Text: T1666; 大乘起信論

No

[T]  T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014.

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Entry author: Michael Radich

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• Title: 大乘起信論
• People: Paramārtha, 真諦 (translator 譯)
• Identifier: T1666

Yes

[Muller DDBh]  Muller, Charles. DDB s.v. 大乘起信論 — Accessed July 28 2014

• T1666; 大乘起信論

"Although its authorship is attributed to the Indian monk Aśvaghoṣa 馬鳴, its direct Indian provenance is doubtful. At the same time, there is a lack of concrete evidence for fully East Asian origins, and thus the matter its origin remains the subject of debate—especially among Japanese scholars." [MR:] Note: the scholarship on the possible provenance and attribution of this text is quite copious.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Lai 1990]  Lai, Whalen. "The Chan-ch'a ching: Religion and Magic in Medieval China." In Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr., 175-206. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. — 175, 186-191

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Lai states that the Dasheng qi xin lun 大乘起信論 T1666 is an “apocryphon.” He notes that it was originally thought to be the work of Aśvaghoṣa and translated by Paramārtha around 550 in Canton, “but confirmation of that is lacking.” He notes that none of Paramārtha’s students show any knowledge of the Dasheng qi xin lun 大乘起信論 T1666, and the text is now recognised by most scholars as an apocryphal composition. Here, Lai refers to Kashiwagi Hiroo’s Daijō kishinron. Lai argues that there was mutual borrowing between the Dasheng qi xin lun and the Zhancha shan'e yebao jing 占察善惡業報經 T839. Lai notes that the Dasheng qi xin lun contains elements which complicate a simple assignation to India or Central Asia and concludes that the text’s structure can best be explained by recognising the influence of “the Chinese cosmology of the One, ying-yang theory, three six numerology, and the progression into the five processes.”

Entry author: Sophie Florence

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No

[Ishii 2012]  Ishii Kōsei 石井公成. “Shintai kan’yo bunken no yōgo to gohō: NGSM ni yoru hikaku bunseki” 真諦關與文獻の用語と語法―NGSMによる比較分析 [The Vocabulary and Syntax of Paramārthan Texts: A Comparative Analysis Using NGSM]. In Shintai sanzō kenkyū ronshū 真諦三藏研究論集 [Studies of the Works and Influence of Paramartha], edited by Funayama Tōru 船山徹, 87-120. Kyoto: Kyōto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo/Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, 2012. — 109, 119 n. 36, 37

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Ishii mentions in passing that work by himself and Takasaki suggests that the vocabulary of AF is closer to that of Bodhiruci than of Paramārtha. He cites:

Takasaki Jikidō 高崎直道. "Daojō ki shin ron no gohō: e, i, ko tō no yōhō o megutte 『大乗起信論』の語法―「依」「以」「故」等の用法をめぐって." Waseda daigaku daigakuin bungaku kenkyūka kiyō (tetsugaku, shigaku hen) 早稲田大学大学院文学研究科紀要(哲学・史学編) 37 (1992).

Ishii Kōsei 石井公成. "Daijō ki shin ron no yōgo to gohō no keikō 『大乗起信論』の用語と語法の傾向.” IBK 42, no. 1 (2003): 287.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Sakaino 1935]  Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. — 708-709

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Sakaino maintains that the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith 大乗起信論 (T1666) is not apocryphal. Fajing was the first to suspect the ascription to Paramārtha, because the text was not listed in the catalogue of his works (Sakaino lists a few works that might correspond to this supposed catalogue). LDSBJ, by contrast, does not show any doubt about the ascription to Paramārtha. KYL records, apparently based on the lost preface to the text 起信論序, details of the translation work of T1666 different from those in KYL, but Sakaino suspects that this preface was unreliable. Sakaino states that T1666 was not included in the catalogue in the time of Fajing because Paramārtha translated scriptures in different places, and it was probably too soon from the time of translation to be included in the catalogue. Sakaino also claims that there would not have been enough time to compose the text from whole cloth, even if somebody had wanted to counterfeit it.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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No

[Funayama 2017]  Funayama Tōru 船山徹, “Shinnyo no sho kaishaku – bongo tathatā to kango, honmu, nyo, nyonyo, shinnyo 眞如の諸解釋--梵語tathatāと語, 本無, 如, 如如, 眞如.” Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 92 (2017): 1-75. — 25

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Funayama argues that the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith was (at least partially) composed in China. In support of this argument, Funayama points to exegetical materials found in the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith that must have originally been written in Chinese. In particular, Funayama points to the gloss on the Chinese binome, zhenru 真如, the equivalent to the Sanskrit word tathatā, found early on in the treatise (T1666 [XXXII] 576a16), which breaks apart the binome into its two components, zhen, meaning “truly,” and ru, meaning “thus.” Funayama argues that this gloss on the binome zhenru was composed in China because it treats the binome zhenru as a compound, where its equivalent, the Sanskrit word tathatā, is not a compound. Funayama refers to the work of Kashiwagi Hiroo 柏木弘雄, who argues that in the Mahāyāṇa Awakening of Faith, the Chinese binome zhenru refers to tathatā and not to the compound bhūtatathatā. Because zhenru is the equivalent to tathatā, which is not a compound, and would not have been treated as such by Indic authors, Kashiwagi argues that the gloss which treats zhenru as a compound would have had to have been a later addition not found in the “original [Indic] text” (Jpn. genbun 原文) forming the core of the “translated” portion of Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith. Thus, according to Kashigawi, this gloss on zhenru must represent a later interpretation by Sinitic exegetes, and does not comprise part of the ostensibly “original [Indic] text” of the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda-śāstra. In sum, this gloss of the word zhenru adds another small piece of evidence in support of the current consensus view, that the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith cannot be a simple translation from a single Indic original text, and must have been (at least partially) composed in China.

Entry author: Billy Brewster

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No

[Young 2015]  Young, Stuart. Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015. — 134, 139-141 with n. 29

• T1666; 大乘起信論

Young notes that Aśvaghoṣa himself is glaringly absent from the "account of Dharmic history and justification for authoring the Awakening of Faith" in the Nanatsu-dera version of the Maming pusa zhuan 馬鳴菩薩傳 T2046. His name also appears nowhere in the extant text of the the Awakening of Faith itself. His name does appear in the preface attributed to Zhikai 智愷 or Huikai 惠愷, but this preface is considered spurious by Demiéville (1929, 8; 11-15) and Girard (2004, xvii, lxvii).

The motivation for the ascription of the Awakening of Faith to Aśvoghoṣa is easy to understand: Aśvaghoṣa offered a kind of Indian authority that was particularly attractive to medieval Chinese audiences.

The earliest undisputed source that attributes the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa is Huiyuan's Dasheng yi zhang 大乘義章 T1851, completed around 590. The attribution also appears in a range of supposedly earlier texts, but the authenticity of all these sources is disputed: (1) the preface attributed to Zhikai 智愷 or Huikai惠愷 in T1666; (2) the Qixin lun yishu 起信論義疏 attributed to Tanyan 曇延; (3) the Dasheng qi xin lun yishu 大乘起信論義疏 T1843 attributed to Jingying Huiyuan 淨影慧遠.

Entry author: Chia-wei Lin

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