buddha”. He does not find any parallels in Chinese and Pāli aside from T150b. He notes that the Bhaiṣajyaguru-sūtra also lists nine forms of premature death, but the contents of the two lists differ. While acknowledging that some catalogues assign the sūtra to SĀ, Harrison thinks that the Jiu heng jing also could have stemmed from an EĀ collection. |
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The extant Ji gu jing 積骨經 has been transmitted as part of the received T150A. In his study of T150A, Harrison restores the order of the collection as follows (roman numerals are used to indicate the number that discourses currently carry in the Taishō): A. 七處三觀經Qi chu san guan jing: i(a) 875b4 – c16 & iii(b) 876b1 – c7 Based on the records in Sengyou’s CSZJJ, Harrison deduces that these texts were already collated together by Sengyou's time, since he marks the collection Zajing sishisi pian as missing, and indicates the length of Qi chu as 2 juan and Jiuheng as 1 juan --- even though Qi chu alone could never have amounted to 2 juan. Unlike all the other sūtras collected in T150A (which are set in the Jetavana, Śrāvastī), the Ji gu jing is set on the Gṛḍhrakūṭa at Rājagṛha. It exhorts people to follow the Buddha’s teaching, stating that it would otherwise take even more lifetimes to reach liberation than the lifetimes needed for one’s bones to pile as high as Mt. Meru. Harrison finds most of the parallels in the Chinese and Pāli SĀ collections: T99(947), T100(340), T101(11) (identical), T765, 15.10 in the Saṃyutta-nikāya, and Itivuttaka 24. However, Harrison suggests that the sutra can also very well have belonged to the Eka-nipāta of an EĀ collection. |
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Harrison argues that An Shigao's Zajing sishisi pian 雜經四十四篇, which is reported by Dao'an and Sengyou, has been transmitted as the major part of the received T150A. In his study of T150A, Harrison restores the order of the collection as follows (roman numerals are used to indicate the number that discourses currently carry in the Taishō): A. 七處三觀經Qi chu san guan jing: i(a) 875b4 – c16 & iii(b) 876b1 – c7 As can be seen, on Harrison's analysis, the Zajing shishisi pian is to be identified with 44 of the discourses of T150A. Although the Zajing collection is reported by Sengyou as missing in CSZJJ, Harrison deduces that it was already collated with Qi chu and the other texts by Sengyou's time, since he indicates the length of Qi chu as 2 juan and Jiuheng as 1 juan --- even though Qi chu alone could never have amounted to 2 juan. Unlike the other sūtras collected in T150A, the 44 Zajing discourses do not bear titles and follow the classic EĀ pattern: sets of 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 dharmas in ascending order. Accordingly, Harrison suggests that they might have represented an EĀ tradition known to An Shigao. In his catalogue, Dao’an also makes a note that assigns the Zajing discourses to the EĀ. Of the 44 texts from the Zajing sishisi pian, 36 have close parallels to the Pāli Aṅguttara-nikāya, and five have parallels in the Chinese EĀ (T125). Harrison points out that this cements the "canonical status" of the collection. At the same time, Harrison cautions that these texts do not necessarily cover the whole extent of the EĀ tradition known to An Shigao, and we also cannot assume that these texts belonged to An Shigao’s EĀ just because they have parallels in the Aṅguttara-nikāya and T125. Nonetheless, the parallels increase this probability. Furthermore, Harrison argues that An Shigao’s EĀ texts come from the Sarvāstivādin tradition. He gives the following reasons: 1. An Shigao’s has a connection with the Sarvāstivādin master Saṅgharakṣa. |