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A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America
J. W. DEJONG
Foreword
THERE seems to be little necessity to justify an attempt to sketch briefly the history of Buddhist studies. There is an abundance of material available in the writings of scholars, but no single work has yet been devoted to a systematic study of the history of Buddhist studies. Windisch's unfinished work contains much information on Buddhist studies in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century,' but very little on the following decennia. Henri de Lubac, a Jesuit father, has written a book on the meeting of Buddhism and the West.2 He is more interested in the reaction of the Western world to Buddhist ideas than in the history of Buddhist studies. The most important chapter of his book for Buddhist scholars is the one which deals with the information on Buddhism which can be found in the writings of missionaries in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. A recent work on Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters by G. R. Welbon3 attempts to show how Western scholars have ex
The following chapters formed the basis for a series of lectures given at the University of Tokyo in October and November 1973. The second part will appear in the following issue of the Eastern Buddhist. -Eds.
1 Ernst Windisch, Geschichte der Sanskrit-Philologie und indischen Altertumskunde, I, Strassburg, 1917; II, Berlin u. Leipzig, 1920; Philologie und Altertumskunde in Indien. Drei nachgelassene Kapitel des III. Teils der Geschichte der Sanskrit-Philologie und indischen Altertumskunde, Leipzig, 1921.
2 Henri de Lubac, La rencontre du bouddhisme et de l'occident, Paris, 1952.
3 G.R. Welbon, The Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters, Chicago, 1968.
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plained the meaning of Nirvāņa. The usefulness of his book is diminished by the fact that the author was not sufficiently equipped for this difficult task. Apart from these three books there are of course many other publications which contain useful information. The most important will be mentioned in due course.
The first chapter deals very briefly with the period up to about 1825. Although important work had been done before that date, it mostly remained unpublished and became known much later. More will be said in this chapter about the period 1826-1877, in which Eugène Burnouf is the dominating figure. The second chapter begins in 1877 and ends about 1942. This period witnesses the work of such great scholars as Sylvain Lévi, Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Hermann Oldenberg, Th. Stcherbatsky and the Rhys Davidses. The third chapter deals with the most recent period, whereas the final chapter sketches some of the tasks which will require the attention of scholars in coming
years.
In this brief sketch it is of course impossible to deal adequately with all aspects of Buddhist studies. The main emphasis has been put on philological studies. From a geographic point of view India is the principal country dealt with but developments in the Theravada countries and in China and Tibet have not been entirely neglected. No attempt has been made to include studies on Japanese Buddhism and the history of Japanese Buddhist studies. This is a topic which can only be adequately treated by Japanese scholars.
4 For a review of his work see Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1, 1972, pp. 396-403.
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ABBREVIATIONS
JOR
Madras JRAS
АО
MCB
NGGW
OLZ
RHR
RO SBE SPAW
AMG, B.V. Annales du Musée Gui
met, Bibliothèque de Vulgarisation
Archiv Orientální BCL Bulletin de la Classe des
Lettres de l'Académie ro
yale de Belgique BEFEO Bulletin de l'École fran
çaise d'Extrême-Orient Bibl. B. Bibliotheca Buddhica Bibl. Ind. Bibliotheca Indica BMFJ Bulletin de la Maison
Franco-Japonaise BSOAS Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African
Studies CPD
Critical Pāli Dictionary GOS Gaek wad Oriental Series
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Indian Antiquary IHQ Indian Historical Quar
terly
Indo-Iranian Journal Ind. St. Indische Studien
Journal Asiatique JAOS Journal of the American
Oriental Society JASB Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal J. Bombay Journal of the Bombay Br. RAS Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society Journal of Indian Philosophy
Journal of Oriental Research, Madras Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Göttingen Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Revue de l'histoire des religions Rocznik Orientalistyczny Sacred Books of the East Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft Zeitschrift für Indologie und Iranistik Zapiski Vostočnogo Otdelenija Russkogo Arxeologičeskogo Obščestva
HJAS
WZKS
IA
WZKSO
ZDMG
JA
ZII
ZVORAO
JIP
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CHAPTER I
The early period (300 B.C.-1877)
Knowledge of Buddhism in Antiquity (p. 58)-The legend of Barlaam and
Josaphat (p. 59-Papal envoys to the Mongol Khans and the travels of Marco Polo (p. 61)--Xaverius and other missionaries (p. 63)-Catholic missionaries in Tibet in the 17th and 18th centuries (p. 64)-First Pāli studies. Translations of the Kammavācā (p. 66)--Pāli studies by Burnouf and others (p. 69 )--Burnouf's study of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts (p. 72-Translations of Buddhist texts in Kalmyk, Mongolian and Tibetan (p. 74)-French translations of Fa-hsien's Fo-kuo-chi and Hsuan-Tsang's Hsi-yü-chi (p. 75)—Study of Theravāda Buddhism by Spence Hardy, Bigandet and Alabaster (p. 75)
Already long before Alexander the Great information about India reached Greece. Since Alexander's conquests (326-323 B.C.) much more became known about India. The most important source is the work of Megasthenes who about 300 B.C. visited Pāțaliputra as an envoy. Megasthenes's work has not been preserved but many Greek and Latin authors have made use of it. Megasthenes mentions brahmans and sramanas. Some scholars have considered the śramanas to be Buddhists but this is not warranted by the use of the word in the inscriptions of Asoka and in the Pāli texts. The first time Buddhism is mentioned in a Greek source is five hundred years after Megasthenes. Clement of Alexandria who wrote his Stromateis about 200 A.D. mentions Indians who follow the precept of Boutta and venerate him as a god. It is not surprising to find this information in an author living in Alexandria. In a discourse to the citizens of Alexandria, Dion Chrysostomos mentioned that among his audience
5 W. Reese, Die griechischen Nachrichten über Indien bis zum Feldzuge Alexander des Grossen, Leipzig, 1914.
6 The most careful study of Megasthenes's work is B.C.J. Timmer, Megasthenes en de indische Maatschappij, Amsterdam, 1930. Recent literature on Megasthenes is given by J. Duncan M. Derrett, Megasthenes, Der kleine Pauly, 3 (Stuttgart, 1969), col. 1150-1154.
7 Strom. I.15.71; cf. Timmer, op. cit., p. 84-6; A. Dihle, Indische Philosophen bei Clemens Alexandrinus, Mullus (Festschrift Klauser), München, 1964, pp. 60–70.
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there were Bactrians, Scythians and some Indians. Dion Chrysostomos died in 117 A.D. During the early centuries of our era there was no lack of contact between South India and Ceylon on the one hand and Alexandria and Rome on the other." Clement could have been particularly well informed about India, if it is true that his teacher Pantainos travelled to India, as is told by Eusebius (±263-339).10 Several scholars believe that Alexandria is mentioned in Pāli texts. The name Alasanda is found four times in the Milindapañha (ed. V. Trenckner 82.23-24, 327.27, 331.18 and 359.29), twice in the Mahāniddesa (P.T.S. ed. 155.5 and 415.11) and once in the Mahāvamsa (XXIX.39).11 Agreement on this point, however, has not been reached by scholars.
About two centuries after Clement Buddha is mentioned by Hieronymus (+347-419) who tells us that Buddha was born from the side of a virgin.12
In the following centuries no knowledge of Buddhism seems to have reached the West. In mediaeval times Christendom venerated two Saints, Barlaam and Josaphat. The legend of these two saints was very popular and versions in many languages (Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Provençal, Romaic, Dutch and Scandinavian) circulated in mediaeval Europe. When the legend of Buddha became known in Europe, the resemblance with the legend of Saint Josaphat was soon noticed. The first to point it out was an unknown editor of Marco Polo's work who added the following remark to Marco Polo's account of the legend of Buddha: "This is like the life of Saint Iosaphat who was son of the king Avenir of those parts of Indie, and was converted to the Christian faith by the means of Barlam, according as is read in the life and legend of the
8 Ad Alexandrinos 32, 40.
9 J. Filliozat, Les échanges de l'Inde et de l'Empire romain aux premiers siècles de l'ère chrétienne, Revue historique, 201, 1949, pp. 1-29; Ét. Lamotte, Les premières relations entre l'Inde et l'occident, La Nouvelle Clio, 1953, pp. 83-118; R. Delbrueck, Südasiatische Seefahrt im Altertum, Bonner Jahrbücher 155/156, 1955-6, pp. 8-58, 229-308; Franz F. Schwarz, Neue Perspektiven in den griechisch-indischen Beziehungen, OLZ, 67, 1972, col. 18-21.
10
11
1
Eusebius h. eccl. 5, 10.
Cf. H. de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 13-16; Critical Pali Dictionary, I Copenhagen, 19241948, pp. 441-442.
12 Hier. adv. Iov. 1,42; cf. A. Dihle, Buddha und Hieronymus, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 2, 1965, pp. 38-41. Foucher, La vie du Bouddha, Paris, 1949, p. 357: Traditur quod Buddam, principem dogmatis eorum, e latere suo virgo generârit.
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holy fathers.”13 The Portuguese writer Diogo do Couto, who described about 1612 the exploits of his countrymen in India, remarked that Josaphat "is represented in his legend as the son of a great king in India, who had just the same upbringing, with all the same particulars that we have recounted in the life of Buddha ... and as it informs us that he was the son of a great king in India, it may well be, as we have said, that he was the Buddha of whom they relate such marvels."14 However, not until the nineteenth century was the Buddhist origin of the legend of Josaphat discovered by scholars. 15 Since 1859, much has been written on this topic. In a sttidy published in 1894, Ernest Kuhn gave a full survey of the work done by scholars since 1859.16 Recent discoveries of Georgian manuscripts have led to new discussions on the history of the legend. D.M. Lang and Georgian scholars have pointed out that there are two Georgian versions, an older and more complete version which was probably written in the ninth or tenth century, and a shorter one, based upon the more complete version. Both versions have been translated into English by D.M. Lang. 17 There seems to be no doubt that the older Georgian version is a Christian adaptation of an Arabic text. Probably towards the end of the eighth century ‘A Book of the Buddha,' a 'Book of Balauhar and Budhasaf' and a 'Book of Budhasaf by himself' were translated from Pehlevi into Arabic. The most complete extant text of the Arabic story was published in Bombay in 1888. This version has been translated into Russian by V.R. Rosen. It was published in 1947 by Krachkovsky. 18 Nothing is known of the Pehlevi versions mentioned above. Lang supposes that the Barlaam and Iosap! legend first developed in Central Asia among the Manichaeans. An Ok Turkish fragment relates the encounter of prince Siddhārtha with a sick man As to the Indian sources of the legend, it has been pointed out that many the parables are not of Buddhist origin but can be found in the Pañcatanti
13 Cf. L. F. Benedetto (ed.), Marco Polo. Il Millione, Firenze, 1928, p. clxxxvii, n. A. C. Moule & P. Pelliot, Marco Polo. The Description of the World, I, London, 1938, p. 410
14 CF. D. M. Lang, The Wisdom of Balahvar, London, 1987, p. 12.
15 Laboulaye, Journal des Débats, 26 Juillet 1859; Felix Liebrecht, Jahrbuch für romanis und englische Literatur, II, 1860, pp. 314-334.
16 Barlaam und Joasapb. Eine bibliografisch-literaturgeschichtliche Studie. München, 1894 17 The Wisdom of Balabvar. London, 1957; The Balavariani, London, 1966. 18 Povesti o Barlaame i losafe. Moskva-Leningrad, 1947.
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and the Mahābhārata. It is quite possible that the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts contain episodes which have found their way into the legend. I hope that Japanese scholars will study the oldest accessible versions of the legend (the old Georgian version and the Arabic version) and compare them with the Buddhist texts in Chinese which have not been consulted by scholars in the past. The Georgian version, in its turn, has been translated into Greek about A.D. 1000. From Greek it was translated into Latin (A.D. 1048) and from Latin into many Western languages.
The first contacts of the Western world with Buddhism in Asia took place in the thirteenth century when Pope Innocent IV sent Franciscan and Dominican friars as envoys to the Mongol khan. The Italian Franciscan friar John of Pian di Carpino (†1252) left Lyons in 1245. The following year he reached the Mongolian camp in Central Mongolia. In 1247 he returned to France and wrote the Ystoria Mongalorum. He speaks of the religion of the Kitai in Christian terms: “Kytai autem, de quibus superius diximus, homines sunt pagani, qui habent litteram specialem; et habent Novum et Vetus Testamentum, ut dicitur, et habent Vitas Patrum, et heremitas, et domos quasi ecclesias factas, in quibus ipsi orant temporibus suis; et dicunt se quosdam sanctos habere. Unum Deum colunt, dominum Jesum Christum honorant, et credunt vitam aeternam, sed minime baptizantur; Scripturam nostram honorant et reverentur, christianos diligunt, et eleemosynas faciunt plures; homines benigni et humani satis esse videntur” (Sinica Franciscana I, pp. 57-58). This passage clearly refers to the Confucianists and not to the Buddhists, as asserted by H. de Lubac. Information about Buddhists is given by Willem van Ruysbroeck, a Flemish Franciscan friar, who spent six months in 1254 in Karakorum. In his Itinerarium he describes rather accurately Tibetan lamas and mentions even the formula Om mani padme hūm (ou man haetavi or On man baccam, Sinica Franciscana, I, p. 230). However, the most comprehensive account of Buddhism is to be found in Marco Polo's Description of the World (Divisament dou Monde). Marco was in China from 1275 to 1291. Arriving in Sa-chau (Tun-huang) he meets Chinese Buddhists: “It (Sa-chau) lies in a province called Tangut, whose inhabitants are all idolaters, except that there are some Turks who are Nestorian Christians and also some Saracens. The idolaters speak a language of their own. They do not live by trade, but on the profit of the grain which they harvest from the soil. They have many abbeys and monasteries, all full of idols of various forms
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to which they make sacrifices and do great honour and reverence” (tr. Ronald Latham, London, 1958, pp. 54-55). In his book Marco Polo mentions Tibetan Buddhists. However, it is in a chapter dealing with Ceylon that Marco Polo has given a fairly accurate summary of the life of the Buddha. He mentions Adam's Peak: “The Saracens say that it is Adam's grave, but the idolaters call it the monument of Sakyamuni Burkhan (Sagamoni Borcan).” Marco Polo tells that he was the son of a king; he mentions' two of his encounters, one with a dead man and one with a very old man, how he left the palace and spent the rest of his days most virtuously and chastely and in great austerity'. Marco Polo knows about the reincarnations of the Buddha:""And they said that he had died eighty-four times. For they say that when he died the first time he became an ox; then he died a second time and became a horse” (tr. Latham, Pp. 255-257).
While Marco Polo returned from China, Pope Nicholas IV sent Friar John of Monte Corvino (1247-1328) to the Mongols. He arrived in Khanbaliq (Peking) in 1294. He lived for many years in China from where he sent two letters, the first dated 8 January 1305, the second 13 February 1306, in which he mentions the idolaters. John of Monte Corvino was appointed Archbishop of Khanbaliq in 1307 and died in 1328. In the same year the Franciscan friar Odoric de Pordenone(†1331) arrived in Peking. In 1330 he returned to Padua where he dictated the story of his travels (Relatio). The last papal envoy is John Marignolli who was sent to China in 1339 by Pope Benedict XII. He arrived in Khanbaliq in 1342 where he remained for three years. He returned in 1352 by way of Ceylon.19
The travels of the friars aroused much interest in Europe. The most popular work, which contains many legends apart from information obtained from the writings of the friars, is John Mandeville's Voyages, written in 1365. There are about 300 manuscripts of this work which was translated into most European
19 The texts of the writings of the papal envoys have been published by A. van den Wyngaert O.F.M., Sinica Franciscana, vol. 1: Itinera et relationes Fratrum Minorum saec. XIII et XIV, Quaracchi-Firenze, 1929. Translations of the most important are to be found in C. Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission, Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, trans. by a Nun of Stanbrook Abbey, London and New York, 1955. For further bibliographical references see I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, London, 1971.'
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languages and printed 22 times between ca. 1470 and the end of the eighteenth century.20
Henri de Lubac summarizes the knowledge which the Western world had acquired during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the following words: “Quelques récits curieux, quelques détails extérieurs, quelques descriptions de la vie des bonzes et des lamas, c'était donc à peu près tout. La grande religion d'Orient n'apparaissait pas dans son individualité; elle n'était même pas nommée. De ses doctrines, autant dire qu'on ne savait rien” (op. cit., p. 47).
Vasco da Gama's voyage to India in 1497–8 inaugurated a new chapter in the history of the relations between the West and Asia. In the sixteenth century missionaries went out to China, Japan, Ceylon, Siam and Indochina. In 1542 Franciscus Xaverius (1506-1552), a Spanish Jesuit, left for India. In the following year he arrived in Goa which had been occupied by the Portuguese in 1910. In 1547 Xaverius met a Japanese merchant, named Yagiro, and brought him back to Goa. Yagiro explained to Xaverius and other missionaries the history of Xaca (i.e. Sākya), his cult and the life of the bonzes. Information obtained from Yagiro was sent to Europe in letters written by Xaverius himself (22.6. 1549), by Cosme de Torrès (25.1.1549), by the Fathers of Goa and by Father Nicolas Lancilotto (26.12.1948).21
Xaverius left Goa for Japan in 1549. He died three years later. It is not possible to study here in detail the work of missionaries in Japan and other Asian countries in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henri de Lubac has given some information on the knowledge of Buddhism which they obtained in these countries. No detailed study has been made by Buddhist scholars of the many reports sent by missionaries and of the publications which are based upon these reports. Only a detailed investigation could show how reliable is the information contained in these publications. A study of this kind is hampered by the fact that many of them are found only in very few libraries. Many reports and letters have not yet been published and are kept
20 Cf. M. Letts (ed.), Mandeville's Travels. Texts and Translations, 2 vols., London, Hakluyt Society, 1953; M. Letts, Sir John Mandeville. The Man and his Book, London, 1949.
21 Cf. Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii, nova editio (G. Schurhammer et I. Wicki), t. II, Roma, 1945, pp. ISI-153; R. P. Schurhammer, Die zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens zur Zeit des bl. Franz Xaver, 1538-1552, Leipzig, 1932; Guillaume Postel, Des Merveilles du Monde, Paris, 1552.
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in manuscript form in libraries and collections. Very few have been critically edited. Even those that have been so edited have for the greater part not been annotated by Orientalists. In these circumstances it is difficult to form a clear opinion on the extent and the correctness of the knowledge of Buddhism which reached Europe in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries. Missionaries came into contact with Theravāda Buddhism in Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Indochina and with different forms of Mahāyāna Buddhism in China and Japan. Their knowledge was based upon what they observed, and on discussions with Buddhist priests, but very rarely on the study of the Buddhist lįterature itself. For these reasons it must have been very difficult to gain a clear notion of the main Buddhist ideas. A religion like Buddhism which is based upon principles which are very different from the guiding principles of Christianity cannot be understood without a thorough study of its scriptures.
There is perhaps only one important exception to the fact that the missionaries were not well versed in Buddhist literature. Curiously enough, the best knowledge, obtained in this period on Buddhism, comes from a country which was more inaccessible than other Buddhist countries, namely Tibet. At the end of the sixteenth century Jesuit missionaries believed that Christians lived in Tibet.22 The first missionary to enter into Tibet was the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio d'Andrade (1580-1634) who arrived in August 1624 in Tsaparang (rTsa-bran the capital of the kingdom of Guge. After his return to Agra he wrote a report of his voyage on the 8th November 1624. It was published in 1626 in Lisbon, entitled: Novo Descobrimento do gram Cathayo ou Reinos de Tibet pello Padre Antonio de Andrade da Campanhia de Jesu, Portuguez, no anno de 1626.23 Translated into French in the following year, this aroused great interest in Europe. However, the success of the mission in Tsaparang did not last for a long time. In 1635 the last two missionaries were expulsed. A new attempt in 1640 led to the imprisonment of Manoel Marques. The last news from him reached India in 1641. Most probably he died in captivity. The efforts of the Jesuits to found missions in other parts of Tibet had even less success. Estevão
22 Giuseppe M. Toscano, La prima missione cattolica nel Tibet, Parma, 1951, p. 19; Luciano Petech, I missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, I, Roma, 1952, p. xviii.
23 Annotated translation in Toscano, op. cit., pp. 47-76; Portuguese text in F. M. Esteves Pereira, O Descobrimiento do Tibet pelo P. Antonio de Andrade, Coimbra, 1921.
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Cacella and João Cabral travelled in 1627–8 via Bhutan to Shigatse (gzis-kartse). Cacella arrived on the 20th January 1628 and left again at the end of January. On the 28th February 1630 Cacella returned to Shigatse where he died on the 6th March. After a first stay in Shigatse in 1627–8 Cabral returned there in March 1631, but the same year or the next year he left Shigatse. In 1661 the Austrian Johann Grüber and the Belgian Albert d'Orville arrived in Lhasa from Peking. Their stay was of short duration (8th October to the end of November) but noteworthy because it was due to these two Jesuits that the first information on Lhasa reached Europe 24
Of greater importance are the missions established in Lhasa by Italian Capuchins and Jesuits in the 18th century. The Capuchins remained in Lhasa during the greater part of the first half of the eighteenth century (1707-1711; 1716– 1733; 1741-1745). Only one of them acquired a good knowledge of the Tibetan language: Francesco Orazio della Penna (1680-1745) who from 1717 to 1721 applied himself with great energy to the study of Tibetan. Della Penna, who lived in Lhasa from 1716 to 1732, compiled a great Tibetan dictionary (of about 35,000 words) which was later translated into English by F.C.G. Schroeter and published in Serampore in 1826: A dictionary of Bhotanta or Boutan language. Della -Penna also translated several Tibetan works among which must be mentioned Tson-kha-pa's Lam-rim chen-mo and the Prātimoksasūtra. These translations have not been preserved but Della Penna's chronological summary of Tibetan history was published by Antonio Giorgi in his Alphabetum Tibetanum Missionum Apostolicarum commodo editum (Roma, 1762; XCIV + 820 pp.). In Giorgi's work there are also other parts based upon writings of Della Penna.25
On September 24, 1714, two Jesuit fathers, Ippolito Desideri (20.12.1684–14. 4.1733) and Manuel Freyre, left Delhi for Lhasa. On the 26th June 1715 they
24 Cf. Athanasius Kircher, S. J., China monumentis qua sacris, qua profanis, necnon variis naturae et artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustratis. Amstelodami, 1667; C. Wessels S. J., New Documents relating to the Journey of Fr. John Grueber, Archivum bistoricum S. J., IX, 1940, pp. 281–302. On the Jesuit missionaries in Tibet and Central Asia see C. Wessels, S. J., Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, The Hague, 1924.
25 A definitive edition of all documents relating to the Capuchin mission in Tibet has been published by Luciano Petech, I missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, I-IV, Roma, 1952-1953.
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arrived in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, and the following year, on the 18th March, they finally arrived in Lhasa. Manuel Freyre returned to India, but Desideri remained in Lhasa until the 28th March 1721. During the five years of his stay in Lhasa, Desideri studied in Tibetan monasteries and acquired an excellent knowledge of the Tibetan language and the Tibetan religion. He made excerpts of many Tibetan works, first of all of the Lam-rim chen-mo. He left India in 1729 and during his return journey he began writing a Relazione on his travels and on Tibetan customs and religion. The manuscript of his work remained unpublished until 1904 when extracts of it were published by C. Puini who had discovered the manuscript in 1875. An incomplete English version was published in 1931 by Filippo De Filippi: An Account of Tibet; the travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J. 1712–1727, London, 1931; second ed., 1937. A complete and beautifully annotated edition of the original Italian version has been published recently by Luciano Petech.26 In this edition, the Relazione consists of four books. The third book (Petech, vol. VI, pp. 115–309) is entirely devoted to a description of Tibetan religion. Petech characterizes it with the follow words: "A stupendous description of the lamaist religion, penetratingly a profoundly understood in its essential nature as few European scholars have been able to do in the two following centuries.” And Giuseppe Tucci remarked: "The work of Desideri was in advance of his time: the secrets of the speculations of Mahāyāna Buddhism which began to be revealed by Orientalist erudition in the last years of the last century are already clear in the logical scholastic architecture of his Relazione" (cf. Petech, op. cit., V, pp. xxvixxvii). An English version of the complete Italian text of the Relazione and of the precious notes by Luciano Petech is an urgent desideratum.
It is only in the nineteenth century that the Indian sources of Buddhism in Pāli and Sanskrit began to be studied. The first Pāli grammar to be published in Europe was written by Burnouf (1801-1852) and Lassen (1800-1876): E. Burnouf et Chr. Lassen: Essai sur le Pali ou langue sacrée de la presqu'île au-delà du Gange, Paris, 1826 (vii+224pp., 6pl.). In the first chapter Burnouf sketches the history of Pāli studies up to 1826. According to Burnouf the first to mention Pāli was Simon de La Loubère who visited Siam in 1687–1688 as envoy of King
26
I missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, V-VII, Roma, 1954-1956.
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Louis XIV. In 1691 he published a Description du royaume de Siam.27 La Loubère's book contains a translation of the life of Devadatta (La vie de Thevetat, le frère de Sommona-Codom, traduite du Bali, t. II, pp. 1-6) and an abstract of the Patimokkha (t. II, pp. 35-57). He also drew attention to the similarity of the names of the days of the week in Pāli and Sanskrit (t. II, p. 75). Burnouf adds: "Dans l'état d'imperfection où se trouvaient ces études, il y avait quelque mérite à faire ces rapprochements que Chambers a reproduits depuis." Nevertheless, Burnouf gives the honour of having discovered the connection between Sanskrit and Pali not to William Chambers but to Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo, an Austrian, whose civil name was J. Ph. Wesdin (1748-1806).28 In 1793 he published a catalogue of the manuscripts of the Museum of Velletri: Musei Borgiani Velitris Codices Manuscripti Avenses Peguania Siamici Malabarici Indostani, in which he remarked that Pāli is "a dialect or a daughter of Sanskrit, the most ancient language of India."29 According to Burnouf, Chambers repeated this in his article "Some account of the sculptures and ruins at Mavalipuram" (Asiatick Researches, I, 1788, pp. 145-170: His article is dated 17 June 1784). It is of course impossible that Chambers repeated a remark published five years after the publication of his article. The real state of affairs is just the opposite. In his Systema brahmanicum (published in 1791 and not in 1792 as said by Windisch, p. 21) Paulinus refers expressly to Chambers: "D. Chambers in libro Asiatick Researches tom. 1, pag. 160 & seq., ubi defendit linguam Balicam seu Pali vel Bali, qua liber Kammuva scriptus est, a Samscrdamica descendere, aut saltem unam cum altera intimam affinitatem habere, allatis etiam multis exemplis, quae ibi vide" (p. 117). Chambers discovered Sanskrit elements in Tamil and concluded that: "Shanscrit [was] common to both that [i.e. Tamil, Tamulic in his spelling] and the Balic." Chambers observed that the "Shanscrit word Maha, which signifies great, is constantly used in the Balic language in the same sense. And the names of the days are most of them the same in Shanscrit and in Balic."
Apart from the texts translated by La Loubère, the first Pāli text to become
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27
Cf. Windisch, op. cit., p. 125; de Lubac, op. cit., p. 99.
29
Cf. Windisch, op. cit., pp. 20-22 and p. 203; de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 109 and II. Quoted after Bechert, Some side-lights on the early history of Pali lexicography, Añjali. O. H. de A. Wijesekera Volume (Peradeniya, 1970), p. 1.
28
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known in Europe was the Kammavācā. In his Systema brahmanicum Paulinus quoted an Italian translation in the Library of the Propagation of the Faith made from the Pāli original in 1776.30 Another translation was described by Paulinus two years later in the catalogue already mentioned. 31 According to him this text is accompanied by a commentary. It is not clear whether the commentary accompanying the text was based upon a Pāli text or on oral explanations.32 Paulinus quotes several passages from the Peguanus codex (Burmese manuscript) of the Kammuva and adds explanations which were given by an erudite interpreter (eruditus interpres). The explanations, quoted by Paulinus, are obviously added to the translation by the Italian translator. Only an examination of the manuscript, which has been in the Library of the Vatican since 1902, will be able to show whether or not the explanations are due to the translator.33 Perhaps it will also be possible to discover whether the Italian translator has used a Pāli text or whether his translation is based upon a Burmese version of the original. Another translation was made in Burma by Father Vincente Sangermano (1758–1819, cf. Windisch, p. 17). His translation was published in English by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton (1762-1829) in an article published in 1799 in the Asiatick Researches: On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas (As. Res., VI, 1799, pp. 136–308). Buchanan received from Captain Symes three Latin translations made by Sangermano: 1. A cosmography, extracted from various Burmese writings (pp. 167–256); 2. A short view of the religion of Godama written by a late Tarado or king's confessor (pp. 265-273);
30 According to Burnouf the manuscript contains also the Pāli text. Cf. Papiers d'Eugène Burnouf, Paris, 1899, p. IIS.
31 Kammuva, o sia Trattato dell'ordinazione dei Talapoini del secondo ordine, detti Pinzen, 30 pp. (Musei Borgiani Velitris Codices etc., No. 6, p. 84).
32 Kammuva, o sia trattato della ordinazione dei Talapoini in carattere Pali o Bali sopra ole dorate. Traduzione fatta per commissione di Monsignor Stefano Borgia segret. di Propag. nel 1776 (Systema, p. 114, n. 2). According to Burnouf the explanations quoted by Paulinus (Systema, p. IIS: Innanzi a tutto, etc.,) are to be found in the manuscript in the library of Velletri, but in his Systema Paulinus seems to refer only to the manuscript in the library of the Propagation of the Faith.
33 Cf. The remarks on the commentary by Buchanan Asiatick Researches, VI, 1799, p. 280) and by Spiegel (Kammavākyam, Bonn, 1841, p. xi). I have been unable to consult Paulinus's Catalogue, p. 84, to which Buchanan refers.
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3. The book of ordinations (pp. 280–289). Burnouf says that these three treatises were based upon Pāli books but from Buchanan's description it seems obvious that, most probably, the second and also the first were written in Burmese. It is not clear whether Sangermano translated the Kammavācā from the Pāli or from a Burmese version. Buchanan himself did not know Pāli or Burmese but his long article is not only useful for the information which he presented for the first time, but also for some perspicacious comments which he made. For instance, he states categorically that Nirvāņa is not annihilation: "Annihilation . . . is a very inaccurate term. Nieban implies the being exempted from all the miseries incident to humanity, but by no means annihilation" (p. 180). Amusing is a remark by a Siamese painter on Devadatta: "Devadat, or as he pronounced it, Tevedat, was the god of the Pye-gye, or of Britain; and... it is he who, by opposing the good intentions of Godama, produces all the evil in the world" (p. 268). The translation by Sangermano and Buchanan of the Kammavācā has been of use to Burnouf and Lassen who were able to compare it with a Pāli manuscript in the Royal Library in Paris. The first reliable translation of the Pāli Kammavācā is due to a Wesleyan missionary in Ceylon, Benjamin Clough, who published an English translation in 1834.34 The Paris manuscript was used by Friedrich Spiegel (1820-1905) who in 1841 published the Upasampadā-Kammavācā in Devanāgari together with a Latin translation and notes: Kammavākyam. Liber de officiis sacerdotum buddhicorum (Bonn, 1841). Three years later Otto von Boehtlingk published the Kaṭhina-Kammavācā (Bull. hist.-phil. de l'Académie de St. Pétersbourg, I, p. 342ff.) and in 1845 Spiegel published three other Kammavācās in his Anecdota Pâlica (Leipzig, 1845, pp. 68–71).
In the year following the publication of the Essai sur le Pali, Burnouf published a small brochure of 30 pages, entitled Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'Essai sur le pali de MM. E. Burnouf et Ch. Lassen, in which he quotes the Mahāvamsa and the Pāli dictionary“Abhidhānappadīpikā. Burnouf continued his Pāli studies until his death. He collected much material for a grammar and a dictionary which have not been published. He planned to study in detail the canonical Pāli texts in the second volume of his Introduction à l'étude du Buddhisme
34 The Ritual of the Buddhist Priesthood. Tr. from the original Pāli work, entitled Karmawākya. London, 1834.
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indien, but his untimely death prevented him from carrying out his plan. The 21st appendix of his translation of the Lotus sūtra which was published in October 1852 is entitled: "Comparaison de quelques textes sanscrits et pâlis” (pp. 859-867). Burnouf was only able to complete the first pages of this essay when in the first days of March illness forced him to abandon his work. He died only a few weeks later on the 28th May 1852. Burnouf had made a careful study of a manuscript of the Dighanikāya. The appendices of his translation of the Lotus sūtra contain a complete translation of the Samaññaphala and Mahanidāna suttas (pp. 449-482; 534-544) and a translation of the beginning of the Tevijja sutta (pp. 490-4).
When Burnouf and Lassen wrote their Essai sur le Pali, they did not know that a Pāli grammar had already been published. In 1824 Benjamin Clough, a Wesleyan missionary, published in Colombo A compendious Pali grammar with a copious vocabulary in the same language (iv+147+20+157 pp.). This work was first undertaken by W. Tolfrey. Clough’s book consists of three parts: a grammar based on the Pāli grammar Bālāvatāra, a collection of roots based on the Dhātumañjūsā and a vocabulary based on the Abhidhānappadipikā. Clough's Pāli grammar seems to have reached Europe only after a long delay. On II January 1832 A. W. von Schlegel wrote to Lassen that according to Brockhaus only two copies had arrived in Europe. 35 Important work on Pāli was done in Ceylon also by George Turnour (1799–1843) who entered the Civil Service of Ceylon in 1818. In 1837 he published text and translation of the first 38 chapters of the Mahāvamsa. At the same time he contributed a series of important articles to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.36 In the same period another Wesleyan missionary, D. J. Gogerly (1792–1862), began to publish articles on Pāli literature. His collected writings have been published in two volumes in Colombo in 1908.37 They contain many translations of Pāli texts, for instance, a translation of the Pātimokkha which was first published in 1839 in the Ceylon Friend (reprinted in 1862 in JRAS, XIX).
35 Briefwechsel A.W. von Schlegel-Christian Lassen, Herausgegeben von Dr. W. Kirfel, Bonn, 1914, p. 217.
36 Examination of Some Points of Buddhist Chronology, JASB, V, 1836, pp. 521-536; An Examination of the Pāli Buddhistic Annals, JASB, VI, 1837, pp. 501-528, 717-737; VIII, 1838, pp. 686-701, 789–817, 919-933, 991-1014.
37 Ceylon Buddhism, being the collected writings of Daniel John Gogerly.
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In 1821 the Danish linguist Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787-1832) visited Ceylon and collected many Pāli and Sinhalese manuscripts. Rask studied there Pāli and Sinhalese with the assistance of B. Clough. He also wrote a Pāli grammar which was largely based upon the Bālāvatāra but this was never published. His manuscript collection made Copenhagen one of the most important centres of Pāli studies in Europe. The Pāli manuscripts were described by N. L. Westergaard (1815-1878) in collaboration with Friedrich von Spiegel in the catalogue of the Indian manuscripts of the Royal Library: Codices indici Bibliothecae Regiae Havniensis, Havniae, 1846. From 1859 till 1865 the French consul in Ceylon, P. Grimblot, collected a large number of Pāli manuscripts which have been described by J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire.38 Grimblot planned the publication of many texts in a Bibliotheca Palica but death prevented him from carrying out his plans. Léon Feer published his Extraits du Paritta in 1871 (JA, 1871, II, pp. 225-335). The first scholar to make good use of the manuscripts collected by Grimblot was I. P. Minaev (1840-1890) who published in 1869 the text of the Patimokkha with a translation and many extracts from Buddhaghosa's Samantapāsadikā, the Kankha-vitaraņi, etc.39 In 1872 Minaev published a Pāli grammar which was translated into French and English.40 Spiegel was the first to publish Pāli texts from the Copenhagen collection in his Anecdota Pâlica (Leipzig, 1845) which contains the first four stories of the first vagga of the Rasavāhini and the Uragasutta from the Suttanipāta. In 1855 Viggo Fausbøll (1821-1908) published the Dhammapada with a Latin translation and extracts from the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā. Albrecht Weber (18251901) translated the Dhammapada in German (ZDMG, 14, 1860, pp. 29–86; Indische Streifen, I, 1868, pp. 112-185). Both Fausbøll and Weber also published some Jātakas from the Jātaka collection.41 Of other texts published before 1877
38 Du bouddhisme et de sa littérature à Ceylan. Collection de M. Grimblot, consul de France à Ceylan, Journal des Savants, 1866, pp. 43-59, 100-116, 151–166.
39
Pratimoksa-sutra. Buddijskij služebnik, Spb., 1869. lii+122pp.
40
Očerk fonetiki i morfologii jazyka pali. Spb., 1872; Grammaire Pālie, Paris, 1974; Pāli Grammar, British Burmah, 1883. On Minaev see Alexandra Schneider, Professor J. P. Minayeff, IHQ X, 1934, pp. 811-826; Ivan Pavlovič Minaev. Sbornik statej, Moskva, 1967.
41 A. Weber, Über das Makasajâtakam, Ind. St., 4, 1858, pp. 387-392; V. Fausbøll und A. Weber, Die Pāli-Legende von der Entstehung des Sâkya (Çâkya)-und Koliya-Geschlechtes, Ind. St., 5, 1862, pp. 412-437; Fausbøll, Five Játakas, Copenhagen, 1861; The Dasa-*
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mention must be made of Childers's editions of the Khuddaka-pātha (FRAS, 1870, pp. 309–389) and the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (FRAS, 1875, PP. 49–80; 1876, pp. 219–261), and Senart's edition and translation of Kaccāyana's grammar (JA, 1871, pp. 193-540; also published separately, Paris, 1871). Book 6 of this grammar had already been translated by the Sinhalese scholar James d'Alwis (1823-1878) in 1863.42
As mentioned before, Burnouf's Pāli dictionary was never published. In 1845 Spiegel announced a compilation of a Pāli dictionary on which he continued working for many years up to 1865. Bechert has given some information on the manuscript of Spiegel's dictionary which he received from a great-grandson.43 Pāli scholars had to wait till 1875 to see the first Pāli dictionary published in Europe: A Dictionary of the Pāli language by Robert Caesar Childers (1838– 1876). With the publication of Childers's dictionary and Minaev's grammar and due to the presence of good collections of Pāli manuscripts in European libraries, the conditions were created for fruitful work in Pāli philology. From 1877 onwards Pāli texts began to be published and translated in great number as we will see in the next chapter.
In 1837 the Société Asiatique received from Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800-1894) in Kathmandu 88 manuscripts of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. Immediately Burnouf began reading the manuscripts. On s June 1837 Burnouf wrote to Hodgson that from the 25th April he devoted all his spare moments to reading the Saddharmapundarika.44 His translation of this text was completed in 1839.45 It was printed in 1841 but did not appear until after his death in 1852. Burnouf translated many Buddhist Sanskrit texts. His translations from the Divyāvadāna, the Avadānaśataka and other texts were published in his Introduction à l'histoire du Buddhisme indien (Paris, 1844), but many others were never pub
*ratba-fātaka, Kopenhagen, 1871; Two Jātakas, JRAS, V. 1871, pp. 1-13; Ten Jātakas, Copenhagen, 1872.
42 An introduction to Kachchayan's grammar of the Pali language, Colombo-London, 1863. On d'Alwis see: Memoirs and Desultory Writings of the Late James D'Alwis. Edited by A.C. Seneviratne, Colombo, 1939.
43 Heinz Bechert, Some side-lights on the early history of Pali lexicography, Añjali (Peradeniya, 1970), pp. 1–3.
44 Papiers d'Eugène Burnouf conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1899, p. 158. 45 Ibid., p. 169.
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lished. Among his posthumous papers are an almost complete translation of the Așțasāhasrikā Prajñāparamitā and translations of the Kārandavyūha (which took him only ten days to complete) and the Sumāghāvadāna.46 Burnouf carefully read many other texts, even such difficult and voluminous texts as the Mahāvastu and the Abhidharmakośavyākhyā. The amount of work done by Burnouf in the last fifteen years of his life is staggering. Not only did he study many Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts, but he also continued his studies of Avestan and Pehlevi texts, and his translation of the Bhāgavata Purāņa. In connection with his Pāli studies he undertook the study of Sinhalese, Burmese and Siamese translations and commentaries. Moreover, he did not neglect modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati. For most of these languages he had to compile his own dictionary. All this was done without neglecting his duties as Professor at the Collège de France and often in poor health.
Burnouf stressed the fact that Indian Buddhism had to be studied on the basis of the Sanskrit texts from Nepal and the Pāli texts from Ceylon.47 ACcording to him it would be possible to find the fundamental and ancient elements of Buddhism in that which was common to both the Sanskrit and the Pāli texts.48 Burnouf was well aware of the fundamental importance of the study of the texts for the history of Buddhism.49 His idea with regard to India at the time of the Buddha, the doctrine of the Buddha and its later development, the relation of Buddhism to castes, etc. which he develops in the Introduction are all based on a careful study of the texts. It is only due to the progress in the study of Buddhist literature that some conclusions he arrived at have had to be modified. However, even after almost 130 years his Introduction and also his translation of the Saddharmapundarika are works which one can never read without learning something. A detailed survey of the contents of these two works can be found in Windisch's work.50
Burnouf appreciated the importance of Tibetan translations for the study
46 47 48 49 50
Ibid., pp. 63 and 65. Introduction, p. 12. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 123. Op. cit., pp. 131-139.
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of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. When he began to study these texts in 1837, Buddhism had been studied already by scholars among the Kalmyks who lived between the Volga and the Don. Benjamin Bergmann (1772-1856) translated several Kalmyk texts and noted his observations of Kalmyk customs. His Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken in den Jahren 1802 und 1803 (Riga 1804-5; reprint, Oosterhout, 1969)51 is still an important source for the study of the Kalmyks and Lamaism in general. Bergmann realized that, in order to understand Lamaism, it would be necessary to study the Mongolian literary language and Tibetan. This program was executed by Isaak Jakob Schmidt (1779-1847) who lived among the Kalmyks during the years 1804-1806. Schmidt became the founder of Mongolian and Tibetan studies in Russia.52 In four long articles, published from 1832 to 1837 in the Mémoires de l'Académie, he studied Tibetan sources of Mahayana Buddhism.53 In the last of these four articles he translated the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā from the Tibetan version. In the same years Alexander Csoma de Körös (1784-1842) published an analysis of the Kanjur and an abstract of the contents of the Tanjur.54 The Tibetan version of the Lalitavistara was studied by Philippe Édouard Foucaux (1811-1894) who published the Tibetan text and a French translation in 1847-1848.55 In 1843 Schmidt published the Tibetan text and a German translation of the "Sage and the Fool," a collection of tales told in the bu language in Khotan shortly before 445.56 Franz Anton von Schiefner (1817-1879) trans
51 Cf. Indo-Iranian Journal, XIV, 1972, pp. 265-7.
52 Cf. Franz Babinger, Isaak Jakob Schmidt, 1779-1847, Festschrift für Friedrich Hirth, Berlin, 1920, pp. 7-21.
53
Über einige Grundlehren des Buddhaismus, Mémoires de l'Acad. Imp. d. Sc. de St. Pétersbourg, I, 1832, pp. 90-120, 222-262; Über die sogenannte dritte Welt der Buddhaisten, ibid., II, 1834, pp. 1-39; Über die Tausend Buddhas einer Weltperiode der Einwohnung oder gleichmässigen Dauer, ibid., II, 1834, pp. 41-86; Über das Mahâjâna und Pradschnâ Pâramita der Bauddhen, ibid., IV, 1837, pp. 123-228.
54 Asiatick Researches, XX, 1836-9, pp. 41-93, 393-552. French translation by Léon Feer, Analyse du Kandjour, recueil des Livres sacrés du Tibet, Annales du Musée Guimet, II, 1881, pp. 131-555.
55 Rgya Tch'er rol pa, ou Développement des Jeux, Paris, 1847-1848.
56 Dsanglun oder der Weise und der Tor. St. Petersburg, 1843. For some bibliographical notes see J.W. de Jong, Buddha's Word in China, Canberra, 1968, p. 23, n. 39. Add Takahashi Moritaka, Zō-Kan taiyaku: Kengukyō, Ōsaka, 1970.
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lated many stories from the Tibetan version of the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya and published the Tibetan text and a German translation of Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India.57 Also based on Tibetan sources is V. P. Vasilev's Buddhism which was published in Russian in 1857 and in Germ translations in 1860 and 1865.58
Of great importance for the study of Indian Buddhism is the work done by Sinologists. Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832) who in 1815 became the first professor of Chinese at the Collège de France translated Fa-hsien's Fo-kuo-chi. It was published after his death by Klaproth and Landresse.59 His successor, Stanislas Julien (1797-1873) translated the life of Hsuan-tsang and his Hsi-yü
cbi.60
We mentioned the study of Buddhism among the Kalmyks by Bergmann and Schmidt. Buddhism in the Theravāda countries also became better known by the work of the Wesleyan missionary R. Spence Hardy (1803-1868) who published several works based on Sinhalese sources. 61 In Burma the Roman Catholic bishop P. Bigandet (1813–1894) studied Burmese sources on the life of the Buddha62 and in Siam Henry Alabaster (died 1884) translated several Siamese texts.63
In the period 1800 to 1877 the knowledge of Buddhism in the West greatly increased. Still very few Pāli texts were published during this period, but the publication of a grammar and a dictionary and the presence of collections of
57 Tibetan Tales, London, 1882: Târanathae de Doctrinae Buddhicae in India propagatione narratio, Petropoli, 1868; Târanatha's Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien, St. Petersburg, 1869.
58 Buddizm, ego dogmaty, istorija i literatura, č. 1., Spb., 1857; Der Buddhismus, Seine Dogmen, Geschichte und Literatur, St.-Pétersbourg-Riga-Leipzig, 1860; Le Bouddhisme, ses dogmes, son histoire et sa littérature, Paris, 1865. On Vasil'ev see Z. I. Gorbačeva, N. A. Petrov, G. F. Smykalov, B. I. Pankratov, Russkij Kitaeved Akademik Vasilij Pavlovič Vasilev (1818-1900), Očerki po istorii russkogo postokovedenija, II, Moskva, 1956, pp. 232–340.
59 Foe Koue Ki ou Relation des royaumes bouddhiques de Fa bian, Paris, 1836.
60 Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang et de ses voyages dans l'Inde, Paris, 1853; Mémoires sur les Contrées occidentales de Hiouen-thsang, Paris, 1857-1858.
61 Eastern Monachism, London, 1850; Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development, London, 1853; The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, London, 1866.
62 The Life of Gaudama, Rangoon, 1858; Second enlarged edition, The Life or Legend of Gaudama, Rangoon, 1866; third edition, London, 1880; fourth edition, London, 1911.
63 The Wheel of the Law. Buddhism illustrated from Siamese sources, London, 1871.
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manuscripts in several centres of Oriental studies would make intensive work possible in the following period. Burnouf laid solid foundations for the study of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. Important work had been done on the Tibetan sources in this period but this field would be relatively neglected in the coming decennia. Abel-Rémusat and Stanislas Julien had made known important texts for the history of Buddhism in India, but in this field, too, progress was less conspicuous in the following years.
CHAPTER II
76
The middle period (1877-1942)
Editions of Pali and Sanskrit texts in the last quarter of the 19th century (p. 77) Senart's Essai sur la légende du Buddha (p. 78)-Kern's History of Buddhism in India (p. 79)-Oldenberg's Buddha (p. 81)-The first two Buddhist Councils (p. 83)-The relations between Buddhism and Brahmanism (p. 84) The relations between Buddhism and Samkhya (p. 85)-The relations between Buddhism and Yoga (p. 86)-The inscriptions of Aśoka. Senart's conception of Buddhism at the time of Aśoka (p. 87)-Buddhist monuments and inscriptions (p. 89)-Discoveries of Buddhist manuscripts in Central Asia (p. 91)-Later work by Kern, Senart and Oldenberg. Barth (p. 93)-Sylvain Lévi (p. 93)—Louis de La Vallée Poussin (p. 96)—Jean Przyluski (p. 98) Lamotte (p. 99)-Stcherbatsky (p. 99)—d'Oldenburg and Obermiller (p. 101)-Lüders and Waldschmidt (p. 102)-Schayer, Tuxen, Tucci and Frauwallner (p. 102)—-Johnston's editions of Asvaghosa's works. Weller and Nobel (p. 103)-The Critical Pāli dictionary. Wilhelm Geiger (p. 104)-Tibetan sources on Buddhism (p. 104)-Chinese sources on Buddhism. Watters, Peri, Chavannes, Pelliot and Demiéville (p. 105)
It is of course not possible to make a sharp distinction between the early period of Buddhist studies up to 1877 and the following one, but 1877 can be taken as point of departure for a new era in Buddhist studies for several reasons.
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From 1877 many Pāli texts were edited. Moreover, Buddhist Sanskrit texts began to be published in increasing number from 1881 onwards. Perhaps even more important is the fact that significant works on Indian Buddhism began to appear in the next few years, most of them written by scholars who were to contribute much to Buddhist studies in the succeeding decennia.
In 1877 Fausbøll published the first volume of the Tātaka book. The seventh volume, containing Andersen's index, appeared in 1897. Oldenberg's edition of the Vinayapitaka appeared from 1879 to 1883. In 1881 T. W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922) founded the Pali Text Society. With the exception of the texts mentioned above, almost all Pāli texts published in Europe since that date have been published by the Pali Text Society. Already in the eighteen-eighties a beginning was made with the publication of all five Nikāya. In 1882 the first volume of the Journal of the Pali Text Society was published. By 1930 all five Nikāya were published and a beginning had been made with the publication of the Aţthakathā-s. As far as the non-canonical Pāli texts are concerned, mention must be made of Oldenberg's edition of the Dīpavamsa in 1879, and of Trenckner's edition of the Milindapañha in 1880. At the same time many Pāli texts were translated, to begin with the Pātimokkha, the Mahāvagga and the Cullavagga, which were translated jointly by Oldenberg and Rhys Davids (SBE, 13, 17, 20, Oxford 1881–1885). In 1899 Rhys Davids published the first volume of his translation of the Dighanikāya. In 1894 he had already completed his translation of the Milindapañha (SBE, 35, 36, Oxford 1890–1894).
Since Burnouf's death in 1852 little work had been done in the field of Sanskrit Buddhist literature. The only important text published between 1852 and 1880 was the Lalitavistara of which Rajendralal Mitra (1824-1891) published a very unsatisfactory edition (Bibl. Ind. work no. 15, Calcutta, 1853– 1877). The last fascicle of this edition appeared in 1877. In 1882 Émile Senart (1847–1928) published the first volume of his edition of the Mahāvastu. Senart's edition of the Mahāvastu, of which the third and final volume appeared in 1897, is still one of the most important works in the field of Buddhist studies. In 1881 Max Müller published the Sanskrit text of one of the most famous texts of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Vajracchedikā. Two years later he published the texts of the Smaller and Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, the sacred texts of the Pure Land School in China and Japan. The Divyāvadāna, already well-known through Burnouf's translations in his Introduction, was carefully edited by E. B.
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Cowell (1826-1903) and R. A. Neil in 1886. Five years later, in 1891, Hendrik Kern (1833-1917) published the Jātakamālā as the first volume of the Harvard Oriental Series. Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917) and Hari Mohan Vidyabhusan began the publication of Kṣemendra's Avadānakalpalata in 1888. The last fascicle appeared only in 1918. In 1889 Minaev published Santideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra (Zap. Vost. Otd. Imp. R. Arx. Obšč, IV, pp. 153-228). Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869-1938) in 1898 published the ninth chapter of Prajñākaramati's commentary and from 1901 to 1914 the complete text.1 In 1893 Cowell published the Buddhacarita. Lefmann (1831-1912)'s new edition of the Lalitavistara was printed in 1882 but did not appear until 1902.
The enumeration of the Pali and Sanskrit texts published in those years shows how active scholars were at that time in editing Buddhist texts. During the same period great efforts were made in the interpretation of the Buddhist texts. The problems, discussed in the works of the leading scholars, are of basic importance and it is therefore necessary to dwell upon their work in some detail. Senart's Essai sur la légende du Buddha appeared from 1873 to 1875 in the Journal Asiatique but the second edition, which dates from 1882, deserves our special attention because it contains a revised version of the introduction and the conclusions in which the author carefully explains his method and the results obtained by it. Senart explains that the stories relating to the Buddha contain both legendary and realistic elements. In the past scholars have considered the legendary elements as an addition to a basis of historical facts. Once freed from these legendary elements, the historical truth about the Buddha would become clear. It was usual to apply this method-called the subtraction method by de La Vallée Poussin-before Senart's time and also after him. It was the same method of historical criticism which was developed by New Testament scholars in studying the life of Jesus. However, Senart believed that the legendary or rather the mythological elements form a coherent system which existed already before the time of the Buddha. It is not surprising to see that Senart made great use of the Lalitavistara. As to the Pāli texts, he was unable to go back to the canonical texts, which were not yet published
1 Bouddhisme, Études et Matériaux. London, 1898, pp. 233-388; Bodhicaryavatārapañjikā, Calcutta, 1901-1914.
2 Cf. Lalita vistara (ed. S. Lefmann), vol. II, Halle, 1908, p. v..
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at that time. He relied upon such texts as the Nidānakathā and the Buddhavamsa and its commentary. Senart studied in detail the conception of the cakravartin and his seven ratna and that of the Mahāpurusa and his marks. In this way the Buddha was considered by him as the solar hero, the Mahapurusa, the Cakravartin. Before his birth he is the supreme god. He descends from heaven as a luminous god. His mother, Māyā, represents the sovereign creative power and is at the same time the goddess of the atmospheric mist. She dies but survives as Prajāpati, creating and nourishing the universe and its god. In this way Senart explains all twelve episodes of his life. He characterizes his method as historical mythology as distinct from comparative mythology. The latter method was very popular in the nineteenth century and tended to assimilate gods and mythological figures to naturalistic phenomena as the sun, the clouds, lightning, etc. It will be sufficient to mention in
onnection the names of Adalbert Kuhn, author of Die Herabkunft des Feuers und der Göttertranke, Berlin (1859) and of Max Müller, Essay on Comparative Mythology, London (1856); Lectures on the Science of Language, London (1861– 1864). Senart's merit consists in the fact that he-although influenced by the naturalistic mythology of his time in the first place tried to explain the myth of the Buddha as a product of India and its religious concepts. In this regard his attitude is in marked contrast to that of Kern in his book on the history of Buddhism in India, which was first published in two volumes in Dutch in 1882 and 1884. A German edition appeared in the same years, translated from Dutch by Hermann Jacobi: Der Buddhismus und seine Geschichte in Indien (Leipzig, 18821884). Almost twenty years later a French translation was published (Histoire du Bouddhisme dans l'Inde, Paris, 1901-1903). In the first volume Kern related first the life of the Buddha according to Pāli and Sanskrit sources--or according to Southern and Northern sources, as one used to say at that time. His main sources are the same as those used by Senart: the Nidānakathā and the Lalitavistara (cf. Vol. I, p. 18, n. 2). After having retold the legend of the Buddha in great detail, Kern arrives at his interpretation. Like Senart he considers the Buddha to be a solar god. However, Kern is much more astronomical in his exegesis than Senart. The twelve nidāna are the twelve months of the year. The six heretical teachers are the planets. His first predication takes place in midsummer. For this reason the Middle Way is its theme. Kern never hesitates in his identifications with stars, planets and constellations. Senart's system of
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interpretation is based upon a careful examination of the Vedic and Brahmanical literature but one finds nothing similar in Kern's book. One observes with some astonishment that his categorical statements have been able to carry away even such a sober-minded and cautious scholar as Barth, who was willing to consider the courtezans as mother-goddesses, the six heretical teachers as the six planets and the rebellion of Devadatta as the struggle of the moon with the sun (Oeuvres de Auguste Barth, I, Paris, 1914, p. 335). However, Barth believed that the legend of the Buddha contains historical elements which had been handed down since the time of the Buddha. Even Senart was willing to admit that historical elements had been connected secondarity with the mythical biography of the Buddha (op. cit., pp. 442-444), but for him the mythical and historical elements belonged to two entirely different traditions. Senart conceded the fact that the Pāli sources were less miraculous than the Lalitavistara but, according to him, this does not guarantee their greater authenticity. On the contrary, this is due to the fact that they have been re-written and simplified. Nevertheless, the mythical elements which have been preserved in the Pāli tradition show that there is no fundamental difference between the Pāli tradition and the Sanskrit sources.
Kern entirely dissolved the historical Buddha in the solar god. Senart and Barth did admit the possibility that reliable information had been handed down concerning the life of the Buddha, but neither of them attempted to collect these data. T. W. Rhys Davids, who in 1877 published his Buddhism, being a sketch of the life and teachings of Gautama the Buddha (I quote from the 14th edition published in 1890), believed that the Pāli texts are much more reliable and complete than the Sanskrit works. He put great reliance on those statements in which they agree. According to him it is possible to discover the historical basis of the legend of the Buddha. On the basis of the Pāli sources, Rhys Davids sketches the life of Gautama. In a chapter on the legend of the Buddha he refers to Senart's theory which he accepts "to a certain modified extent” (p. 190). Rhys Davids believes that the later forms of each episode of Buddha's life) differ chiefly from the former in the way in which they further exaggerate the details of the stories so as to make them more consistent with the imperial wealth and power ascribed to Gautama or his father by the Chakrawarti parallel; or with the belief in Gautama's omniscience and omnipotence” (p. 194).
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Senart's theory was rejected by Hermann Oldenberg (1854-1920) in his Buddha. Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, which appeared in 1881. I quote from the second edition (Berlin, 1890) which refers to the second edition of Senart's Légende (Paris, 1882). In a chapter entitled "The character of the tradition. Legend and myth” (Die Beschaffenheit der Tradition. Legende und Mythus), Oldenberg defends the reliability of the canonical Pāli texts. According to him the great majority of the sacred texts were compiled before the council at Vesālī about 380 B. C. These texts were transmitted in Ceylon without undergoing such profound changes as those to which the texts of other schools were subjected. Oldenberg points out that the Pāli texts used by Senart such as the Nidānakathā and the Buddhavamsa are much younger than the canonical texts. He is firmly convinced of the fact that the canonical texts contain a series of positive facts which inform us about the life of the Buddha. Oldenberg is without doubt justified in pointing out that Senart has based his theory on younger texts. However, it is difficult to accept that the Pāli Vinaya and Sutta Pițakas are a reliable source for Buddhism during the first century after Buddha's Parinirvana. Already in 1879 in the introduction to his edition of the Mahāvagga, Oldenberg defended the historicity of the Council at Vesāli and the antiquity of the Vinaya. On this point he never changed his opinion, as one can see from a note, published in 1912, in which he declares that the essential parts of the Vinaya and Sutta Pitakas were compiled before the Council at Vesālī.3
Oldenberg does not deny that the traditions concerning the Buddha contain legendary elements which go back to Vedic times or even further back and which are connected with popular ideas relating to the solar hero, the luminous ex"mple of all earthly heroes (p. 89). However, when Oldenberg relates the life of the Buddha, he does not elaborate on this aspect of the legend of the Buddha. No scholar has accepted in their entirety Senart's theories, but it is interesting to see that even such eminent representatives of what came to be called the Pāli school as Rhys Davids and Oldenberg did not deny that Senart was not completely wrong. Kern's extreme view which even denied the existence of the historical Buddha altogether has not found any followers, but Senart's
3. Cf. Studien zur Geschichte des buddhistischen Kanons, NGGW, 1912, p. 203, no. 5 = Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden, 1967, p. 1021, n. 5.
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theory has continued to exercise a fascination on later scholars even though most of them followed Oldenberg's example. It has become customary to oppose Senart's mythological method to Oldenberg's rationalistic and euhemeristic method. Foucher, the author of the most recent work on the Buddha, declares that in Senart's Buddha the human being is absent but in the one described by Oldenberg the god.* This formula which had first been used by Barth, who did not refer to Senart's work but to ķern's History of Buddhism, has often been repeated. Without doubt it underlines a very important aspect of the methods applied by Senart and Oldenberg and it would be possible, by placing Senart or Kern at one end of the spectrum and Oldenberg at the other, to determine the exact place which later scholars occupy in relation to Senart or Oldenberg. Some are closer to Senart, some to Oldenberg or go even beyond him. However, one aspect of the work by Senart and Oldenberg is not covered by the above-mentioned formula. Senart did not hesitate to make use of texts of much later date because he thought it possible to reconstruct the legend of the Buddha as a system of which the separate parts are indissolubly connected. To use a modern terminology, Senart's approach was structuralistic as against Oldenberg's atomistic method which consisted in collecting bits of historical information in the oldest accessible sources. By denying Senart the right to make use of some texts of later date, by accepting only part of his conclusions, one does not take into account an essential aspect of Senart's method. The important point in Senart's work is the fact that he based himself upon the conceptions which the Indians had of the Buddha. Their reality is not the historical reality as conceived by nineteenth century scholars.
Oldenberg's merit consists less in his rejection of Senart's methodological views but in his attempt to distinguish earlier and later sources. Oldenberg has done important work in studying Buddhist texts from the point of their style. Already in his Buddha he draws attention to some stylistic features which prove the younger date of the Buddhavamsa (second ed., 1890, p. 77, n. I). In 1882 he distinguished earlier and later strata in the Lalitavistara. He con
4 La vie du Bouddha, 1949, p. 13. 5 RHR, 1882, p. 242=CEuvres, I, Paris, 1914, p. 344.
6 Über den Lalitavistara, Verbandlungen des 5. Internationalen Orientalisten-Congresses, Berlin, 1882, Bd. 2, 2, Berlin, 1882, pp. 107–122= Kleine Schriften, pp. 873-888.
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tinued this line of research in his Buddhistische Studien which were published in 1898.7 Famous is his distinction between a nominal style A and a hieratic, canonical style B in Buddhist Sanskrit texts such as the Mahāvastu, the Divyāvadāna, the Avadānaśataka, etc.% Style B closely resembles the style of canonical Pāli texts and is older than style A. Oldenberg is the first scholar to have undertaken the task which Burnouf was unable to accomplish: the comparison of Pāli and Sanskrit texts for the sake of establishing the older and common elements in both. Notable work has been done also in this respect by Ernst Windisch (1844–1918) in his studies on Māra and Buddha, the birth of the Buddha and the composition of the Mahāvastu.' Oldenberg already took into account the Sanskrit fragments discovered in Central Asia in the beginning of the twentieth century. As we will see later on, the publication of Sanskrit fragments and their comparison with parallel texts in Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan has made great progress in the last forty years.
Oldenberg's reliance on the Pāli texts was connected with his belief in the historicity of the Council at Vesālī and in the compilation of Buddhist texts before this Council. His examination of the traditions concerning the two first councils at Rājagrha and Vaiśāli in the introduction to his edition of the Mahāvagga in 1879 has stimulated in the following years an animated discussion on the Councils. A good summary of the different points of view and of the literature up to 1911 is found in L. de La Vallée Poussin's article in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (vol. IV, 1911, pp. 179-185). The inconclusiveness of the debate shows the difficulties in obtaining reliable information from the conflicting Buddhist traditions. La Vallée Poussin, who also published a long article on the Councils in 1905, 10 declared that without a study of the Chinese sources no definite conclusions could be reached. However, even the transla
7 Buddhistische Studien, ZDMG, 52, 1898, pp. 613-694=Kleine Schriften, pp. 889-970.
8 Studien zum Mahāvastu, NGGW, 1912, pp. 123-154= Kleine Schriften, pp. 10371068; Studien zur Geschichte des buddhistischen Kanons, ibid., pp. 155-218=Kleine Schriften, pp. 973-1036.
Māra und Buddha, Leipzig, 1895; Buddha's Geburt und die Lehre von der Seelenwanderung, Leipzig, 1908; Die Komposition des Mahāvastu, Abb. d. K. Sächsischen Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.hist. Kl., XXVII, 1909, pp. 467-511.
10 Les deux premiers conciles, Muséon, VI, 1905, pp. 213-323; English tr.: The Buddhist Councils, IA, 37, 1908, pp. 1-18, 81-106.
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tion and study of the Chinese sources by Jean Przyluski in 1926–192811 and by Marcel Hofinger in 194612 has not put an end to the debate as can be seen from recent studies.13
The introduction of Oldenberg's Buddha contains a chapter entitled "Indian pantheism and pessimism before Buddha,” in which he studies the relations between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Oldenberg discovered in the older Upanişads ideas which are closely related to Buddhist ideas. Quoting BAU IV. 4.12 ātmānam ced vijānīyāt ayam asmīti puruṣaḥ, kim icchan kasya kāmāya śarīram anusamjvaret (If a man should well understand the Self, saying 'I am It'—seeking after what, for desire of what, should he crave after the body?--tr. Edgerton, The Beginnings of Indian Philosophy, 1965, p. 163), Oldenberg pointed to the similarity with Buddhist ideas about desire, nescience and the abolition of suffering through knowledge (Buddha, 2. Auflage, 1890, p. 53). Special attention was paid by Oldenberg to the Kathaka-Upanişad, in which text, pre-buddhist according to him, the Buddhist Satan Māra figures in the form of mrtyu ‘Death’. Oldenberg believed that the Buddhists had probably not known the brahmanical texts but, nevertheless, he did not hesitate to state that Buddhism had not only inherited from Brahmanism many of its important dogmas but also the mood of religious thought and sentiments (op. cit., p. 54). Since 1881 much has been written on the relations between the Upanisads and Buddhism, but without clear results. In 1925 in a preface to a new edition of his Bouddhisme, which was first published in 1909, La Vallée Poussin remarked that on the relations between the Upanişads and ancient Buddhism arbitrary judgments were given (p. vii: "Sur les rapports des Upanishads et du vieux Bouddhisme, on s'en tient à des opinions arbitraires"). La Vallée Poussin does not pronounce himself on this problem and in his Le dogme et la philosophie du bouddhisme which
11 Le concile de Rājagrba. Introduction à l'histoire des canons et des sectes bouddhiques, Paris, 1926–1928.
12 Étude sur le concile de Vaisāli, Louvain, 1946.
13 For instance: Paul Demiéville, A propos du concile de Vaiśālī, T'oung Pao, XL, 1951, pp. 239-296; Erich Frauwallner, Die buddhistischen Konzile, ZD MG, 102, 1952, pp. 240 261; A. Bareau, Les premiers conciles bouddhiques, Paris, 1955; Étienne Lamotte, Histoire du bouddhisme indien, I, Louvain, 1958, pp. 136-154, 297–300; L. Alsdorf, Aśokas SchismenEdikt und das Dritte Konzil, 117, III, 1959, pp. 161-174; H. Bechert, Aśokas "SchismenEdikt” und der Begriff Sanghabheda, WzKSO, V, 1961, pp. 18-52.
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appeared in 1930, he contents himself with some bibliographical notes (pp. 165-167). Opinions have varied greatly. As La Vallée Poussin remarked, scholars who take their point of departure in the Veda and Brahmanism, consider Buddhism as an annex of Brahmanism. The doctrines of transmigration and of the act had been invented by the brahmans. The life of a religious mendicant had been inaugurated by the brahmans and Nirvāṇa is nothing else than an atheist deformation of Nirvāṇa in Brahman. With these words La Vallée Poussin describes an extreme point of view. Between this point of view and the other extreme which denies any relation at all between brahmanical and Buddhist ideas intermediate positions have been taken by most scholars. The bibliography on this topic is immense and a critical analysis of even some of the most important publications would take up too much space.14
In the first and second edition of his Buddha, Oldenberg denied any relation between Sāmkhya philosophy and Buddhism (op. cit., p. 100, note I). Already Burnouf in his Introduction discussed the relation between Buddhism and Sāmkhya philosophy, and observed a great analogy between the primitive ontology of Buddhism as reflected in the theory of the twelve nidāna and Sāmkhya philosophy (p. SII). Albrecht Weber tried to identify the tattvas of the Sāmkhya with the nidānas.15 Max Müller firmly rejected any similarity between Sāmkhya and Buddhism.16 However, the controversy on this problem became acute with the publication in 1896 of an article by Hermann Jacobi (1850-1937)."7 Jacobi believed that the nidānas were based upon a pre-classical Sāmkhya system which did not know the three guna and which was taught by Buddha's teacher Arāņa Kālāma whose tenets are exposed by Aśvaghoșa in the twelfth canto of the Buddhacarita. Oldenberg replied to Jacobi's theory in the third edition of his Buddha (1897, pp. 443-455). The problem of the relations between Samkhya and Buddhism was studied again by him in his
14 The most recent discussion is to be found in an article by Paul Horsch, Buddhismus und Upanişaden, Pratidānam (Kuiper Volume, 1968), pp. 462-477.
15 Die neuesten Forschungen auf dem Gebiete des Buddhismus, Indische Studien, III, 1853, pp. 131-133.
16 Cf. Chips from a German workshop, I, London, 1867, p. 226. This passage is quoted by Oldenberg, Buddha, 2. A., p. 100, note i.
17 Der Ursprung des Buddhismus aus dem Sānkhya-yoga (NGGW, 1896, pp. 43-58 =Kleine Schriften, II, Wiesbaden, 1970, pp. 646-661).
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Buddhistische Studien, ZDMG, 52, 1898, pp. 681-694 (=Kleine Schriften, II, pp. 957-970), in his book on the Upanişads which was published in 1915 (Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus, 1915, 2. Aufl. 1923, pp. 254–275) and in an article on the Sāmkhya-system, published in 1917, in which he stated unambiguously that Buddhism was influenced by pre-classical Sāmkhya.18 Jacobi defended his views against Oldenberg's objections in his Buddha and against Senart19 in a second article in which he did not fundamentally change his position.20 Richard Garbe (1857–1927) also believed that Buddhism was influenced by Sāmkhya, not by a pre-classical Sāmkhya, however, but by Kapila's system which he considered to be older than Buddhism.21 Dependence of Buddhism on Samkhya ideas had also been defended by other scholars such as Joseph Dahlmann (1860-1930)22 and Richard Pischel (1849– 1908).23 More careful in his judgment is A. B. Keith (1879–1944).24 La Vallée Poussin rejected Samkhya influence but did not elaborate his point of view.25 Recently Horsch stated categorically that all attempts to derive Buddhist philosophy from a primitive Samkhya (Ursāmkhya) must be considered as unsuccessful, but the last word on this problem has certainly not yet been said.26
Kern was the first scholar to advocate Yoga influence on Buddhism.27 On
18 Zur Geschichte der Samkhya-Philosophie, NGGW, 1917, pp. 218–253 = Kleine Schriften, II, pp. 1423-1458. On Buddhism and Samkhya see pp. 1445-1452.
19 A propos de la théorie bouddhique des douze Nidanas, Mélanges Charles de Harlez, 1896, pp. 281–297.
20 Über das Verhältnis der buddhistischen Philosophie zu Sāmkhya-Yoga und die Bedeutung der Nidānas, ZDMG, 52, 1898 = Kleine Schriften, II, pp. 662-676.
21 Einleitung zur Übersetzung des Sānkhyattvakaumudi, München, 1892, pp. 517ff.; Die Sāmkhya-Philosophie, 1894, pp. 3-5, 14-23; Sāmkbya und Toga, 1896; Die Sāmkbya-Philosophie, 2. Auflage, 1917, pp. 6-18.
22 Nirvana, Berlin, 1897; Buddha, Berlin, 1898; Die Samkhya-Philosophie, Berlin, 1902. 23 Leben und Lehre des Buddha, Leipzig, 1906.
24 The Sāmkhya System, London, 1918, 2nd ed., 1924, pp. 24-33; Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, Oxford, 1923, pp. 138-143.
25 Cf. Bouddbisme, études et matériaux (1898), p. 82; Indo-européens et Indo-iraniens, Paris, 1924; Nouvelle édition, Paris, 1936, p. 310; Le dogme et la philosophie du bouddhisme, Paris, 1930, p. 182.
26 Buddhismus und Upanişaden, Pratidānam, 1968, p. 475. 27 Geschiedenis etc., I (1882), pp. 366-405.
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this point also the relations between Buddhism and classical Yoga or preclassical Yoga have often been discussed. In 1898 La Vallée Poussin reacted against the definition of Buddhism as an atheist religion and consecrated a chapter of his book on Buddhism to Buddhist Yoga.28 Senart studied in detail Yoga influence on Buddhism, but he has been unable to convince other scholars that the Yoga which influenced Buddhism was already Yoga in its classical form.29 In his Origines bouddhiques he arrived at a different conclusion, according to which Buddhism was influenced by a form of Visņuïte Yoga older than the Yoga of the epic and not yet associated with Sāmkhya.30
La Vallée Poussin and Beckh have stressed the importance of Yoga in Buddhism. La Vallée Poussin declared that Buddhism is essentially pure Yoga, Nirvana mysticism.31 Similarly Hermann Beckh (1875-1937) stated that “Der ganze Buddhismus ist durch und durch nichts als Yoga.”32 Oldenberg recognized the importance of Yoga in Buddhism but was not willing to consider Buddhism as a branch of Yoga.33 For a bibliography on Yoga and Buddhism one must refer to La Vallée Poussin's publications.34 La Vallée Poussin does not mention Beckh's Buddhismus (I-II, 1916)35 or Keith's chapter on Buddhism and Yoga in his Buddhist Philosophy (1923, pp. 143-145).
While texts were edited and translated and the problems connected with their interpretation were studied by scholars in Europe, in India inscriptions were discovered and edited and Buddhist monuments described and interpreted. Among the inscriptions, those of Asoka are the most important for the historian. It is not necessary to relate the first attempts at deciphering by James Prinsep (1799–1840) in 1834 and the following years. Burnouf is the first scholar of Buddhism to have studied the Asokan inscriptions. He remarked that these epigraphical monuments contain a considerable number
28 Bouddhisme, études et matériaux, pp. 82-93. 29 Bouddhisme et Yoga, RHR, 42, 1900, pp. 345-365; Nirvāṇa, Album Kern (Leiden, 1903), pp. 101-104. 30 Origines bouddhiques, AMG, B. V., tome 25, 1907, pp. 115-158. 31 Le bouddhisme et le yoga de Patañjali, MCB, V, 1937, p. 227. 32 Buddhismus, II, Berlin und Leipzig, 1916, p. II. 33 Die Lehre der Upanishaden (1923), pp. 275-288.
34 Le dogme et la philosophie du bouddhisme (1930), pp. 182-184; Le bouddhisme et le yoga de Patañjali, MCB, V, p. 223, n. 1.
35 Latest edition in one volume, Stuttgart, 1958.
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of words and expressions which belong to the language and the authentic doctrine of Buddhism (Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi, p. 653). Burnouf's careful examination of the inscriptions in the tenth appendix of his book (pp. 652-781) resulted in a more adequate interpretation of many passages. His work was continued by Kern who in 1873 published a monograph on the "Chronology of the Southern Buddhists and the monuments of Açoka the Buddhist" (Over de Faartelling der Zuidelijke Buddhisten en de Gedenkstukken van Açoka den Buddhist, Amsterdam, 1873). In 1874 Barth published a long review of Kern's work.36 In 1877 General Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), who in 1870 became director-general of the "Archaeological Survey of India," published as volume I of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum a comprehensive edition of the inscriptions of Aśoka. New inscriptions continued to be discovered. Senart, who in 1879 wrote a long article on Cunningham's edition, prepared a new edition of the inscriptions in a long series of articles in the Journal Asiatique which were published later in two volumes: Les inscriptions de Piyadasi, Paris, 1881-1886. Senart's great knowledge of Middle-Indian languages enabled him to make an important contribution to the study of the language and the grammar of the inscriptions. Senart also studied the inscriptions in a larger perspective in an article published in 1889.37 On the basis of the inscriptions, Senart described a popular Buddhism which attached more importance to happiness in this world and to rebirth in heaven than to Nirvāṇa and to abstruse speculations on the causal chain. According to him, Buddhism was at that time a large popular movement inspired by an elevated ethical code and reacting against ritual Brahmanism in the same way as contemporary Hinduism. Barth did not accept Senart's conclusions and pointed out that dogmatical speculations must have originated very soon in Buddhism.38 La Vallée Poussin remarked that from the beginning Buddhism was at the same time not only a religion of the masses but also of a clergy which propagated a doctrine of salvation and ascetism.39 In the preface of the second edition of his Buddha, Oldenberg entirely rejected Senart's ideas
36 Euvres, III, 1917, pp. 131-139.
37 Un roi de l'Inde au IIIe siècle avant notre ère. Açoka et le bouddhisme, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1er mars 1889 (tome 92), pp. 67-108.
38
Euvres, II, 1914, pp. 55-57.
39
Bouddhisme, Études et matériaux, London, 1898, pp. 31-33.
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and remarked that the true nature of Buddhism was realised not by the layfollowers, but by the monks whose goal was Nirvāņa. Oldenberg also protested against Senart's reduction of Buddhism to a branch of Hinduism and pointed out that fundamental Buddhist concepts such as the dualism between the sufferings of human existence and deliverance, the doctrine of karman and also the ascetic way of life were inherited from Vedism (Buddha, 2. Auflage, 1890, pp. iii-viii). Though Senart's views were not accepted by these prominent scholars, his concept of Asokan Buddhism has continued to exercise a kind of subterranean influence on Buddhist studies and not without justification. The inscriptions of Asoka cannot give a complete picture of Buddhism in the third century B. C., but they are of great value for the study of popular Buddhism at that time and of the influence Buddhism had among lay-followers. Buddhism is not only a doctrine of monks and ascetics but also a which for many centuries counted its followers in India by many millions. It is one of the merits of La Vallée Poussin's Bouddhisme (London, 1898) to have stressed the importance of taking into account both popular Buddhism and monastic Buddhism for a better understanding of the place of Buddhism in the history of Indian religions.
Senart's Inscriptions de Piyadasi was followed by other publications of new inscriptions and by contributions to their interpretation. Senart himself wrote several articles. Important work was also done by Georg Bühler (1837–1898) and Heinrich Lüders (1869–1943). Eugen Hultzsch (1857–1927) published a new edition of The Inscriptions of Asoka in 1925. His work has remained the standard edition up to our days but many new discoveries and new interpretations which have been published in recent years make the publication of an entirely new edition an urgent desideratum. K. R. Norman of Cambridge University has for a number of years been engaged in this task and we may hope to see the publication of his edition in the course of this decennium.40
The Annual Reports of the Archaeological Survey which were published from 1871 onwards by. Cunningham and by James Burgess, who succeeded him in 1885 as director general, contain much material for Buddhist archaeology. Of special importance for Buddhist studies was Cunningham's book
40 For a bibliography see M.A. Mehendale, Asokan Inscriptions in India (A Linguistic Study together with an exhaustive Bibliography), Bombay, 1948.
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on The Stupa of Bharhut (London, 1879). The monuments of Sāñchi had already been studied by James Fergusson in his Tree and Serpent Worship (London, 1868). However, neither his work nor F. C. Maisey's Sanchi and its Remains (London, 1892) were very satisfactory, Sir John Marshall (1870–1958), who in 1902 succeeded to Burgess, continued the work first undertaken by Cunningham (The Bhilsa Topes, London, 1854). His guide to Sāñchi (A Guide to Sanchi, Delhi, 1918; 2nd ed., 1936) was the result of the work done by him on the site between 1912 and 1919. With A. Foucher and N. G. Majumdar he published finally in 1940 The Monuments of Sāñchi, a splendid publication in which Marshall studied the monuments and the art of Sāñchi, Foucher (1865-1952) the meaning of the sculptures and N. G. Majumdar the inscriptions. 41
It is not feasible to enumerate the important epigraphical and archaeological discoveries which relate to Buddhism but mention must be made of the Asokan inscriptions discovered in 1895 and 1896 in Nepal. The first, found near the village Nigliva, mentions the stūpa of the Buddha Konākamana, the second, found at a distance of 13 miles from it near the village Paderia, was erected by Asoka in the 21st year after his consecration to commemorate the birth of the Buddha in the park of Lummini. The discovery of these two pillars and consequently of the nearby site of Kapilavastu and of the stūpa of Krakucchanda established, as Barth remarked, that the legend of the Buddha is more ancient than was supposed before. 42 The discoveries could not prove the historical truth contained in the legend of Buddha, but they made it impossible to consider Kapilavastu a mythological locality without a real foundation as had been done by Senart and Kern. Already about 1870 Cunningham believed that he had rediscovered the place of Buddha's Nirvāņa near the village of Kasia, 34 miles East of Gorakhpur, but doubt continued. Vincent - A. Smith wrote a monograph on The Remains near Kasia (Allahabad, 1896) in which he rejected Cunningham's claim. It is only in 1911 that an inscription discovered by Hirananda Shastri proved without any doubt that Cunningham had been correct in his identification.43
41 For a survey of the archaeological work done in India up to 1938 see Revealing India's Past. A Cooperative Record of Archaeological Conservation and Exploration in India and Beyond. London, 1939.
42 Découvertes récentes de M. le Dr Führer au Népal, (Euvres, IV, pp. 323-335. 43 Cf. J. Ph. Vogel, op het voetspoor van Boeddha, Haarlem, 1934, p. 72.
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The last decennium of the nineteenth century inaugurated a long series of important discoveries of Buddhist manuscripts in Central Asia. The Russian consul in Kashgar, Nikolaj Fedorovitch Petrovskij (1837-1908)44 sent manuscripts in several languages to Serge Oldenburg (1863-1934) in St. Petersburg. A photocopy of one leaf of a Kuchean text was published by Oldenburg in 1892 and in 1900 Ernst Leumann (1859-1931) published a transcription of it and of another leaf.45 In the following years Oldenburg published Sanskrit fragments from Kashgar.46 In the same years manuscripts from Khotan and Kashgar were sent to A. F. R. Hoernle (1841-1918) who reported on them in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.47 Of great importance was the discovery of a manuscript of a version of the Dharmapada in Prakrit. Part of the manuscript had been acquired by Dutrueil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan in 1892. Another part had been sent to Oldenburg by Petrovskij in 1897. Oldenburg published a facsimile and transcription of one leaf in 1897 and in the following year Senart published a transliteration of the fragments in Paris.48 A definitive edition of all fragments was not published before 1962: John Brough, The Gāndhāri Dharmapada, London, 1962. It contains a full bibliography of all publications relating
to the text.
These and other discoveries in Central Asia led to the organisation of several expeditions to Central Asia: three expeditions led by Sir Aurel Stein
44 Cf. S. F. Ol'denburg, Pamjati Nikolaja Fedoroviča Petrovskogo 1837-1908, Zap. Vost. Otd. R. Arch. Obšč., XX, 1910, pp. 01-08.
45 S. F. Oldenburg, Kašgarskaja rukopis N. F. Petrovskogo, ZVORAO, VII, 1892, pp. 81-82; E. Leumann, Über eine von den unbekannten Literatursprachen Mittelasiens, Mémoires de l'Acad. imp. des sc. de St.-P., VIIIe série, Tome IV, No. 8, 28 pp., 2 pl.
46 Otryvki kašgarskix sanskritskix rukopisej iz sobranija N. F. Petrovskogo, ZVORAO, VIII, 1894, PP: 47-67; XI, 1899, pp. 207-267; XV, 1902-3, pp. 0113-0122; K kašgarskim buddijskim tekstam, ibid., VIII, 1894, pp. 151-153; Ešče po povodu kašgarskix tekstov, ibid., pp. 349-351.
47 The Weber Manuscripts, JASB, 62, part 1, 1893, pp. 1-40; Three further collections of Ancient manuscripts from Central Asia, ibid., 66, part 1, 1897, pp. 213-260; A report on the British Collection of Antiquities from Central Asia, JASB, 68, part 1, Extranumber Nr. 1, 1899 and JASB, 70, part 1, Extra-number 1, 1901.
48 S. F. Oldenburg, Predvaritel'naja zametka o buddijskoj rukopisi, napisannoj pis'menami kharoṣṭhi, Sanktpetersburg, 1897; E. Senart, Le manuscrit kharoṣṭhi du Dhammapada: les fragments Dutreuil de Rhins, JA, 1898, II, pp. 193-308, 545-548.
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(1862–1943) in 1900–1901, 1906–1908 and 1913-1916, four German expeditions, the first led by Albert Grünwedel (1856-1935) and Georg Huth (18671906) in 1902–1903, the second by Von Le Coq (1860–1930) in 1904–1905, the third by Von Le Coq and Grünwedel in 1905-1907 and the fourth led by Von Le Coq in 1913-1914, a French expedition led by P. Pelliot (1878–1945) in 1906–1908, three Japanese expeditions in 1902-1904, 1908-1909 and 19101913, and three Russian expeditions, the first by D. Klementz in 1898, the second and third led by Serge Oldenburg in 1909–1910 and 1914–1915. Other expeditions are mentioned by Jack A. Dabbs49 but the above-mentioned are the most important for Buddhist studies. Buddhist månuscripts in Sanskrit, Kuchean, Agnean, Khotanese, Sogdian, Uigur, Tibetan and Chinese arrived in great number in Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Japan as a result of these expeditions. A bibliography of Central Asiatic Studies has been published in volume 1 of the Monumenta Serindica (Kyoto, 1958, pp. 53-87). Waldschmidt's Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden (I, Wiesbaden, 1965, pp. XXVi–xxxii) lists all Sanskrit fragments published by German scholars from 1904 to 1964 (for the years 1964-1970 see volume III, 1971, pp. 275-276). Bernard Pauly has listed the publications of Sanskrit fragments brought back by Pelliot: Fragments sanskrits de Haute Asie (Mission Pelliot), JA, 1965, pp. 83-121. As far as I know, there are no bibliographies for the publication of Sanskrit fragments from the collections in London, Leningrad and Japan, but most of those, published before 1959, are to be found in Yamada's Bongo butten no shobunken (Kyoto, 1959). For Kuchean and Agnean one must refer to Ernst Schwentner, Tocharische Bibliographie 1890–1958 (Berlin, 1959), for Sogdian to M. J. Dresden, Bibliographia Sogdica concisa (Jaarbericht No. 8 van het vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Gezelschap Ex Oriente Lux, 1942, pp. 729-734), for Khotanese to M. J. Dresden, Introductio ad linguam hvatanicam (ibid., No. 9, 1944, pp. 200-206) and L. G. Gercenberg, Xotano-Sakskij jazyk, Moskva 1965, pp. 16–29; for Uigur to Rudolf Loewenthal, The Turkic Languages and Literatures of Central Asia ('s-Gravenhage, 1957), and the supplementary indications given by me in IIJ, II, 1958, p. 81. The Tibetan manuscripts in Paris and London
49 Jack A. Dabbs, History of the discovery and exploration of Chinese Turkestan. The Hague, 1963; Chap. V. The Archaeological Period: 1888 to Stein's First Expedition; Chap. VI. The Archaeological Period: 1901-1914.
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have been catalogued by Marcelle Lalou50 and La Vallée Poussins1 but a bibliography of text editions does not exist.
BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
We have mentioned the principal publications of Kern, Senart, and Oldenberg. For other studies by them it suffices to refer to the bibliographies of these three scholars.52 The reviews of Auguste Barth (1834-1916), who especially during the period 1880 to 1900 carefully analysed many important publications on Buddhism, have been published in five volumes.53 The bibliography of his works and the general index in volume 5 are very useful for the study of the history of Buddhist studies.
In the eighteen-sixties a new generation of scholars was born: R. Otto Franke (1862-1928), Serge d'Oldenburg (1863-1934), Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935), Th. Stcherbatsky (1866-1942), F. W. Thomas (1867-1956), E. J. Thomas (1869-1958), Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869-1938) and Heinrich Lüders (1869-1943).
Sylvain Lévi's importance is not limited to Buddhism but the work which he has done in this field has had a lasting influence not only in Europe, but also in India and Japan. In 1927 Sylvain Lévi recalled how in 1887 Fujishima Ryōon and Fujieda Takutsū, two priests of the Nishi Honganji, became his first two pupils.54 They have probably contributed in directing his attention towards Buddhism. Sylvain Lévi has not written any comprehensive work on Buddhism but his genius led him from discovery to discovery and his work has not ceased to stimulate research in many directions. Very soon he realised the importance of Chinese not only for the study of Buddhism, but also for that of Indian history. Sylvain Lévi has shown by his example that Indian,
50 Inventaire des Manuscrits tibétains de Touen-houang, I, Paris, 1939, II, 1950; III, 1961. Catalogue of the Tibetan Manuscripts from Tun-buang in the India Office Library, London,
51
1962.
52
H. Kern, Verspreide Geschriften, Register en Bibliografie, 's-Gravenhage, 1929; L. Finot, Nécrologie d'Émile Senart, BEFEO, XXVIII, 1929, pp. 335-347; A. Guérinot, Bibliographie des travaux d'Émile Senart, JA, 1933, II, fasc. annexe, pp. 1-75; Hermann Oldenberg, Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden, 1967, pp. vii-xxxv.
53 Euvres de Auguste Barth, I-V, Paris, 1914-1927. For an obituary of Barth see A. Foucher, Auguste Barth, Bulletin de la commission archéologique de l'Indo-chine. Années 19141916, Paris, 1916, pp. 207-221.
54 Matériaux japonais pour l'étude du bouddhisme, BMFJ, I, 1927, p. 1.
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Tibetan and Chinese sources are indispensable for the study of Buddhism. Sylvain Lévi was fascinated by Aśvaghosa. In 1892 he published text and lation of the first canto of his Buddhacarita,55 but he abandoned his plan to edit the text in favour of Cowell. Already in his first publications Sylvain Lévi studied the historical problems related to Aśvaghoșa, Kaniska and the IndoScythians.56 During his first journey to Nepal in 1898 he looked for the Sanskrit original of Asvaghosa's Sūtrālamkāra. Sylvain Lévi obtained a copy of Asanga's Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra which he edited and translated in 1907 and 1911, the first publication of a text of the Yogācāra school. His researches on Aśvaghoșa resulted in tracing 26 stories of the Divyāvadāna in the Viňaya of the Mūlasarvāstivādin.57 Sylvain Lévi's article complemented the research undertaken by Édouard Huber (1879–1914).58 Huber's translation of the Sūtrālamkāra (Paris, 1908) was a point of departure for a long article on Aśvaghosa and his Sūtrālamkāra by Sylvain Lévi.59 In 1922 Sylvain Lévi discovered in Nepal a manuscript of the Dharmasamuccaya which contains the verses of the Saddhari smrtyupasthānasūtra. In a famous article Sylvain Lévi had already in is compared the description of Jambudvipa in this work with the digvarnana in the Rāmāyana. On rather tenuous grounds Sylvain Lévi connected the name of Asvaghosa with the Saddharmasmrtyupasthānasūtra.61 The publication by Lüders in 1926 of Sanskrit fragments of the Sūtrālamkāra put into doubt both title and authorship of the work.62 Many scholars participated in the debate which took place in the following years.63 Even though Sylvain Lévi has
55 Le Buddhacarita d'Açvaghosa, JA, 1892, I, pp. 201-236.
56 Notes sur les Indo-Scythes, JA, 1896, II, pp. 444-484, 1897, I, pp. 5-42, 1897, II, PP: 526-531.
57 Les éléments de formation du Divyāvadāna, Toung Pao, 8, 1907, pp. 105-122.
58 Trois contes du Sūtrālamkāra d'Acvaghosa conservés dans le Divyāvadāna, BEFEO, IV, pp. 709–726; Les sources du Divyāvadāna, BEFEO, VI, 1906, pp. 1-43.
59 Açvaghosa. Le Sūtrālamkāra et ses sources, JA, 1908, II, pp. 57-184. 60 Pour l'histoire du Rāmāyaṇa, JA, 1918, I, pp. 5-161. 61 JA, 1925, I, pp. 36-40. 62 Bruchstücke der Kalpanāmanditikā des Kumāralāta, Leipzig, 1926.
63 Sylvain Lévi, La Drstānta-pankti et son auteur, JA, 1927, II, pp. 95-127; Encore Ašvaghoșa, JA, 1928, II, pp. 193-216; Autour d'Asvaghosa, JA, 1929, II, pp. 255-285; Kaniska et Sātavāhana, JA, 1936, 1, p. 80; Johannes Nobel, Kumāralāta und sein Werk,*
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claimed too much for Aśvaghosa, his devotion to him has brought to light much important material.
Sylvain Lévi's discovery in Nepal in 1922 of Vasubandhu's Vimsatikā and Trimśikā was of great importance for the knowledge of the Yogācāra school.64 Some of the most important texts discovered by Sylvain Lévi were published by his pupils. Félix Lacôte (1873–1925) edited and translated Budhasvāmin's Brhatkathāślokasamgraha (Paris, 1908–1929) which added a new dimension to the study of the famous Brhatkathā. Yamaguchi Susumu edited in 1934 Sthiramati's Madhyāntavibhāgatīkā (Nagoya, 1934; reprint, Tokyo, 1966). Sylvain Lévi took also great interest in the discoveries of Sanskrit and Kuchean manuscripts in Central Asia. Pischel's publication of a Sanskrit fragment of the Samyuktāgama (SPAW, 1904, pp. 807–827) inaugurated the publication of Sanskrit manuscripts discovered by the German Turfan expeditions. Sylvain Lévi showed that the corresponding text was to be found in the Chinese version of the Samyuktāgama.65 This discovery was of great importance for the history of the Buddhist canon. In a study of the sacred scriptures of the Buddhists, Sylvain Lévi underlined the importance of the discoveries of Buddhist texts of different schools for the history and comparative study of the Buddhist canon.66 For Sylvain Levi's editions of Sanskrit and Kuchean fragments we must refer to the bibliography of his writings in volume VII-VIII of the Bibli
*NGGW, 1928, pp. 295–304; Um Ašvaghoşa, NGGW, 1931, PP. 330-336; L. de La Vallée Poussin, La Siddhi de Hiuan-tsang, I, Paris, 1928, pp. 221–224; Jean Przyluski, Aśvaghoșa et la Kalpanāmanditikā, BCL, se série, XVI, 1930, pp. 425-434 (see Pelliot's review T'oung Pao, 28, 1931, pp. 196-197); Sautrāntika et Dārstāntika, RO, VIII, 1932, pp. 14-24; Dārstāntika, Sautrāntika and Sarvāstivādin, IHQ , XVI, 1940, pp.246-254; Entai Tomomatsu, Sūtrālamkāra et Kalpanāmanditikā, JA, 1931, II, pp. 135-174, 245-337; E. H. Johnston, Buddhacarita, II (1936), pp. xxii-xxiij; D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Mecaka et le Sūtrālāņkāra, JA, 1952, pp. 71-73.
64 Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, Paris, 1925; Matériaux pour l'étude du système Vijñaptimātra, Paris, 1932.
65 Le Samyuktāgama sanscrit et les feuillets Grünwedel, Toung Pao S, 1904, pp. 297– 309.
66 Les Saintes Écritures du Bouddhisme. Comment s'est constitué le canon sacré, AMG, B. V., t. XXXI, 1909, pp. 105-129= Mémorial Sylvain Lévi, Paris, 1937, pp. 75-84. For Oldenberg's reaction see Studien zur Geschichte des buddhistischen Kanons, NGGW, 1912, pp. 197–208=Kleine Schriften, II, pp. 1015-1026.
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ographie bouddhique (Paris, 1937, pp. 1-64). Of his other articles we mention only two which have a great bearing on the history of the Buddhist canon: his article on a precanonical language and his study on the texts recited by Koţikarna. 67 In 1928 Sylvain Lévi visited Bali and Java. In Bali he gained the confidence of the priests and was able to collect several stotra which were published in Sanskrit Texts from Bali (Baroda, 1933, GOS, LXVII). When he visited the Borobudur and inspected the lower galleries he recognized that the sculptors had made use of a text dealing with acts. A manuscript of this text had been discovered by him in Nepal during his last visit.68
Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869-1938) was one of the first pupils of Sylvain Lévi, but the nature of his work is entirely different. He devoted most of his research to the study of Buddhist dogmatism as he called it and of the philosophical schools of Mahāyāna. His first works concern Tantrism: an edition of the Pañcakrama, edition and translation of the Adikarmapradīpa and a chapter on Tantrism in his Bouddhisme of 1898.69 Already in 1897 he analysed a chapter of the Prasannapadā,7o and in the following years he published a masterfully annotated edition of the Prasannapadā, an edition of the Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā, an edition of the Tibetan text of the Madhyamakāvatāra and an incomplete translation of the same text.?1 His translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is still by far the most learned of all the existing translations.72 In 1933 La Vallée Poussin wrote a long comprehensive article on the Madhyamaka but
67 Observations sur une langue précanonique du Bouddhisme, JA, 1912; II, pp. 495514; Sur la récitation primitive des textes bouddhiques, JA, 1915, 1, pp. 401-447:
68 Sylvain Lévi, Mabākarmavibhanga et Karmavibhan gopadeśa, Paris, 1932. See also N. J. Krom, Het Karmawibhangga op Barabudur, Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, deel 76, serie B, no. 8, Amsterdam, 1933, pp. 215-283.
69 Études et textes tantriques. I. Pañcakrama. Gand, 1896; Bouddhisme, Études et matériaux, London, 1898, pp. 162-232 et 118–161.
70 Caturāryasatyaparikṣā, Mélanges Charles de Harlez, 1897, pp. 313-320.
71 Mülamadhyamakakārikās (Mādhyamikasūtras de Nāgārjuna avec la Prasannapadā, commentaire de Candrakirti, Bibliotheca Buddhica, IV, St.-Pétersbourg, 1903-1913; Prajñākaramati's Commentary to the Bodbicaryāvatāra of Çantideva, Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 19011914; Madhyamakāvatāra de Candrakirti, traduction tibétaine, Bibl. B., IX, St.-Pétersbourg, 1907–1912; Madhyamakāvatāra, traduit d'après la version tibétaine, Muséon, 8, 1907, pp. 249–317; II, 1910, pp. 271-358; 12, 1911, pp. 235-327.
72 Introduction à la pratique des futurs Bouddhas, Paris, 1907.
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his final opinion on the Madhyamaka absolute did not appear until after his death.73 In 1905 in an article on the 75 and 100 dharma, La Vallée Poussin studied the Abhidharmakosa and the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi.74 In this field his work culminated in his translation of the Abhidharmakośa, one of the greatest achievements in Buddhist studies.75 La Vallée Poussin translated also many passages of the Abhidharma works of the Sarvāstivādin and of the Mahāvibhāṣā to which he referred also in his Abhidharma studies. In the field of Yogācāra studies his greatest achievement is his translation of the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi.76 Even the later Buddhist school of logic was not neglected by him as is shown by his edition of the Tibetan text of the Nyāyabindu together with Vinitadeva's commentary.77
Philosophical problems were studied by him in many publications. Let us mention only his articles on the doctrine of karman,78 the trikāya,79 the pratītyasamutpādasand the councils. 81 His numerous contributions to Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (12 volumes, 1908–1921; Index volume 1926) deal with many aspects of Buddhism. If one adds to all this his publications of Sanskrit fragments (cf. FRAS, 1907, 1908, 1911, 1912, 1913) and many other articles and reviews, it is difficult to imagine that so much has been achieved by one scholar. 82 La Vallée Poussin published the results of his researches also in books which were meant for a larger (but highly intelligent) public: Bouddhisme. Opinions sur l'Histoire de la Dogmatique, Paris, 1909; The Way to Nirvāna,
73 Réflexions sur le Madhyamaka, MCB, II, 1933, pp. 1–59; Buddhica, HJAS, 3, 1938, pp. 137-160.
74 Dogmatique bouddhique. Les soixante-quinze et les cent dharmas (avec la collaboration de T. Suzuki et de P. Cordier), Muséon, 6, 1905, pp. 178-194.
75 L'Abbidharmakośa de Vasubandhu, 6 volumes, Paris-Louvain, 1923-1931. 76 Paris, 1928-1929.
77 Tibetan Translation of the Nyāyabindu of Dharmakirti, with the commentary of Vinitadeva, Bibliotheca Indica. Calcutta, 1907–1913. 78 Dogmatique bouddhique, JA, 1902, II, pp. 237-306, 1903, II, pp. 357-450.
79 JRAS, 1906, pp. 943-977; Muséon, 14, 1913, pp. 257-290; Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, Vol. II, Paris, 1929, pp. 762-813.
80 Bouddhisme. Études et matériaux. Théorie des douze causes. Gand, 1913.
81 Les deux premiers conciles, Muséon, 6, 1905, pp. 214-323; The “Five Points” of Mahadeva and the Kathāvatthu, JRAS, 1910, pp. 413-423.
82 For a bibliography of his writings see Bibliographie bouddhique, XXIII bis, Paris, 1955, PP. 1-37.
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Cambridge, 1917; Nirvana, Paris, 1925; La Morale bouddhique, Paris, 1927; Le dogme et la philosophie du bouddhisme, Paris, 1930. Moreover, much information on Buddhism is to be found in the three volumes of his history of Ancient India: Indo-Européens et Indo-Iraniens. L'Inde jusque vers 300 av. J.-C., Paris, 1924, nouvelle édition, 1936; L'Inde au temps des Mauryas, Paris, 1930; Dynasties et Histoire de l'Inde depuis Kanishka jusqu'aux invasions musulmanes, Paris, 1935. We have already mentioned several times La Vallée Poussin's Bouddhisme which appeared in 1898. In this work he discussed for the first time many problems such as the value of the Pāli sources, the nature of popular Buddhism, Buddhist Yoga, etc. La Vallée Poussin was never satisfied with the results he obtained and many of the problems were studied by him again and again over a period of forty years. It is for this reason difficult to give a general characterisation of his principal views. However, on some points his opinions did not vary greatly. La Vallée Poussin has always stressed the fact that Buddhism owed most of its ideas to brahmanical speculation and ascetism, although he pointed out that one can recognize in Buddhism a characteristic way of envisaging the problem of salvation, a coherent doctrine which can be called an orthodoxy (Bouddhisme, Opinions, etc. p. 51). From the beginning La-Vallée Poussin has also underlined the importance of Yoga and in one of his last articles he did not hesitate to consider Buddhism as a branch of Yoga, an opinion which was utterly unacceptable for Oldenberg, as we have seen.83 The problem which was always the centre of his research was the interpretation of Nirvana. In his The Buddhist Nirvana and its Western Interpreters (Chicago, 1968, pp. 256-283) G. R. Welbon has attempted to sketch the evolution of La Vallée Poussin on this point, but only a fuller treatment could do justice to this difficult problem. La Vallée Poussin always had a disinclination to study the life of the Buddha and other problems which can hardly be solved with the help of the existing materials. He preferred to analyse the views of the different schools. No scholar has contributed more to our knowledge of Buddhist Abhidharma than La Vallée Poussin.84
Jean Przyluski (1885-1944), another pupil of Sylvain Lévi, did excellent
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83
See note 33.
84 For an excellent characterization of La Vallée Poussin's personality and work see Étienne Lamotte, Notice sur Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Académie royale de Belgique—Annuaire pour 1965, Bruxelles, 1965, pp. 145-168.
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work in translating from the Chinese texts concerning northwestern India, Buddha's parinirvāṇa, the legend of Asoka and the Council of Rājagļha.85 Przyluski attached much importance to geographical factors for the development of Buddhist schools. His work on the Council of Rajagrha is inspired by some rather wild sociological ideas. Although many of Przyluski's theories cannot stand the test of a serious examination, his translations will always be useful for the historian of Buddhism. In later publications Przyluski succumbed to a mania of comparatism which led him to discover everywhere non-Indian influences. Probably not much of it will be of any lasting value. To Przyluski belongs the great merit to have created with Marcelle Lalou (1890–1967) the Bibliographie bouddhique which analyses exhaustively all publications relating to Buddhism during the years 1928 to 1958 (Bibliographie bouddhique, IParis, 1930–1967). A complete analytical bibliography of Przyluski's writings has been published recently: A. W. Macdonald et Marcelle Lalou, L'quvre de Jean Przyluski, Paris, 1970.
La Vallée Poussin's most famous pupil is Étienne Lamotte (1903– ) who before 1942 published translations of the Samdhinirmocana (Louvain, 1935), of Vasubandhu's Karmasiddhiprakarana (MCB, IV, 1936, pp. 151-263) and of Asanga's Mahāyānasamgraha (2 tomes, Louvain, 1938-1939). A discussion of his recent work has to be postponed to the next chapter.
Theodor Stcherbatsky was a pupil of Minaev, Bühler and Jacobi. His most important work is devoted to the logic and epistemology of the later Buddhist authors Dharmakirti and Dharmottara. In 1903 he published a Russian translation of Dharmakirti's Nyāyabindu and Dharmottara's tīkā. This was followed by a study of the main concepts of the Buddhist epistemological school, published in Russian in 1909 and in French and German translation in 1924 and 1926.86 Both works appeared in an entirely new and enlarged version in English in the two volumes of Buddhist Logic (Bibl. B., XXVI, Leningrad, 1930–1932).
85 Le Nord-ouest de l'Inde dans le Vinaya des Mūlasarvāstivādin et les textes apparentés, JA, 1914, II, pp. 493-568; Le parinirvāṇa et les funérailles du Buddha, JA, 1918-1920, separate edition, Paris, 1920; Le partage des reliques du Buddha, MCB, IV, 1936, pp. 341-367; La légende de l'empereur Asoka, Paris, 1923; Le Concile de Rājagrha, Paris, 1926-1928.
86 Erkenntnistheorie und Logik nach der Lebre der späteren Buddhisten, München-Neubiberg, 1924; La théorie de la connaissance et la logique chez les bouddhistes tardifs, Paris, 1926.
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In 1918 Otto Rosenberg (1888–1919) published a study on the problems of Buddhist philosophy, largely based on Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa, in which he advocated the view that Buddhist philosophy was based on the idea of the plurality of dharmas. 87 Stcherbatsky accepted Rosenberg's view and described Buddhism as a system of Radical Pluralism in his The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word “Dharma” (London, 1923) which contains an analysis of the main doctrines of the Abhidharmakośa. La Vallée Poussin's Nirvāna and, to a lesser degree, Keith's Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon (Oxford, 1923) provoked a spirited attack by Stcherbatsky in his The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāna (Leningrad, 1927). The second part of this book contains a translation of chapter I and chapter XXV of Candrakirti's Prasannapadā. The first part sketches the development of Buddhist philosophy in the schools of Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna. Stcherbatsky believed that Buddhism arose as a philosophical system which analysed matter and mind as composed of evanescent elements (dharmas). It is not possible to follow in detail Stcherbatsky's opinions on the later development of Buddhist philosophy. His conclusion (pp. 60-62) summarizes briefly the results at which he arrived. Stcherbatsky had a profound knowledge both of Western and Indian philosophy. In his translations he strove to render the philosophical meaning and not the literal sense. In his interpretation of the epistemological school of Buddhism he tried to show up parallels with Kant's transcendental philosophy. Stcherbatsky's philosophical views regarding the radical pluralism of early Buddhism and the transcendental character of later Buddhist philosophy do not do justice to the essentially religious nature of the Buddhist quest for salvation. Stcherbatsky also carried on a vivid controversy with La Vallée Poussin on the nature of the Absolute of the Madhyamaka. For further details we refer the reader to two articles, recently published in the Journal of Indian Philosophy.88 Even if Stcherbatsky's ideas cannot always carry convic
87 Problemy buddijskoj filosofii, Petrograd, 1918; German translation: Die Probleme der buddhistischen Philosopbie, Heidelberg, 1924. See also A. M. Pjatigorskij, 0. O. Rozenberg i problema jazyka opisanija v buddologii [O. O. Rosenberg and the problem of the language of description in Buddhology), Trudy po znakovym sistemam, s (Tartu, 1971), pp. 423-436.
88 J. W. de Jong, The Problem of the Absolute in the Madhyamaka School, JIP, 2, 1972, pp. 1-6; Emptiness, ibid., pp. 7-15.
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tion, one must recognize that by translating and explaining for the first time some very difficult Buddhist philosophical texts, he has made an important contribution to Buddhist studies. 89
A contemporary of Stcherbatsky was Serge d'Oldenburg whom we mentioned already in connection with the publication of Sanskrit fragments from Kashgar. Oldenburg published many writings on Buddhist tales and Buddhist iconography. Several of his articles were translated during the eighteennineties.90 Oldenburg founded the Bibliotheca Buddhica of which the first volume was Bendall's edition of the Sikşāsamuccaya (1897–1902). The thirtieth volume, Stcherbatsky's translation of the first chapter of the Madhyāntavibhanga, appeared in 1936. Many well-known scholars published editions of texts in this series. To mention only a few: the Rāsţrapālapariprcchā by Louis Finot (1865-1935) in 1898, the Avadānaśataka by J. S. Speyer in 1902–1909, the Saddharmapundarikasūtra by H. Kern and Bunyiu Nanjio in 1908-1912. Another Russian scholar who has to be mentioned here is von Staël-Holstein (1877–1937) who edited the Kāśyapaparivarta (Shanghai, 1926) and Sthiramati's commentary (Peking, 1933).91
A pupil of Stcherbatsky, Eugène Obermiller (1901-1935), translated from
89 For a bibliography of his writings see Materialy po istorii i filologii centralnoj Azii, vyp. 3, Ulan-Ude, 1968, pp. 5-7 (add Über den Begriff vijñāna im Buddhismus, ZII, 7, 1929, 136-139). Several of Stcherbatsky's Russian articles have recently been published in English translation: Papers of Th. Stcher batsky, Calcutta, 1969; Further Papers of Stcherbatsky, Calcutta, 1971.
90 On the Buddhist Jātakas, JRAS, 1893, pp. 301-356; The Buddhist Source of the (Old Slavonic) Legend of the Twelve Dreams of Shahaïsh, JRAS, 1893, pp. 509-516; Notes on Buddhist Art, JAOS, 18, 1897, pp. 183-201; H. Kern, Een Russisch Geleerde over de beeldhouwwerken van de Boro Boedoer, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederl. Indië, 47, 1897, pp. 49-56; Verspreide geschriften, 4, 1916, pp. 209–231; A propos du Mahābhārata dans la littérature bouddhique, RHR, 37, 1898, pp. 342-343. For a complete bibliography see P. Skačkov, Materialy dlja bibliografija trudov S. F. Oldenburga, Sergeju Fedoroviču Oldenburgu k pjatidesjatiletiju naučno-obščestvennoj dejatelnosti 1882–1932, Leningrad 1934, pp. 625-637.
91 Cf. S. Elisséef, Staël-Holstein's Contribution to Asiatic Studies, HJAS, 3, 1938, pp. 1-8; E. Schierlitz, In Memory of Alexander Wilhelm Baron von Staël-Holstein, Monumenta Serica, 3, 1938, pp. 286-291.
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the Tibetan the Uttaratantra or Ratnagotravibhāga. 92 His main work was devoted to the Abhisamayālamkāra.93
Heinrich Lüders's importance for Buddhist studies consists in his extremely careful editions of Sanskrit fragments from Central Asia. His edition of fragments of Buddhist dramas revealed for the first time the fact that Asvaghosa had written for the theater, a fact of great importance for the history of Indian theater.94 We mentioned earlier his edition of fragments of the Kalpanamanditikā. Other publications of fragments have been reprinted in his Philologica Indica. Of great importance for the problem of the pre-canonical language is his posthumously published Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Kanons (Berlin, 1954) in which he defended the view that the Pāli and Sanskrit Buddhist texts show traces of the existence of a primitive canon (Urkanon) written in an Eastern dialect, called Ardhamāgadhi or Old-Ardhamāgadhi. Lüders's work on the Sanskrit fragments was continued by his pupil Ernst Waldschmidt (1897– ), who edited fragments of the Bhikṣuṇīprātimokşa of the Sarvāstivādin and fragments of canonical sūtras. 95
In the field of Buddhist philosophy important work has been done by Stanislas Schayer (1899–1941), Poul Tuxen (1880–1955), Giuseppe Tucci (1894- ), and Erich Frauwallner (1898– ). Schayer and Tuxen have contributed to a better understanding of the Madhyamaka philosophy by their studies on Candrakirti's Prasannapadā.96 Schayer provoked a lively discussion
92 The Sublime Science of Great Vehicle to Salvation (Uttaratantra), Acta Orientalia, 9, 1931, pp. 81-306.
93 The Doctrine of Prajñāpāramitā as exposed in the Abhisamayālamkāra, Acta Or., II, 1932, pp. 1-133, 334-354; Analysis of the Abhisamayālamkāra, 3 fasc., Calcutta, 1933, 1936, 1943. See further La Vallée Poussin, MCB, 5, 1937, p. 244; Th. Stcherbatsky, Dr. E. Obermiller, Obituary Notice, J. of the Greater India Society, 3, 1936, pp. 211-213.
94 Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen. Berlin, 1911; Das Sāriputraprakarana, ein Drama des Aśvaghoșa, SPAW, 1911, pp. 388-411 = Philologica Indica, Berlin, 1940, pp. 190-213. For a bibliography of Lüders's writings see H. Lüders, Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden, 1973, pp. vii-xiii.
95 Bruchstücke des Bhikṣuni-prātimokşa der Sarvāstivādins, Leipzig, 1926; Bruchstücke buddhistischer Sūtras aus dem zentralasiatischen Sanskritkanon, I, Leipzig, 1932.
96 St. Schayer, Ausgewählte Kapitel aus der Prasannapadā, Cracow, 1931. For an incomplete) bibliography see Rocznik Orientalistyczny, XXI, 1957, 24-27; Poul Tuxen, Indledende Bemaerkninger til buddhistisk Relativism, København, 1936; In what sense can we call*
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on the problem of pre-canonical Buddhism.97 Tuxen also is the author of one of the best books on Theravada, based upon first-hand knowledge of Buddhism in Thailand.9 Of Tucci's work on Buddhist philosophy one must mention above all his Pre-Dinnaga Buddhist texts on logic from Chinese sources (Baroda, 1929), his translation of Dinnaga's Nyayamukha and his articles on the Vadavidhi, Dinnaga, Buddhist logic before Dinnaga, etc.99 Many other articles and books on Indian Buddhism were published by Tucci before 1942.100 In the same period Erich Frauwallner published a series of important articles on Dignaga, Dharmakirti and Dharmottara which greatly increased the understanding of the role played by these thinkers in the development of Indian philosophy, 101
We mentioned before the fascination which Asvaghosa had exercised on Sylvain Lévi. E. H. Johnston (1885-1942) studied his work for many years and published exemplary editions and translations of his Saundarananda (Calcutta, 1928-1932) and his Buddhacarita (Calcutta, 1936; Acta Orientalia, 15, 1937, pp. 26-62, 85-III, 231-292). The edition and translation of the Tibetan version of the Buddhacarita by Friedrich Weller (Leipzig, 1926–1928) rendered great service to Johnston. Weller (1889- ) extensively studied Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Sogdian.102 An important Mahāyānasūtra, the Suvarnabhāsottamasutra, was edited with
*the teachings of Nagarjuna negativism? FOR Madras, XI, 1937, pp. 231-242. On Tuxen see Kaj Barr, Poul Tuxen, Oversigt over Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Virksombed 1955-1956, pp. 1-32.
97 Precanonical Buddhism, 40, 7, 1935, pp. 121-132; New Contributions to the Problem of Pre-hinayanistic Buddhism, Polish Bulletin of Oriental Studies, 1, 1937, pp. 8-17. See also Constantin Regamey, Le problème du bouddhisme primitif et les derniers travaux de Stanislaw Schayer, RO, XXI, 1957, pp. 37-58.
98
Buddha. Hans Laere, dens Overlevering og dens Liv i Nutiden. København, 1928.
99 The Vādavidhi, IHQ,4, 1928, pp. 630-636; Buddhist logic before Dinnaga, JRAS, 1929, pp. 451-488, 870-871; Is the Nyayapraveśa by Dinnaga, FRAS, 1928, pp. 7-13; Bhamaha and Dinnaga, IA, 59, 1930, pp. 142-147; Notes on the Nyayapraveśa by Sankarasvamin, FRAS, 1931, pp. 381-413.
100 Cf. Giuseppe Tucci, Opera minora, I, Roma, 1971, pp. xi-xviii.
101 Cf. Verzeichnis der Schriften Erich Frauwallners, WZKSO, XII-XIII, 1968, pp.9-10. 102 Cf. Asiatica. Festschrift Friedrich Weller, Leipzig, 1954, pp. xi-xiii.
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great care by Johannes Nobel (1887–1960) in 1937 (for critical remarks see Edgerton, JAOS, 77, pp. 185-187).
We mentioned the work done by Fausbøll and the Pali Text Society for Pāli studies. Denmark has continued to be an important centre for Pāli studies. The most important undertaking in the field is the Critical Pāli Dictionary by Dines Andersen (1861-1940)103 and Helmer Smith (1882-1956),104 who made use of the lexicographical materials collected by Trenckner. The first volume of the dictionary, comprising the letter a, was published from 1924 to 1948. In this connection one must mention the lexicographical materials collected by Wilhelm Geiger (1856–1943), which remained unpublished as were the materials collected before him by Burnouf and Spiegel. However, Geiger's materials have been put at the disposal of the editors of the CPD and have been included in fasc. 2 and following of volume 2. Geiger's name will also always be connected with the two Pāli chronicles Dīpavamsa and Mahāvamsa to which he devoted many years of careful study. To Geiger is also due the best Pāli grammar (Pāli, Literatur und Sprache), which appeared in 1916. Finally, one must mention his very fine translation of the first two volumes of the Samyuttanikāya (München-Neubiberg, 1930-1925). Together with Magdalene Geiger he wrote a detailed study of the meaning of the word dhamma in Pāli literature (Pāli Dhamma vornehmlich in der kanonischen Literatur, München, 1921; W. Geiger, Dhamma und Brahman, Z. f. Buddhismus, III, 1921, pp. 73-83).105
Tibetan studies relating to Buddhism can only be mentioned briefly. W.W. Rockhill (1854-1914) made important material accessible to the scholarly world by his translations from the Tibetan of the Udānavarga (London, 1883), The Life of the Buddha, based on the Tibetan translation of the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya (London, 1884) and the Bhiksuni-prātimokșa-sūtra from the same Vinaya (Paris, 1886).106 Georg Huth (1867–1906) edited and translated the Hor-chos
103 On Andersen see CPD pp. xxxv-xxxviii. 104 On Helmer Smith see CPD, II, 1, 1960, pp. v-viji.
105 Cf. Bechert's article on Geiger, CPD, II, 2, 1962, pp. ix-xiv; for a complete bibliography of Geiger's writings see Wilhelm Geiger, Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden, 1973, pp. xi-xxxiii.
106 Cf. A. Cordier, Nécrologie William Woodville Rockhill, T'oung Pao, 16, 1915, pp. 160-164; B. Laufer, Nécrologie William Woodville Rockhill, ibid., pp. 289–290.
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byun (Strassburg, 1892–1896). 107 Palmyr Cordier (1871-1914) published a very accurate catalogue of the Tibetan Tanjur (Catalogue du fonds tibétain de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1909–1915).108 Berthold Laufer (1874–1935) published many articles, based on Tibetan materials.109 Giuseppe Tucci undertook several expeditions to Tibet and brought back many precious materials on Tibetan Buddhist literature and art.110 The important work of Andrej Vostrikov (1904–1937) on Tibetan historical literature was published twenty-five years after his death: Tibetskaja istoričeskaja literatura, Moskva, 1962 (Bibliotheca Buddhica, vol. XXXII.
Sinologists continued to study the travels of Chinese pilgrims to India. Thomas Watters (1840–1901) prepared extensive notes on Hsüan-tsang's Hsi-yü-chi which were published posthumously: On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, London, 1904–1905 (cf. Pelliot's review BEFEO, V, 1905, pp. 423-457). Noël Peri (1865-1922) wrote some important articles of which we mention only two: one on the date of Vasubandhu and one on the wives of Sākyamuni.111 Two of the greatest Sinologists, Édouard Chavannes (1865-1918) and Paul Pelliot (1878–1945), have made notable contributions to Buddhist studies. Chavannes translated I-tsing's work on the pilgrims to the Western countries (Mémoire composé à l'époque de la grande dynastie T'ang sur les religieux éminents qui allèrent chercher la loi dans les pays d'Occident par I-tsing, Paris, 1894) and many Buddhist stories (Cinq cents contes et apologues, I-III, Paris, 1910–1911; IV, 1935). Together with Sylvain Lévi he wrote articles on some enigmatic titles in the Buddhist ecclesiastic hierarchy and on the sixteen Arhats. 112 Pelliot's contribu
107 Cf. B. Laufer, Nécrologie Dr. Georg Huth, Toung Pao, 7, 1906, pp. 702-706. 108 Cf. Ed. Chavannes, Le Dr. Palmyr Cordier, Toung Pao, 15, 1914, pp. SSI-553.
109. Cf. H. G. Creel, Obituary Berthold Laufer: 1874-1934, Monumenta Serica I, 1935, pp. 487–496; Johannes Schubert, Berthold Laufer, Artibus Asiae, IV, 1935, pp. 265-270; V, 1935, p. 83; VI, 1936, p. 169.
110 Cf. Note 100.
111 A propos de la date de Vasubandhu, BEFEO, XI, 1911, pp. 339-390; Les femmes du Çākyamuni, ibid., XVIII, ii, pp. 1-37. See further Ed. Maitre's obituary, BEFEO, XXII, 1922, pp. 404-417.
112 Quelques titres énigmatiques dans la hiérarchie ecclésiastique du Bouddhisme indien, JA, 1915, I, pp. 193-223; II, pp. 307–310; Les seize Arhats protecteurs de la Loi, JA, 1916, II, pp. 5-50, 189-305. See further Henri Cordier, Édouard Chavannes, JA, 1918, I, pp. 226, 227, 228, 246.
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tion to Buddhist studies up to 1928 has been analysed in the Bibliographie bouddhique IV-V (Paris, 1934), pp. 3–19. His most important publications since 1928 have been mentioned by Paul Demiéville in “La carrière scientifique de Paul Pelliot, son æuvre relative à l'Extrême-Orient” in Paul Pelliot (Paris, 1946), pp. 29-54. Paul Demiéville (1894- ) has continued the tradition. His article on the Chinese versions of the Milindapañha (BEFEO, XXIV, 1924, pp. 1-258) is the definitive work on the subject. As editor-in-chief of the Hôbôgirin (fasc. I, 1929; fasc. 2, 1930; fasc. 3, 1937), Demiéville has contributed some very long and important articles (see for instance the article on Byo 'Illness', pp. 224-270). The recently published Choix d'études bouddhiques (Leiden, 1973) contains some of his contributions to Buddhist studies.
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A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America
J. W. DE JONG Chapter III
The recent period (1943-1973)
Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary. The objections raised by critics and especially by Helmer Smith (p. 50)-Brough's edition of the Gandhari Dharmapada (p. 57)-Editions of Sanskrit texts from Central Asia (p. 58)-Bareau's work on early Buddhism (p. 62)-Pāli studies (p. 63) -Lin Li-kouang's work on the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthanasūtra and the Dharmasamuccaya. Abhidharma (p. 64)-Mahāyāna studies. Conze, Lamotte, Nobel and Weller (p. 64)-Matṛceta (p. 66)-Mahāyāna philosophy (p. 66) Buddhist epistemology (p. 68)-Tantrism (p. 69)-Lamotte's Histoire du bouddhisme indien (p. 69)-Tibetan Buddhism (p. 69)-Chinese Buddhism (p. 70)
By 1943 some of the greatest scholars of the preceding period had passed away: to mention only a few: Sylvain Lévi, Louis de La Vallée Poussin and Stcherbatsky. Lüders died in 1943 but his Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons appeared posthumously and in an incomplete form only in 1954. Several scholars who had already published important work before 1943 continued their activity after that date, for instance Friedrich Weller and Ernst Waldschmidt in Germany, Étienne Lamotte in Belgium, Erich Frauwallner in Austria and Giuseppe Tucci in Italy. With the death of Stcherbatsky Buddhist studies declined in Russia and only in recent years does one observe an increasing interest in Buddhism, especially in the field of Central
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Asian archaeology. In other countries, however, many scholars either specialized in Buddhism or devoted much of their research to Buddhism. Although the total number of specialists in this field in the West is considerably smaller than in Japan, the future of Buddhist studies looks much brighter now than it did in the first post-war years.
One of the most important contributions to Buddhist studies in recent years is undoubtedly Franklin Edgerton's monumental Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary (New Haven 1953). Franklin Edgerton (1885-1963) embarked upon this immense task in the nineteen-thirties and a number of articles preceded the publication of his grammar and dietfonary. However, only after the publication of his work did Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit become the subject of a lively discussion. Yuyama lists nineteen reviews of Edgerton's work and several articles (by Bailey, Brough, Iwamoto, Nobel, Raghavan, Regamey and Smith) which are inspired by it." Edgerton defended his views in several articles and reviews and also continued his work on BHS(=Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit in everal publications. In his Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader (New Haven, 1953) he applied his principles in the editing of several BHS
1 Cf. Heinz Bechert, Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ländern des TheravādaBuddhismus, I, Frankfurt am Main-Berlin, 1966, p. 138; A. N. Kotschetow, Die buddhistische Forschung in der UdSSR, Buddhist Tearly 1967 (Halle, 1967), pp. 86-118; N.L. Zukovskaja, Sovetskaja buddologija (bibliografičeskij obzor za 1959-1969 gody), Narody Azii i Afriki, 1970 (6), pp. 148-156.
2 The Prakrit underlying Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, BSOS, 8, 1936, pp. 501-516; Nouns of the a-declension in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, HJAS, I, 1936, pp. 65-83; The meter of the Saddharmapundarika, Kuppuswami Sastri Commemoration Volume, Madras, 1936, pp. 39-45; Gerunds in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Language, 13, 1937, pp. 107-122; The aorist in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, JAOS, 57, 1937, pp. 16-34; Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit samdbā, samdhi-(nirmocana), JAOS, 57, 1937, pp. 185-188; Meter, phonology, and orthography in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, JAOS, 66, 1946, pp. 197-206; Indic Causatives in -āpayati (-āpeti, -āvai), Language, 22, 1946, pp. 94-102.
3 Akira Yuyama, A Bibliography of the Sanskrit Texts of the Saddharmapundarikasūtra, Canberra, 1970, pp. 80-81.
4 Reviews of Waldschmidt's Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, Mahāvadānasūtra and Catusparisatsūtra, JAOS, 72, 1952, pp. 114-117; 77, 1957, pp. 227-232; Language, 39, 1963, pp. 489-493; of Ensink's The questions of Rāstrapāla, JAOS, 73, 1953, pp. 169-170; Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit language and literature, Banaras, 1954; Semantic notes on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Sprachgeschichte und Wortbedeutung (Festschrift Albert Debrunner), Bern, 1954, pp.*
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texts. For the editing of BHS verse Edgerton's views on the metre and phonology of the gāthās are of fundamental importance. They were first attacked by Helmer Smith in Les deux prosodies du vers bouddhique (Lund, 1950), in which he severely criticised Edgerton's article in JAOS, 66 (pp. 197-206). After the publication of Edgerton's Grammar and Dictionary, Smith discussed Edgerton's views in his Analecta rhytmica (Helsinki, 1954) and in his “En marge du vocabulaire sanskrit des bouddhistes” (Orientalia suecana, 2, 1953, pp. 119–128; 3, 1954, pp. 31–35; 4, 1955, pp. 109–113). Edgerton's metrical theories were also discussed briefly by Waldschmidt (Das Mahāvadānasūtra, II, Berlin, 1960, pp. 59-62), by Heinz Bechert(Bruchstücke buddhistischer Versammlungen, I, Berlin, 1961, p. 26; Über die "Marburger Fragmente des Saddharmapundarīka, Göttingen, 1972, p. 70), and by Franz Bernhard (Udānavarga, Göttingen, 1965, pp. 1620). Finally, in this connection, mention must be made of Lamotte's pages on BHS in which he draws attention to the history of epigraphic mixed Sanskrit (Histoire du bouddhisme indien, I, Louvain, 1958, pp. 634-645).
Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit was first known as Gāthā dialect because it was characteristic for the language of the verses of Mahāyāna sūtras. Wackernagel (Altindische Grammatik, I, Göttingen, 1896) enumerates the publications which appeared up to 1896 (pp. xxxix-xl). Bibliographical information on the publications which appeared since 1896 is given in Renou's translation of Wackernagel's text (Altindische Grammatik, Introduction générale, Göttingen, 1957, pp. 81-85). Senart's edition of the Mahāvastu made it clear that the Gāthā dialect was not limited to verses. Moreover, it was found to have been used in inscriptions and in non-religious works such as the Bakshāli manuscript, a mathematical text (edited by G. R. Kaye: The Bakshāli Manuscript, Calcutta, 1927) and in the Bower manuscript, a medical text discovered in 1890 near Kucha (edited by A. F. R. Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript, Calcutta, 1893– 1912). In 1886 Senart proposed therefore the name “mixed Sanskrit” (Les
*129-134; The nature of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, J. Ganganatha Jha Research Institute, 11/12.2, 1955, pp. 1-10; On editing Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, JAOS, 77, 1957, pp. 184192; The Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guna-samcaya-gāthā, IIJ, 5, 1961, pp. 1-18.
5 For a complete bibliography of Edgerton's publications see Language, 40, 1964, pp. 116–123.
For Smith's other publications on Pāli and Middle Indic metrics see Critical Pāli Dictionary, vol. II, fasc. I, Copenhagen, 1960, p. viii.
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inscriptions de Piyadasi, II, Paris, 1886, p. 470). Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit refers only to Buddhist texts and does not include secular texts and inscriptions. The publication of Edgerton's work makes it possible to study the linguistic history of India on a much more comprehensive basis than in 1886 when Senart tried to unravel the relations between Sanskrit, mixed Sanskrit and Prakrit (op. cit., pp. 447–538). Edgerton's work is in the first place descriptive. He divides the BHS in three classes according to the degree of hybridization of the language. The first class contains texts of which both the prose parts and the verses are entirely in BHS. This class consists mainly of the Mahāvastu. One must add now the parts of the Virtaya of the Mahāsāmghika edited by Gustav Roth and Jinananda.? The second class comprises texts of which the verses are in BHS but the prose parts contain few signs of Middle Indic phonology and morphology. However, the vocabulary is largely BHS. The third class consists of texts of which both prose and verse are Sanskritized. Only the vocabulary shows that they belong to the BHS tradition. According to Edgerton BHS tradition goes back to an early Buddhist canon, or quasi-canon, which was composed in a Middle Indic vernacular that very probably already contained dialect mixture. In his view the Prakrit underlying BHS was not an eastern dialect as had been assumed by Heinrich Lüders, who maintained that at least parts of the works of the Pāli and Sanskrit canon were translated from Old-Ardhamāgadhi. Edgerton did not have at his disposal Lüders's Beobachtungen and referred to Lüders's view that the original dialect of the Saddharmapundarika was Māgadhi, solely on the ground of voc. pl. forms in -ābo. The Beobachtungen contain more evidence in support of Lüders's theory but it is certainly true that the characteristics of BHS cannot be explained exhaustively by an Old-Ardhamāgadhi canon. It is of course possible that some texts were transmitted in Old-Ardhamāgadhī but that later additions to the canon were composed in a mixture of dialects with the consequence that the older parts of the canon also were transposed into the same language. This mixture of dialects was subjected to a process of Sanskritization when BHS texts were written. Brough, Renou' and Regameyło agree on this point
7 G. Roth, Bhiksūni-vinaya. Patna, 1970; B. Jinananda, Abbisamācārikā. Patna, 1969. 8 The Language of the Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, BSOAS, 16, 1954, pp. 351-375. 9 Histoire de la langue sanskrite, Paris, 1956, p. 209. 10 Randbemerkungen zur Sprache und Textüberlieferung des Kārandavyūha, Asiatica.*
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with Edgerton, but they are not willing to accept that the prose of the works of the second class and the works belonging to the third class belong to the BHS tradition. According to them these texts were written in a Buddhist Sanskrit which contains some elements of BHS. Edgerton has rejected this opinion: "It seems to me that hybrid forms in the prose of the second class are just what hybrid forms in the verses of the same texts are: relics of genuine BHS forms which must have been much more numerous. Similarly texts of the third class. And I hold that all the works I have classified as BHS (excepting perhaps the Jātakamālā), and some others, do constitute, on the whole, a unified tradition” (JAOS, 77, 1957, pp. 189–190). In his grammar (1.40–44) Edgerton pointed out that in the case of texts such as the Saddharmapundarīka, Vajracchedikā and the Udānavarga the Central Asian manuscripts show a more Middle Indic appearance than the Nepalese manuscripts. According to Regamey (Asiatica, p. 523) these texts have not been submitted to a conscious Sanskritization but copyists have corrected the texts. However, if one compares' for instance Chakravarti's edition of the Udānavarga with the later recensions, one observes not a mechanic Sanskritization but the transposition of words, the substitution of pādas by newly created pādas, etc. This is certainly due to a.deliberate attempt to re-write these verses in Sanskrit. It seems to me that it is not possible to make a unilateral decision. Some texts, written in Buddhist Sanskrit with a few BHS elements, may have directly been composed in this language but others may well be the end product of a long process of Sanskritization. It will probably be possible to arrive at a greater degree of certainty only when the available Central Asian and Gilgit manuscripts have been properly edited and accompanied by photographic facsimiles.
Another objection which has been raised against Edgerton is his use of Nepalese 'manuscripts. Edgerton has not himself studied any manuscripts of Buddhist texts. Scholars such as Brough, Regamey, Nobel and Waldschmidt have a long experience of studying manuscripts and are more keenly aware of the possibility of scribal errors than Edgerton. It is of course often difficult to distinguish between a genuine BHS form and a scribal error. It is perhaps methodically advisable to consider in the first place the possibility that an aberrant (from classical Sanskrit) form is a BHS form and not a scribal error.
* Festschrift Friedrich Weller, Leipzig, 1954, pp. 514-527.
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However, in his reaction to the practice of editors who have Sanskritized their texts Edgerton has sinned in the opposite direction. Edgerton admits the genuineness of 3rd plural, optative and aorist forms in -itsuC”) and -etsu(b) because they occur very often in the manuscripts of the Mahāvastu. Brough and Regamey are undoubtedly right in rejecting the evidence of the recent Nepalese manuscripts in this case. There is no doubt that Edgerton's Grammar contains many forms for which the manuscript evidence is slight and doubtful. It will be necessary to verify in each case whether the manuscript readings can be accepted as such or whether a different reading must be assumed. Let me quote one example which has been discussed by Břough. In the Lalitavistara one finds anyatra karma sukrtāt (37:7). In 8.9 Edgerton explains karma as an abl. of an a-stem resulting from a shortening of -ä(t) metri causa. In 17.13 he proposed an alternative explanation as a stem-form. Brough prefers this explanation. However, if one takes into account the context: na ca samskste sahāyā na mitrajñātijano ca parivārāḥ/anyatra karma sukstād anubandhati prşthato yāti, it is obvious that anyatra is here not a preposition but an adverb meaning "on the contrary, only" (cf. Edgerton's Dictionary s.v. anyatra). The original reading must have been anyatra karma sukrtam. A misunderstanding of the meaning of anyatra has led to the transformation of sukrtam into sukstād. Edgerton has pointed out that a syllable ending on an anusvāra before a vowel is used metri causa in order to obtain a long syllable. In his critical examination of Edgerton's view Helmer Smith prefers to speak of metrical doublets: for instance -am, -ām or -amm before a vowel instead of -am. Edgerton's assumption of lengthening and shortening of vowels because it is required by the metre has been rejected by Nobel with reference to Smith's article. Edgerton has replied (JAOS, 77, p. 187) by stating that “Smith thought that such changes should be recognized only when there was some historic, phonological or morphological “justification” for them.” I believe this does not reproduce Smith's opinion quite adequately. In Les deux prosodies du vers bouddhique Smith admits lengthening of a short vowel at the end of a pāda, of an initial vowel preceded by a prefix (an-ābhibhūto) and shortening of -e to -i, -ā to -a, -am to-U, -o to -u. The principal point of difference between Edgerton and Smith is that, according to Smith, Middle Indic orthography admits a short vowel before a caesura where metrically a long vowel was pronounced, for instance the fifth syllable of a trişțubh-jagatī, and also in other places where the metre
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requires a long vowel, for instance the second syllable of a trişțubh-jagati, the third syllable of the first and third pāda of a śloka. In these places manuscripts often write -o for -a. Smith maintains that one pronounced a long a and not an o. The writing of an -o is a pedantic orthography. Smith, who has a profound knowledge of Pāli metres, also tried to show that there is a greater variety of metrical schemes in Middle Indic metres than in the metres of classical Sanskrit. Therefore Smith does not limit himself to stating that lengthening or shortening of vowels must be justified on historic, phonological or morphological grounds but he maintains that also metrical and rhythmical considerations have to be taken into account. Smith has made an important contribution to the study of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit metrics in his articles. It is a pity that he has not written in a more accessible form, but one has to seriously take into account his objections against Edgerton. However, one should not magnify the differences between the views of Edgerton and Smith. Much of what has been said by Edgerton is correct but his short article contains statements which are too comprehensive and which must be qualified by a series of restrictions. Edgerton's metrical theories have a great bearing on the editing of BHS texts. As Smith points out, it would be a falsification to try and reconstruct artificially a metrically correct text by transforming Sanskrit forms into hybrid forms. However, Smith does not indicate how an editor has to proceed when his manuscripts are partly written in a Middle Indic orthography and partly in a metrically correct but pedantic orthography. This does not happen only in Nepalese manuscripts but already in older manuscripts from Central Asia and Gilgit. In these circumstances, and considering the fact that in most cases there is only one Central Asian or Gilgit manuscript, it will certainly be more advisable to be conservative, i.e. to keep the manuscript readings and to correct only those which are scribal errors. In the second place it will be necessary to separate manuscripts which belong to different streams of tradition. An edition such as Kern's edition of the Saddharmapundarika which combines readings from Nepalese manuscripts with readings from the Central Asian Petrovsky fragments is neither flesh nor fish. The Saddharmapundarīka is a typical example of the problems connected with the editing of manuscripts of different origin: Nepalese manuscripts and fragments from Gilgit and Central Asia. One ought to edit the fragments separately before trying to reconstruct the history of the text. Once all the fragments from
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Gilgit and Central Asia have been properly edited, it will be possible to see how they relate to the text as transmitted in Nepal. Until now only some fragments from Gilgit and Central Asia have been edited. The Nepalese manuscripts were not properly edited by Nanjio and Kern, as Baruch pointed out in his Beiträge zum Saddharmapundarīkasūtra (Leiden, 1938). Only when a substantial part of the Central Asian and Gilgit fragments of Buddhist texts has been edited will it be possible to study in far greater detail both the metrics and the grammar of BHS. For Edgerton's work the Mahāvastu is of fundamental importance. The presence of an old manuscript in Nepal and the publication of parts of the Mahāsāmghika Vinaya will make it possible to re-edit the Mahāvastu and to re-examine the characteristic features of its language and metrics. Roth's edition of the Bhikṣuṇī-vinaya will be of great help but Jinananda's edition of the Abhisamācārikā cannot be used because the editor has failed to reproduce the manuscript readings correctly (see my review of Jinananda's edition in IIJ, XVI, 1974, pp. 150-152). It will also be one of the tasks of the future to study again the problem of the Prakrit underlying BHS. Dschi Hiän-lin has defended the view that the original Buddhist canon was written in Old-Ardhamāgadhi and that texts, which show the substitution of -u for -am, have been submitted to the influence of the dialect of northwestern India (Bailey's Gāndhārī).11 Both Edgerton and Bechert (Über die "Marburger Fragmente” des Saddharmapundarika, pp. 78–79) have shown clearly the unacceptability of Dschi's theory. Edgerton believes that BHS is based upon a Middle Indic vernacular which very probably already contained a dialect mixture. He finds no reason to question the essential dialectic unity of the BHS Prakrit. Bechert (op. cit. p. 76) has pointed out that the Mahāvastu and the Bhikṣuṇī-vinaya of the Mahāsāmghika belong to a different linguistic and stylistic tradition than other BHS texts such as the Saddharmapundarīka. Undoubtedly, future research will be able to make finer linguistic and stylistic distinctions between the texts which have been named BHS by Edgerton. Brough has already made a division in nine groups which takes into account linguistic and stylistic features. However, for two reasons it will probably
11 Die Verwendung des Aorists als Kriterium für Alter und Ursprung buddhistischer Texte, NGGW, 1949, pp. 245-301; Die Umwandlung der Endung -am in -o und -u im Mittelindischen, NGGW, 1944, pp. 121-144.
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never be possible to fully explain the Middle Indic background of the different classes of BHS and Buddhist Sanskrit texts. In the first place the Middle Indic material at our disposal such as the Aśokan inscriptions and later inscriptions are not sufficient. Texts in Middle Indic languages were written down several centuries after Aśoka and do not allow conclusions as to their characteristic features in earlier periods. In the second place, BHS texts were submitted to a great deal of Sanskritization before they were written down; it is not possible to prove that they were originally composed orally in Middle Indic without any admixture of Sanskrit influence. Even in the case of Pali, where the problems of text editing are far less than in BHS texts, it has not been possible to determine exactly which Middle Indic dialect or dialects contributed to its formation. Both for historical and linguistic reasons western India was probably the home of Pāli, but the well-known Magadhisms in Pāli show that Pali is not based exclusively on western dialect(s). Pāli probably found its final form in western India only after having undergone the influence of Middle Indic dialects in other parts of India.
If much more work still has to be done on BHS, the same cannot be said with regard to the only extant Buddhist text in Prakrit, the Gāndhari Dharmapada as it has been called by John Brough (London, 1962). His edition contains all fragments. Previous scholars: Senart, Lüders, Franke, Bloch, Konow and Bailey had been able to study only the parts published in 1897 and 1898. The language of the text had been called Northwestern Prakrit. Gāndhārī, the name Bailey proposed, was adopted by Brough. In 1946 Bailey showed that this language has been of great importance for the history of Buddhism in Central Asia.12 Many Indian words in Khotanese, Agnean, Kuchean and other languages of Central Asia are based on Gāndhārī forms. The same language is used in the Kharoṣṭhi versions of the Aśoka inscriptions in Shahbazgari and Mansehra, later Kharosthi inscriptions,13 and in the Niya documents which were edited by A. M. Boyer, E. Senart and P. S. Noble (Oxford, 1920, 1927, 1929). This language has as typical features the preservation of all three Indian sibilants, and the preservation of certain consonant groups (tr, br)
12 Gāndhārī, BSO AS, 11, 1946, pp. 764-797.
13 Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, volume II, part 1: Kharoṣṭhi Inscriptions, with the exception of those of Aśoka. Ed. Sten Konow, Calcutta, 1929.
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which have been assimilated in other Prakrits. Chinese transcriptions of Indian words in the translation of the Dírghāgama of the Dharmaguptakas are based upon a Prakrit dialect which, according to Bailey and Brough, must have been the Gāndhāri language. Undoubtedly, other Chinese translations must have been made from texts written in Gāndhārī. Only a careful study of Chinese translations will make it possible to discover which translations are based upon a Gāndhāri original. It is not possible to determine to which school the Gāndhārī Dharmapada belonged. The Sarvāstivāda school is the one most frequently mentioned in the Kharoşthi inscriptions of northwestern India. From the publications of Central Asian manuscripts by Waldschmidt and other German scholars it is obvious that the same school was once prevalent in Central Asia. However, Brough shows that the Gāndhāri Dharmapada is different from the Sarvāstivāda tradition as preserved in the Udānavarga. Brough mentions as possibilities the Dharmaguptakas and the Kāśyapīyas which are both mentioned also in northwestern inscriptions. He carefully compares the Gāndhārī versions of the Dharmapada stanzas with those of other versions in the extensive commentary (pp. 177–282) which follows his edition of the text. This commentary is of fundamental importance for the study of many linguistic and grammatical problems in the Sanskrit, Pāli and Gāndhāri versions of the Dharmapada. Brough's work can be called without hesitation the definitive work on the subject. Further research and the discovery of new materials are not likely to cause any substantial changes in the main body of this work. K. R. Norman, an excellent specialist in Middle Indic, who has made a thorough study of Brough's work, has recently shown that only very few revisions can be suggested.14
In the last thirty years great progress has been made with the publication of the Sanskrit manuscripts that were brought back by the German Turfan expeditions. Most of the Hīnayāna fragments belong to the Sarvāstivāda school. This has been proved by comparison with Chinese translations for fragments of the Vinaya and also for an Abhidharma text, the Samgitiparyāya, fragments of which were published by Stache-Rosen.15 Fragments of the same
14 Notes on the Gāndhāri Dharmapada, Indian Linguistics, 32, 1971, pp. 213-220.
15 Valentina Stache-Rosen, Dogmatische Begriffsreihen im ältern Buddhismus, II. Das Sangitisūtra und sein Kommentar Sangitiparyāya. Berlin, 1968.
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text were found by Hackin in Bamiyan in 1930.16 A manuscript, brought back from Kucha by Pelliot, has been identified by Demiéville as a fragment of the Abhidharmajñānaprasthānaśāstra.?? It is more difficult to identify sutra texts as belonging to the Sarvāstivāda school because there is no complete Chinese translation of the Sūtrapitaka of the different schools. It is moreover not always easy to determine to which school one should assign the texts which are extant in Chinese translation.18 Popular in Central Asia was a group of six texts: Dasottarasūtra, Sangitisūtra, Catusparisatsūtra, Mahāvadānasūtra, Mahāparinirvānasūtra. The sixth text was probably the Ekottarasūtra. Ernst Waldschmidt has analysed the Mahāparinirvānasūtra and parallel texts in Die Überlieferung vom Lebensende des Buddha (Göttingen, 1944-1948) and has edited the Sanskrit text together with parallel passages in Pāli, Tibe Chinese (Das Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, Berlin, 1950–1951). Waldschmidt has in the same way analysed and edited the Mahāvadānasūtra which deals with the seven Buddhas who preceded Gautama and, in particular, with Vipaśyin (Das Mahāvadānasūtra, Berlin, 1953-1956). The third great text analysed and edited by Waldschmidt is the Catusparişatsūtra which relates an important episode in the life of the Buddha, beginning with the invitation of the Brahmakāyikā gods to preach the doctrine and ending with the conversion of King Bimbisāra and Upatisya and Kolita.19 Waldschmidt was able also to use a manuscript from Gilgit which had been identified by Giuseppe Tucci as part of the Samghabhedavastu of the Vinaya of the Mūlasarvāstivādin. The comparison of the manuscripts from Central Asia with the Gilgit manuscript is important for the linguistic history of the text but also for the study of the relations between the Sarvāstivādin and the Mūlasarvāstivādin. If the Catusparişatsūtra is a Sarvāstivāda text, the Mūlasarvāstivādin must have incorporated great parts of it in their Vinaya, of which a considerable part has
16 Sylvain Lévi, Sur des manuscrits sanscrits provenant de Bamiyan (Afghanistan), et de Gilgit (Cachemire), JA, 1932, 1, pp. 2 et 9-13.
17 Un fragment sanskrit de l'Abhidharma des Sarvāstivādin, 7A, 1961. pp. 461-475. 18 Cf. J.W. de Jong, Les Sūtrapitaka des Sarvāstivādin et des Mūlasarvāstivādin, Mélanges d'indianisme à la Mémoire de Louis Renou, Paris, 1968, pp. 395-402.
19 Vergleichende Analyse des Catusparişatsūtra, Festschrift Schubring, Hamburg 1951, pp. 84-122; Das Catusparisatsūtra, Berlin, 1952, 1957, 1962.
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been found in Gilgit.20 Waldschmidt's editions are exemplary. His careful editions of the fragments leave no doubt about the manuscript readings, which, moreover, can be checked with the help of photomechanic reproductions of the manuscripts.21
By analysing parallel texts and publishing the Sanskrit fragments together with parallel passages, Waldschmidt has made available all the relevant material. It is a pity that, as has been observed by Nobel,22 Dutt's edition of the Gilgit manuscripts is very unsatisfactory. Waldschmidt's editions have been criticised in one respect only. According to Edgerton Waldschmidt has Sanskritized many readings.23 There is no doubt that the texts edited by Waldschmidt contain BHS elements. However, it is by no means sure that this has to be explained by the fact that these texts were originally composed in BHS. From a historical point of view one would expect texts such as the Mahāparinirvāņasūtra to belong to the older stratum of the Buddhist canon. However, it is possible that the Sarvāstivādin began writing down their canonical texts at a much later period when the use of Sanskrit had already greatly replaced the use of Prakrit and BHS. Some Sarvāstivāda texts were originally written in BHS. This is shown by the existence of an old manuscript of the Udānavarga, found near Kucha by Pelliot, which was partly edited by Chakravarti.24 It seems possible that a small number of texts of the Sarvāstivāda school were written in BHS but that later texts were written in Buddhist Sanskrit with an admixture of BHS elements. An edition of the Udānavarga which Lüders had prepared was destroyed in the war. Franz Bernhard (19311971) whose untimely death is a great loss for Buddhist studies, has edited the text of the Udānavarga with the help of a great number of manuscripts and
20 Gilgit Manuscripts, vol. III, part 1, Srinagar, 1947; part 2, 1942; part 3, 1943; part 4, Calcutta, 1950. All edited by Nalinaksha Dutt.
21 Faksimile-Wiedergaben von Sanskrit-Handschriften aus den Berliner Turfanfunden. I, The Hague, 1963; Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden. I, Wiesbaden, 1965; II, 1968; III, 1971.
22 Udrāyana, König von Roruka. II, Wiesbaden, 1955, p. v, note 1.
23 Cf. note 4; see also Brough, The Language of the Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, BSO AS, 16, 1954, pp. 364-365.
24 N.P. Chakravarti, L'Udānavarga sanskrit. Tome premier. Paris, 1930.
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fragments.25 The text edited by him represents the vulgata, which is much more Sanskritized than the text preserved in the manuscript mentioned above.
Many other Sanskrit fragments of the Turfan collection have been published in recent years. I mention only the edition of the Daśottarasūtra by Mittal and Schlingloff, Tripāțhi's edition of the Nidānasamyukta, Härtel's edition of the Karmavācanā, Valentina Rosen's edition of fragments of the Vinayavibhanga of the Sarvāstivādin and of the Sangītisūtra, Schlingloff's edition of stotras, metrical texts and a Yoga textbook, and Weller's edition of fragments of the Buddhacarita, the Saundarananda and the Jātakamālā.26 Waldschmidt has also edited a large number of fragments in a series of articles, many of which have been reprinted in a collection of his publications, 27 and in the Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden of which three volumes have been published with three or four still to follow.
Sanskrit fragments from the Pelliot collection in Paris have been edited by Bernard Pauly in a series of articles published in the Journal Asiatique.28 Pauly has also given a general description of the collection of Sanskrit fragments brought back by Pelliot.29 His article contains a list of the fragments that have been published prior to 1965 (pp. 116–119). These fragments also show the prevalence of the Sarvāstivādin in the region of Kucha.
We already mentioned the publication of parts of the Vinaya of the Mahāsāmghika. Roth's careful edition of the Bhikṣuni-vinaya is not only important for putting at our disposal the Indian original but also for opening up new perspectives for a renewed study of the Mahāvastu, a sixteenth century manuscript of which exists in Nepal. J. J. Jones's translation of the Mahāvastu is based upon Senart's edition and upon a comparison with parallel texts in the Pāli Tripitaka.30 Some parts of the Mahāvastu have been critically studied
25 Udānararga, I-II, Göttingen, 1965-1968. See also L. Schmithausen, Zu den Rezensionen des Udānavargah, W ZKS, 14, 1970, pp. 47-127.
26 Cf. E. Waldschmidt, Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden, I, Wiesbaden, 1965, pp. xxviii-xxxii; III, 1968, pp. 275-276.
27 Von Ceylon bis Turfan, Göttingen, 1967. 28 Cf. JA, 1965, pp. 116-119, pp. 183-187; 1966, pp. 245-304; 1967, pp. 231-241. 29 Fragments Sanskrits de Haute Asie (Mission Pelliot), JA, 1965, pp. 83-121.
30 The Mabāvastu (Sacred Books of the Buddhists, XVI, XVIII, XIX), London, 1949, 1952, 1956.
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by Alsdorf and T. R. Chopra.31 Ernst Leumann's translation of Mahāvastu, I, pp. 1-193.12 has been published in Japan.32 This was not available to Jones but he could have made use of Otto Franke's translation of Mahāvastu, I, pp. 4.15-45.16, which was published posthumously:33 In The Earliest Vinaya : and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature (Rome, 1956) Erich Frauwallner tried to establish that the Vinayas of the different schools derive from a work called Skandhaka, composed in the first half of the 4th century B.c. This theory has been accepted by several scholars but was rejected by Lamotte (Histoire du bouddhisme indien, 1, pp. 194–197).
Important work on the history of early Buddhism ħas been published by André Bareau (1921- ), who made a comprehensive study of the materials which have been transmitted on the Buddhist sects and on the councils.34 Bareau has written a large work on the biography of the Buddha which is based upon a critical examination of the information on the life of the Buddha contained in the Sūtrapitakas, the Vinayas of the Theravādin, the Mahāśāsaka
1 the Dharmaguptaka, and the Sanskrit Mahāparinirvānasūtra and parallel texts. 35 Bareau's work is an important contribution to the study of the "successive states of the legend of the Buddha," to use the title of a chapter of Lamotte's book in which he distinguishes five successive states in the development of the Buddha legend.36 A. Foucher's La vie du bouddha (Paris, 1949) is important not for a critical examination of the literary sources of the Buddha
31 L. Alsdorf, Verkannte Mahāvastu-Strophen, WZKSO, XII-XIII, 1968, pp. 13-22; T.R. Chopra, The Kuša-jātaka, Hamburg, 1966.
32 Proceedings of the Faculty of Liberal Arts Education, Yamanashi University, IIII, 1952, 1957, 1962. The translation of Mahāvastu II. 83.13-121.14 by Ernst Leumann and Watanabe Shōkō was published in Indo koten kenkyü (Acta Indologica), I, 1970, pp. 63-108.
33 Maudgalyāyanas Wanderung durch die leidvollen Welten, z.f.Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, 45, 1930, pp. 1-22; Zur Erinnerung an R. Otto Franke, Königsberger Beiträge. Festschrift zum 400-jähr. Jubelfest d. Staats- und Univ. - Bibliothek zu Königsberg/Pr. (Königsberg, 1929), pp. 115-124.
34 Les sectes bouddhiques du petit bébicule, Saïgon, 1955; Les premiers conciles bouddhiques, Paris, 1955.
35 Recherches sur la biographie du Buddha dans les Sūtrapitaka et les Vinayapitaka anciens, Paris, 1963, 1970, 1971.
36 Histoire du bouddhisme indien, I, Louvain, 1958, pp. 718-733.
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legend but for the use of archaeological materials he had studied for many decennia.
In recent years the study of the Pāli canon has continued. In 1960 the first fascicle of the second volume of the Critical Pāli Dictionary was published. The cooperation of scholars from several countries promises to assure a steady progress in the publication of this monumental dictionary. The seventh fascicle, published in 1971, brings the dictionary up to the word ugghāțima and we may expect the completion of volume two, containing the vowels a--o, in the near future. In 1952 the Pali Text Society published the first fascicle of a Pāli Tipitakam Concordance which, on completion, will render great services to Pāli and Buddhist studies. In the field of Pāli grammar special attention has been paid to syntax by Hans Hendriksen (1913– ), who wrote a Syntax of the infinitive verb-forms of Pāli (Copenhagen, 1944), and by Oskar von Hinüber (1939- ), who analysed the syntax of the cases in the Vinayapitaka.37 A grammar of Pāli according to structural principles was published in Russian by T. Ja. Elizarenkova and V. N. Toporov (Jazyk Pali, Moskva, 1965). The Pali Text Society continues to publish editions of texts and translations. Among the latter one must mention Miss I. B. Horner's translations of the entire Vinayapitaka and the Majjhima-nikāya which are distinguished by their precise terminology and judicious use of the commentaries.38 K. R. Norman made new translations of the Thera- and Therigāthā which, through a penetrating analysis of metrical, grammatical and philological problems, mark a great advance on Mrs. Rhys-Davids's translation.39 The necessity to revise older editions of Pāli texts by taking into account Oriental editions of Pāli texts and analysing metrical problems has been clearly brought out in several studies published by Alsdorf and W. B. Bollée.40
37 Studien zur Kasussyntax des Pāli, besonders des Vinaya-pitaka, München, 1968 (reviewed by J. W. de Jong, I1J, XV, 1973, pp. 64-66).
38 The Book of Discipline, London, 1938, 1940, 1942, 1951, 1952, 1966; The Middle Length Sayings, London, 1954, 1957, 1959.
39 The Elders' Verses I, London, 1969 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, IIF, XIII, 1972, pp. 297-301); The Elders' Verses II, London, 1971.
40 L. Alsdorf, Bemerkungen zum Vessantara-Jātaka, WZKSO, I, 1957, pp. 1-70; Die Ärya-Strophen des Pāli-Kanons, Wiesbaden, 1968; Das Jātaka vom weisen Vidura, WZKS, XV, 1971, pp. 23-56; W.B. Bollée, Kunālajātaka, London, 1970.
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One of the most important texts of later Hīnayāna is the Saddharmasmrtyupasthānasūtra. It was studied by Lin Li-kouang (1902–1945) in his: L'aidemémoire de la vraie loi (Paris, 1949). Lin also prepared an edition of the Sanskrit text of the verses which had been re-arranged in 36 chapters by Avalokitasimha as a compendium of the Buddhist doctrine: the Dharmasamuccaya. Lin prepared the first volume for publication which appeared after his death in 1946. Volume 2 (containing chapters VI-XII) was published in 1969 and the final volume in 1973. According to Lin's calculation the incomplete Sanskrit manuscript of the Dharmasamuccaya contains 2372 verses whereas the Chinese and Tibetan versions of the Saddharmasmộtyupasthānasūtra contain about 2900 verses. The verses are not very interesting in themselves, being nothing but dull variations on well-known themes, but they form a welcome addition to Buddhist literature in Sanskrit. The edition is based upon very bad copies, made by Nepalese scribes, and much effort will still be needed to solve textual problems. In the field of Abhidharma we must welcome the publication of the Sanskrit text of the Abhidharmakośabhāsya by P. Pradhan (Patna, 1967), although the critical apparatus is practically non-existent. Much more care has been given by P. S. Jaini to his edition of the work of an unknown Vaibhāșika critic of Vasubandhu's Sautrāntika leanings: the Abhidharmadīpa (Patna, 1959).
In the field of Mahāyāna studies much work has been done in recent years. Our knowledge of a rather neglected group of texts, the Prajñāpāramitā texts, has been greatly enlarged by the efforts of one scholar, Edward Conze (1904– ). Since the publication of his article on the Prajñāpāramitāhrdayasūtra in 1948 (FRAS, 1948, pp. 33-SI) he has published a great number of books and articles, most of them dealing with Prajñāpāramitā or the Abhisamayālamkāra. He published a comprehensive survey of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, editions and translations of the Abhisamayālamkāra, the Vajracchedikā, the Așțasāhasrikā, the Pañcavimśatisāhasrikā, the Astādaśasāhasrikā, and a dictionary of Prajñāpāramitā literature. 41 Conze also published extensively
41 The Prajñāpāramitā Literature, The Hague, 1960; Abhisamayālamkāra. Translation, Roma, 1954; Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā. Ed. & Tr., Roma, 1957; Aşțasābasrikā Prajñapāramitā. Tr., Calcutta, 1958 (New edition together with tr. of the Ratnagunasamcayagātha: The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines & its Verse Summary, Bolinas, 1973); Buddhist Wisdom Books. The Diamond Sutra. The Heart Sutra, London 1958; The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, London and Madison, 1961-4; The Gilgit Manuscript of the*
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on many other aspects of Buddhist studies, for instance: Buddhism. Its Essence & Developments, Oxford, 1951; Buddhist Thought in India, London, 1962; Thirty Tears of Buddhist Studies, Oxford, 1967. It is to be hoped that soon a complete bibliography of his writings will be published.
The greatest work ever undertaken by a Buddhist scholar in the West is undoubtedly Lamotte's translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitāšāstra or Prajñāpāramitopadeśa.42 The author of this work treats so many topics that it requires a scholar of great learning to do full justice to its richness. Nobody could have been more qualified than Lamotte. The notes, which take up much more space than the translation itself, constitute a treasure-house of learning in all things Buddhist unequalled in Western Buddhist studies. An extensive index becomes an ever more urgent desideratum with the publication of each new volume. The three volumes published so far bring the translation to the end of the 27th chüan. A further volume is required to complete the translation of the first parivarta (chüan 1-34), the most important part of the work. Let us hope that Lamotte will be able to publish a fourth volume and an index to the four volumes without being daunted by the immensity of his task.
Johannes Nobel continued his work on the Suvarņaprabhāsa, the Sanskrit text of which he had edited in 1937. In 1944 he published the Tibetan translation, in 1950 a Tibetan-German-Sanskrit dictionary, and in 1958 a translation of I-tsing's version and the Tibetan translation of that same version.43 Lamotte translated the Vimalakirtisūtra from the Tibetan and Hsüan-tsang's Chinese version, 44 and another important text, the Śūramgamasamādhisūtra.45
* Aştādaśasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramita. Ed. & Tr., Roma, 1962; Materials for a Dictionary of the Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Tokyo, 1967.
42 Le traité de la grande vertu de sagesse, I, Louvain, 1944; II, 1949 (reviewed by P. Demiéville, JA,.1950, pp. 375-395=Choix d'études bouddhiques, Leiden, 1973, pp. 470-490); III, 1970 (reviewed by J. W. de Jong, Asia Major, XVII, 1971, pp. 105-112).
43 Suvarnaprabbāsottamasūtra. Die tibetischen Ubersetzungen. I. Die tibetischen Übersetzungen, Leiden, 1944; II. Wörterbuch Tibetisch-Deutsch-Sanskrit, Leiden, 1950; Suvarnaprabbāsottamasūtra. I-tsing's chinesische Version und ihre tibetische Übersetzung, 2 Bände, Leiden, 1958 (cf. E. Conze, Thirty Tears of Buddhist Studies, Oxford, 1967, p. 18).
44 L'enseignement de Vimalakirti, Louvain, 1962 (reviewed by R.H. Robinson, IIJ, IX, 1966, pp. 150-159)
45 La concentration de la marche héroique, Bruxelles, 1965 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, OLZ, 65, 1970, cols. 72-83).
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Friedrich Weller, who in 1933 and 1935 published indices of the Tibetan translation and Indian text of the Kāśyapaparivarta, continued his work on this text with translations of the four Chinese versions and the Indian text and an edition of the Mongolian version.46 The Rāșțrapālapariprcchā has been translated by J. Ensink.47
A manuscript brought back by Rāhula Sankstyāyana and manuscript fragments from the Turfan collection in Berlin were used by D. R. Shackleton Bailey for his editions and translations of Mātrceta's stotras.48 Fragments of the Varņārhavarṇa were edited by Pauly and Schlingloff published photomechanic facsimiles of the fragments of Mātịceța's stotras in Berlin.49
In the last thirty years much work has been done in the field of Mahāyāna philosophy. Jacques May's excellent translation of chapters II-IV, VI-IX, XI, XXIII-XXIV, XXVI-XXVII of the Prasannapadā supplements the translation of the other chapters by Stcherbatsky, Schayer, Lamotte and de Jong:50 Nāgārjuna's Vigrahavyāvartani with the author's commentary has
46 Index to the Tibetan Translation of the Kāçyapaparivarta, Cambridge, Mass., 1933; Index to the Indian Text of the Kāçyapaparivarta, Cambridge, Mass., 1935; Kāśyapaparivarta nach der Tjin-Übersetzung verdeutscht, Wiss. Z. der Karl-Marx Universität Leipzig, 13. Jg. 1964, Gesellschafts- und Sprachw. Reihe, Heft 4, pp. 771-804; Kāśyapaparivarta nach der DjinFassung verdeutscht MIO, XII, 1966, pp. 379-462; Die Sung-Fassung des Kāśyapaparivarta, MS, XXXV, 1966, pp. 207–361; Kāśyapaparivarta nach der Han-Fassung verdeutscht, Buddhist Tearly 1968/69, Halle 1970, pp. 57-221; Zum Kāšyapapariparta, Heft 1. Mongolischer Text, Berlin, 1962; Heft 2. Verdeutschung des sanskrit-tibetischen Textes, Berlin, 1965.
47 The Question of Rāstrapāla, Zwolle, 1952 (reviewed by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, FRAS, 1954, pp. 79-82; J.W. de Jong, JA, 1953, pp. 545-549).
48 A Note on the Titles of Three Buddhist Stotras, JRAS, 1948, pp. 55-60; The Varņārhavarņa Stotra of Mātộceța, BSO AS, XIII, 1950, pp. 671-701, 810, 947-1003; The Šatapañcāšatka of Mātrceta, Cambridge, 1951 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, T'oung Pao, XLII, 1954, pp. 397-405).
49 Matériaux pour une édition définitive du Varņārhavarnastotra de Mātrceta, JA, 1964, pp. 197-271 (cf. J.W. de Jong, A propos du Varņārhavarṇastotra de Mātộceta, II, X, 1967, pp. 181–183); Dieter Schlingloff, Die Buddhastotras des Mātrceța. Faksimile wiedergabe der Handschriften, Berlin, 1968.
50 Candrakirti. Prasannapadā madhyamakavrtti. Douze chapitres traduits du sanscrit et du tibétain, accompagnés d'une introduction, de notes et d'une édition critique de la version tibétaine, Paris, 1959 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, IIF, V, 1961, pp. 161-16).
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been edited by E. H. Johnston and Arnold Kunst (MCB, 9, 1951, pp. 99-152) and translated into English by Kamaleswar Bhattacharya (Journal of Indian Philosophy, I, 1972, pp. 217–261). T. R. V. Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London, 1955) is based upon the available Sanskrit texts of the Mūdhyamika school. An important review by Jacques May criticizes the Kantian bias of Murti's approach.51 Friedrich Weller published a TibetanSanskrit index of the Bodhicaryāvatāra in 1952–1955.52
The Chinese Buddhist canon has preserved important materials for the early history of the Yogācāra school. They were studied by P. Demiéville in a long article on the Yogācārabhūmi of Sangharakṣa (BEFEO, XLV, 1954, PP. 339-436). The publication by V. V. Gokhale (1901- ) of fragments of the Sanskrit text of Asanga's Abhidharmasamuccaya (J. Bombay Br. R.A.S., NS 23, 1947, pp. 13–38) has led to further studies of this basic Abhidharma work of the Yogācāra school. Prahlad Pradhan reconstructed the Sanskrit text with the help of Hsuan-tsang's Chinese version and Walpola Rahula translated the entire work into French.53 Paul Demiéville translated a chapter of the Bodhisattvabhūmi from the Chinese and Nalinaksha Dutt published a new edition of the text.54 Alex Wayman (1921- ) published an Analysis of the Śrāvakabhūmi (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961) and L. Schmithausen made a very thorough study of a small section on Nirvāņa.55 G. Tucci published Asanga's summary of the Vajracchedikā: the Trišatikāyāḥ prajñāpāramitāyāḥ kārikāsaptatiḥ (Minor Buddhist Texts, I, 1956, pp. 1-128). An excellent survey of the history and doctrines of the Yogācāra school has been given by Jacques May (La philosophie bouddhique idéaliste, Études asiatiques, 25, 1971, PP. 265–323). 51 Kant et le Madhyamika, 117, II, 1959, pp. 102-III. 52 Tibetisch-sanskritischer Index zum Bodbicaryāpatāra, Berlin, 1952-1955.
53 Prahlad Pradhan, Abbidharmasamuccaya of Asanga, Santiniketan, 1950; Walpola Rahula, Le compendium de la super-doctrine philosophie (Abhidharmasamuccaya) d'Asanga, Paris, 1971 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, T'oung Pao, 59, 1973, pp. 339-346). See also L. Schmithausen, The definition of pratyakşam in the Abhidharmasamuccayah, WZKS, 16, 1972, Pp. 153-163.
54 P. Demiéville, Le chapitre de la Bodhisattvabhūmi sur la Perfection du Dhyāna, RO, 21, 1957, pp. 109-128=Choix d'études bouddhiques, Leiden, 1973, pp. 300-319; Bodhisattvabbūmi, edited by Nalinaksha Dutt, Patna, 1966. 55 Der Nirvāna-Abschnitt in der Viniscayasamgrahani der Yogācārabhumi, Wien, 1969.
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The main work of the Tathāgatagarbha school, the Ratnagotravibhāga, has been edited by E. H. Johnston (Patna, 1950) and translated by J. Takasaki. 56 The doctrine of the tathāgatagarbha has been studied on the basis of Indian and Tibetan materials by David Seyfort Ruegg.57 Ruegg is not the first scholar to have studied Indian Buddhist philosophy in the light of the Tibetan philosophical tradition. Obermiller, for instance, made use of works written in Tibet. However, nobody before him has studied Tibetan works on such a large scale.
Much work has been done also on the epistemological school of Buddhism, first by Frauwallner and other scholars of the Vienna schờol:58 Hattori Masaaki translated the first chapter of the Pramāṇasamuccaya.59 As to Dharmakirti, one must mention the texts published by Rāhula Sānkstyāyana (see Yamada Ryūjo’s Bongo butten no shobunken, Kyoto, 1959, pp. 142–143). An excellent edition of the first chapter of the Pramāņavārttika was published by Raniero Gnoli.60 Tilman Vetter translated the first chapter of the Pramāņaviniscaya and wrote on epistemological problems in Dharmakīrti.61 Frauwallner studied the order in which the works of Dharmakirti were composed.62 Ernst Steinkellner published the Tibetan text, a reconstruction of the Sanskrit text and a richly annotated translation of the Hetubindu. He also wrote two articles on Dharmakīrti's philosophy:63 We shall refrain from mentioning publications
56 A Study on the Ratnagotravibbāga (Uttaratantra), Roma, 1966 (reviewed by J.W. de Jong, IIJ, XI, 1968, pp. 36-54). See also L. Schmithausen, Philologische Bemerkungen zum Ratnagotravibhāgah, WZKS, 15, 1971, pp. 123-177.
57 La Théorie du Tatbāgatagarbba et du Gotra, Paris, 1969 (reviewed by M. Hattori, J. of Indian Philosophy, 2, 1972, pp. 53-64).
58 E. Frauwallner, Dignāga, sein Werk und seine Entwicklung, WzKSO, 3, 1959, pp. 83-164; Materialien zur ältesten Erkenntnislehre der Karmamimāmsā, Wien, 1968, pp. 62-106.
59 Dignāga. On Perception, Cambridge, Mass., 1968.
60 The Pramānavārttikam of Dharmakirti. The first chapter with an autocommentary, Roma, 1960.
61 Tilman Vetter, Erkenntnisprobleme bei Dharmakīrti, Wien, 1964; Dharmakirti's Pramānapiniscayah. I. Kapitel: Pratyakşam, Wien, 1966.
62 Die Reihenfolge und Entstehung der Werke Dharmakirti's, Asiatica, 1954, pp. 142– 154.
63 Dharmakirti's Hetubinduh. 2 Teile, Wien, 1967; Die Entwicklung des kşanikatvānumānam bei Dharmakirti, WzKSO, 12–13, 1968, pp. 361-377; Wirklichkeit und Begriff bei Dharmakīrti, WZKS, IS, 1971, pp. 179-211.
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relating to later philosophers such as Devendrabuddhi, Dharmottara, Arcata, Jitāri, Durvekamiśra, Ratnākīrti, Jñanaśrī, Ratnākaraśānti and Mokṣākaragupta. The publications which appeared up to 1965 are listed in Karl H. Potter's Bibliography of Indian Philosophies (Delhi, 1970). More recent publications are enumerated in a supplement (J. of Indian Philosophy, 2, 1972, pp. 65112).
Tantrism is still the most neglected branch of Buddhist studies. Tucci's Tibetan Painted Scrolls (Roma, 1949) contains much information on Indian and Tibetan Tantrism. David Snellgrove (1920- ) published an excellent edition and translation of the Hevajratantra (London, 1959) and Ariane Macdonald has made good use of Tibetan sources in her study of the second chapter of the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa: Le Mandala du Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa (Paris, 1962).
In the last thirty years only one comprehensive work on Indian Buddhism was published: Lamotte's Histoire du bouddhisme indien, I (Louvain, 1958) to which we have already referred several times. This work gives evidence of Lamotte's great knowledge of the Buddhist scriptures and their historical background. Lamotte has been successful in analysing the historical and geographical factors which determined the history of Buddhism from its beginning to the end of the first century A.D. His work will for many years be the basic work on the history of Buddhism during this period.
To end this rapid survey of the research accomplished during the last thirty years, a few words must be said on Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, because Indian Buddhism cannot be studied without knowledge of its developments in Tibet and China. It is not necessary to dwell in detail upon the great contributions made by Tucci in this field. A complete bibliography of his writings from 1911 to 1970 (Opera minora, I, Roma, 1971, pp. xi-xxiv) shows how much he has done. Herbert V. Guenther (1917- ) has made notable contributions to the study of Tibetan philosophy, although his interpretations are not always acceptable. His main works are: sGam-po-pa. Jewel Ornament of Liberation (London, 1959); The Life and Teaching of Naropa (Oxford, 1963); Treasures on the Tibetan Middle Way (Leiden, 1966); The Royal Song of Saraha (Seattle, 1969); Buddhist Philosophy in Theory and Practice (London, 1972); The Tantric View of Life (Berkeley / London, 1972). Lessing and Wayman published a translation of Mkhas-grub rje's Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras (The
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Hague, 1968), which is a systematic survey of Tantrism by one of Tsonkha-pa's main pupils (1385–1438).
In the field of Chinese Buddhist studies the leading scholar is Demiéville. His work on the Council of Lhasa is of great importance for the history of Buddhism in India, Tibet and China.64 Many of Demiéville's articles on Buddhism were published recently in Choix d'études, bouddhiques (Leiden, 1973), which also contains a bibliography of his publications. To this must be added his translation and study of the ninth century Ch’an master Lin-chi: Entretiens de Lin-tsi (Paris, 1972). Other contributions by Demiéville to Buddhist studies are found in Choix d'études sinologiques (Leiden, 1973). Erik Zürcher (1928- ) wrote a comprehensive study of the early period of Chinese Buddhism from its beginnings in the first century to the early fifth century: The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden, 1959). A reprint with additions and corrections was published recently (Leiden, 1972). Kenneth Ch'en wrote the first history of Buddhism in China in a Western language: Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1963). In a compact article Demiéville sketched the main lines of development of Chinese Buddhism.65 His article gives a select bibliography of the most important publications in Western languages on Chinese Buddhism.
CHAPTER IV
Future perspectives
Buddhist studies in Japan. Lack of bibliographical and critical information (p. 72)
-Critical editions of Chinese Buddhist texts (p. 74)Study of the terminology, vocabulary and style of Chinese Buddhist texts and its importance
64 Le concile de Lhasa. Une controverse sur le quiétisme entre bouddhistes de l'Inde et de la Chine au VIIIe siècle de l'ère chrétienne, Paris, 1952. See also G. Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, II, Roma, 1958; III, Roma, 1971.
65 Le bouddhisme chinois, Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, Histoire des Religions, t. I, Paris, 1970, pp. 1249-1319=Choix d'études bouddhiques (Leiden, 1973), pp. 365-435.
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for the history of Buddhism in India and China (p. 76)-Chinese-Sanskrit indices (p. 78)-Translations of Pāli and Sanskrit texts (p. 79)-Lamotte's translation of the Daichidoron (p. 80)-Critical translations of Chinese Buddhist texts (p. 80)-How to translate original Chinese Buddhist texts (p. 80) The study of Buddhism seen in a larger context (p. 81)
It is not my intention to speculate about the future of Buddhist studies. Nobody can foresee at present in which direction Buddhist studies will develop in the years to come. Much will depend on the conditions which will prevail in the universities in which most of the research is undertaken. Even more important, perhaps, is the human factor. Will Buddhist studies be able to continue to attract capable young scholars to engage in a field of study which promises little material gain and which to many seems of no relevance in the world of today?
There seems little point in trying to answer these questions. However, it is not impossible to offer some reflections on the tasks which lie ahead of us. In the preceding pages we have tried to sketch briefly some aspects of Buddhist studies in the West. In order to arrive at a more complete picture of the state of Buddhist studies at present, it would be necessary to study the results obtained by Japanese scholars since the beginning of the Meiji period when the first Japanese scholars went to Europe to study Buddhist Sanskrit texts. It would be presumptuous on my part to try to do this. Much more work has been done in Japan by Japanese scholars in the last hundred years than by Western scholars. Moreover, even the best libraries in the West contain only a small fraction of the Japanese publications on Buddhism. It is very difficult for a scholar in the West to know what is being published in Japan. This brings me to the first point I would like to discuss. In the past Western scholars have made little use of Japanese publications, whereas many Japanese scholars are very well informed about the research which is being undertaken in the West. In the first place, this is due to the fact that few Western scholars know Japanese. Most Western scholars begin by studying Sanskrit and Pāli and acquire later sufficient knowledge of Tibetan and Chinese to read Tibetan and Chinese texts translated from Sanskrit or other Indian originals. Their knowledge of Chinese enables them to make use of Japanese dictionaries such as Mochizuki's Bukkyō daijiten and Akanuma's Dictionary of Proper Names, etc.,
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but this knowledge is not sufficient for reading Japanese books and articles. In the second place, in the West Buddhist studies are more orientated towards philological and grammatical problems. The West has been nurtured in a long tradition of editing, translating and analysing Latin and Greek texts. The methods developed by classical scholars have beer Sanskrit and Pāli texts. In Japan the Chinese Buddhist canon has for many centuries been the basic source for the study of Buddhism. This canon has been printed many times in China and Japan since the roth century and for this reason Japanese Buddhist scholars in the past were not obliged to study and edit manuscripts in the same way as Western scholars had to edit manuscripts in Latin and Greek, to study the grammar of these languages, etc. When Western scholars began a serious study of Buddhist texts, their first task was the editing and translation of Sanskrit and Pāli texts and the study of Sanskrit and Pali grammar.
It is not surprising, in view of the different traditions in which Western and Japanese scholars have been educated, that Buddhist studies have developed in different directions in the West and in Japan. However, it will certainly be to the detriment of Buddhist studies in the West, if Western scholars remain largely ignorant of the work done by their Japanese colleagues. It will always be a difficult task for Western scholars to learn enough Japanese to read Japanese publications, but this is an obstacle which must be overcome. Western Sinologists are very well aware of the importance of the work of Japanese scholars and nowadays most Western Sinologists make good use of Japanese studies. It is undoubtedly necessary for Western Buddhist scholars to follow the example of the Sinologists. Even though a Western scholar has to spend many years to acquire a good knowledge of Sanskrit, Pāli, Tibetan and Chinese, it will not be impossible for him to learn enough Japanese to enable him to read Japanese publications. However, once a scholar has learned enough Japanese, he is faced with a great practical problem. Each year Japanese scholars publish not only many books, some of which run to 600 or more pages, but also numerous articles in hundreds of periodicals. A Japanese scholar can go to his university library and find out which articles are important for his research. In the West this is out of the question. Even in the richest universities the Western specialist in Buddhist studies can make only a modest claim on the financial resources of the library for the purchase of publications in
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his field of research. He has to be very selective in advising the library with regard to the purchase of books and the subscription to periodicals. In the second place, a Western scholar whose knowledge of Japanese will always be limited will not be able to make a rapid selection of the books and articles which are most useful for his research. Scholarly advice from his Japanese colleagues will be of great help to him. He would be greatly assisted by bibliographies which are both analytical, critical and systematic. The only Western bibliography which took into account Japanese publications, the Bibliographie bouddhique, has ceased to appear and there seems at present no prospect for its revival. Japanese scholars have done excellent work in publishing systematic bibliographies of articles on Buddhism such as the bibliographies published by the Ryūkoku University, but no information is given on the contents or on the scholarly value of the articles. Annual bibliographies like those published by the Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho in Kyoto and Toho Gakkai in Tōkyō are useful, but they are not an answer to the requirements of Western specialists. In the first place there is a need for systematic and critical surveys of the work done in the different branches of Buddhist studies in the last fifty years or so. One would like to suggest that a group of leading Japanese scholars plan a series, of bibliographical surveys relating to such topics as Early Buddhism, the schools of Hinayāna Buddhism, Early Mahāyāna, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, etc. These surveys should not limit themselves to an enumeration of titles of books and articles, but critically analyse the contents of the most important of them, so that it will be possible to learn not only what has been done and achieved but also what still has to be done. Once a series of such bibliographical surveys has been published, it would be possible to publish regularly surveys of the current research, adding, insofar as possible, also information on the research projects which are being undertaken by individual scholars or by institutes and universities. It will be necessary to indicate exactly the page numbers of books and articles and the date and place of publication, indications which are not always given in Japanese bibliographies. It would certainly be difficult to expect that such surveys would be published in English, but this is not necessary, although it would be helpful for librarians in Western universities. However, if published in Japanese, it would both be easier for Japanese scholars and also cheaper to produce.
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At the same time such bibliographical surveys would be useful for young Japanese scholars.
It may seem that this proposal is only meant to assist Western scholars in finding their way in the overwhelming mass of Japanese publications and therefore of less interest to Japanese scholars. However, such systematic bibliographical information will not only also be useful to Japanese scholars, but it will help in bringing about a greater exchange of ideas and methods between Western and Japanese scholars to the benefit of both of them. If Western scholars will make greater use of Japanese publications and, will react to them, it will be of use to Japanese scholars. It is exactly because Japanese and Western scholars have been brought up in different worlds, that an exchange of opinions will be fruitful. For instance, Japanese scholars will be able to learn from the philological methods developed in the West, whereas Western scholars have much to learn from Japanese scholarship in the study of Chinese Buddhist texts which have been closely scrutinized by Japanese scholars for many centuries. The number of Buddhist scholars in the West is limited and will probably always be limited. Most of them are working more or less in isolation, because there are very few universities in which one will find more than one or two specialists in this field. Moreover, Western scholars are scattered over many countries and write in several languages. It is difficult for them to cooperate in research projects. Nevertheless, some important publications have been realised by international co-operation: The Pali Text Society, the Bibliotheca Buddhica, and the Bibliographie bouddhique. At present the Critical Pali Dictionary is one of the most important undertakings in this respect. Japanese scholars have produced lasting achievements through cooperation. One must be extremely grateful to the great energy of Takakusu for having organized the publication of such epoch-making works as the Taishō Daizōkyō, the Nanden Daizokyo and the Kokuyaku Issaikyō. Thanks to the tireless energy of Miyamoto Shōson, the Index of the Taishō Daizokyo is at present being published at regular intervals.
The fact that Japanese scholars in the past have been able to produce such collective works of lasting value to Buddhist studies and continue to do so at present, justifies the hope that it will be possible to organise other projects of similar scope. The Taishō Daizōkyō was published fifty years ago and is still the basis for serious study of the Chinese Buddhist canon. However, the
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editors have not been able to make full use of all the existing materials. Moreover, although many variant readings are given in the foot-notes, the Taisho Daizōkyō cannot be said to be a truly critical edition of the Chinese texts. It is one of the traditions of Western scholarship that the study of philosophical, religious and historical problems in ancient Rome and Greece must be based in the first place on a sound philological basis. The same applies to the study of Buddhism which has produced such an enormous literature in many languages. One may expect that the publication of Sanskrit manuscripts will continue both in the West and in Japan. A critical study of the Chinese Buddhist texts can only be undertaken in Japan by Japanese scholars. It will be necessary to collect systematically the printed editions of the Chinese canon. Some of them, for instance the very important Chi-sha (Filmek) edition, had not even been discovered when the Taisho Daizōkyō was being published. Furthermore many old manuscripts are still preserved in Japanese temples and libraries. Last but not least the Tun-huang manuscripts have now become more accessible since many collections have been catalogued. The fact that at present many more manuscripts are available is of great importance for the study of the transmission of the Chinese texts. In ancient manuscripts many characters were written in a way different from the present and this accounts for confusion between characters and for scribal errors which have been perpetuated in the printed editions. Just as editors of Sanskrit manuscripts have to pay careful attention to the script in which a manuscript is written and to the errors the scribe may have committed in copying a manuscript written in a different script in order to establish a correct text, in the same way the editor of Chinese Buddhist texts will have to take into account historical and personal peculiarities in the writing of Chinese characters.
It is obvious that such an undertaking will demand many years and requires the co-operation of many scholars. It will probably be advisable to begin with texts which are rather short and of which the textual history is not too complicated. This depends of course also on the number of manuscripts available. The publication of a small number of critical text editions will make it possible to gradually work out a system of editorial methods before undertaking the editing of more difficult texts on a larger scale. In this way one will obtain a slowly increasing corpus of critical text editions which will form the essential basis for further comparative study of the Chinese texts with Indian originals
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and Tibetan translations. The publication by the Suzuki Foundation of the Peking edition of Kanjur and Tanjur has greatly stimulated the study of the Tibetan canon. In this case, too, it will now be necessary to compare other editions and Tun-huang manuscripts and to publish critical editions. Some of the Tun-huang manuscripts contain archaic translations which have been revised by the editors of the Kanjur and Tanjur. In some cases, these archaic translations are closer to the Indian original thaņ the revised texts in the Kanjur and the Tanjur. Critical editions of Chinese and Tibetan translations are an essential prerequisite for the publication of synoptic editions of the various translations of the same text. Von Staël-Hofstein's edition of the Kāśyapaparivarta is a good example of the way a synoptic edition has to be planned. The ideal goal of Buddhist philology must be the publication of synoptic editions of Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese or Tibetan and Chinese. Of course, in the absence of an Indian original and a Tibetan translation, only a critical edition of the Chinese text will be possible.
The Chinese Buddhist texts are of fundamental importance for Buddhist studies for two reasons. In the first place the Chinese canon has preserved many Indian texts and especially ancient Indian texts which have not been translated into Tibetan. In the second place the Chinese texts have been translated from the second century A.D. onwards and enable us to study older recensions of Indian texts. The fact that many texts have been translated more than once in different periods in China makes it possible to study the development of these texts. This is not possible with the help of translations which, generally, represent the Indian text in its final form. However, the study of Chinese translations is often complicated by the fact that the attribution of a translation to a translator is wrong or doubtful. The Chinese canon contains many catalogues of translations, Tao-an’s catalogue dating from 374 A.D. being the first. However, they often contain conflicting information. Japanese scholars—I mention only Tokiwa Daijō and Hayashiya Tomojiro—have done much work in studying these catalogues critically. In the second place, a study has been made of the terminology used by the translators. This internal criterion is certainly the most important. Generally speaking, however, scholars have studied the terminology of a text in the course of their research and limited themselves to a number of technical terms. In this field of research much more work still has to be done. It will be neces
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sary not to study a single text but to study the work of one translator systematically. Hayashiya Tomojiro had realised the importance of a systematic study of the terminology used by translators, but he has not been able to carry out his plans. It will be necessary not to limit oneself to the terminology but also to take into account the vocabulary used by the translator and the characteristic features of his style. The terminology is not always a reliable guide because translations of Buddhist terms are often taken from translations already in existence. Moreover, one must be aware that the printed editions of the Chinese canon do not always transmit a text in exactly the same form as it has been written by a translator and his collaborators. Translations had been copied for many centuries before they were printed for the first time. It is quite possible that later copyists changed the renderings of Buddhist terms to bring them in line with the equivalents current in their time. It is much more difficult to change the vocabulary and the style. As mentioned before, Tun-huang fragments of Tibetan translations of Buddhist texts contain archaic translations which, in some cases, have been subject to extensive revision by the editors of the Kanjur and Tanjur. There is no evidence to prove that the organisers of the first printed editions of Chinese translations have revised existing translations to a large extent, but it is quite possible that copyists made some changes in the texts. A systematic examination of the Chinese Buddhist texts, translated by An-shih-kao ( W ) and his successors, will make it possible to determine the peculiarities of each translator. Traditionally a distinction is made between archaic, old and new translations. However, this distinction is not sufficient for a critical examination of the existing translations. We need to know in the first place the terminology, the vocabulary and the style of the principal translators in much more detail. Once this is better known, it will become possible to decide with greater certitude whether a certain text is rightly or wrongly attributed to one of these translators. After having studied the work of the principal translators, it will be easier to study carefully the translations which have been made by translators who have translated only a few texts.
A careful study of the language in which the Chinese Buddhist texts are written is necessary in order to determine the date of each translation and the name of the translator. In this way it will become possible to solve many problems relating to the history of the Chinese Buddhist canon, problems
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which are of great importance both for the history of Indian Buddhism and that of Chinese Buddhism. A better and more precise knowledge of the language of the Chinese translations will also lead to a greater knowledge of the Indian originals. Many Indian texts are only known through a Chinese translation. Even if an Indian original exists, it is often not the text translated in China but a later text which differs from it, because in the course of its transmission in India it has been subjected to alterations and accretions. Of great importance for the knowledge of the language of the Indian original are the transcriptions of Indian names and terms. In recent years John Brough has shown that the language of northwestern India, the so-called Gāndhārī, has to be taken into account in explaining Chinese transcriptions of Indian names. Thanks to the work of Karlgren, Pulleyblank and other scholars, it is possible to reconstruct with a fair degree of certainty the pronunciation of Chinese characters in T’ang and pre-T’ang times. On the Indian side more is now known about Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Gāndhārī through the work of Edgerton and Brough. Continued study of Chinese transcriptions and of Indian texts which are not written in pure Sanskrit will be required in order to obtain a better picture of the linguistic aspects of the texts which have been translated into Chinese.
In recent decennia many scholars have done excellent work in publishing detailed Tibetan-Sanskrit indices of Buddhist texts. However, there still are very few Chinese-Sanskrit indices. It is of course more difficult to compile indices of Chinese translations than it is of Tibetan translations, because the Tibetan translators generally adhered to a well-determined terminology, although sometimes one Sanskrit word is rendered by many different Tibetan words as can easily be seen by consulting Lokesh Chandra's Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary. However, it is certainly possible to compare Indian texts with Chinese translations and to compile Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries. These dictionaries would be of great help in the study of Buddhist texts. Once a number of these dictionaries or indices has been published, it will be possible to compile a comprehensive Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary which will allow us to see how a certain Sanskrit term has been translated by An-shih-kao, Dharmaraksa, Kumārajīva, etc. Probably there will be less uniformity in the renderings of terms by the translators of Indian texts in China than is the case in Tibet. In China especially the translators in older periods have not
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always used the same equivalents. This is perhaps also partly due to the fact that they did not always have the same Chinese collaborators who polished the Chinese style. However, the range of variation in the use of terminology by one translator is one of the important facts which can only be determined by the compilation of Chinese-Sanskrit and Sanskrit-Chinese dictionaries.
In the past much work has been done in translating Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Pāli and Chinese. Much more still has to be done. Many translations of Sanskrit texts by Western scholars were done in the nineteenth century. Moreover, they were not based on critical editions. Very few contain sufficient notes. However, there are at present some excellent translations, for example, Johnston's translations of the Buddhacarita and the Saundarananda. Johnston's translations are based upon critical editions and an extensive study of Buddhist literature in Sanskrit and Pāli. Johnston paid great attention to the stylistic and lexical characteristics of these two Sanskrit texts. A scholar who is well acquainted with the Chinese Buddhist literature could probably add much to the commentary and it is always possible to improve upon Johnston's translation in some points as has been shown by Claus Vogel in his study of the first chapter of the Buddhacarita.1 Nevertheless, Johnston's translations are a splendid achievement and they show how Buddhist texts should be translated. Many Pali texts have been translated into English, but new critical translations are an urgent desideratum. As an example of such a critical translation, accompanied by lengthy notes, I would like to mention K. R. Norman's translation of the Theragāthā. In this translation the commentary takes up much more space than the translation itself. Norman's work shows clearly how Pāli texts have to be translated and studied.
The translations by Johnston and Norman are translations of literary texts. Therefore it is not surprising that they have concentrated their efforts in the first place on the language and the style of the texts, as is obvious from the notes to these translations. In the case of texts of philosophical and historical importance, a translation ought to be accompanied by a commentary dealing with these aspects. It is not difficult to mention a translation which contains a commentary discussing in great detail all important items in the text itself:
1 Claus Vogel, On the first canto of Asvaghosa's Buddhacarita, Indo-Iranian Journal, IX No. 4 (1966), pp 266-290.
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Lamotte's translation of the Ta-chih-tu-lun ( ). Lamotte's work is a fine example of Buddhist scholarship. Without any doubt Japanese scholars would be able to provide us with translations of Chinese Buddhist texts accompanied with commentaries of similar scope. Most translations in the Kokuyaku Issaiky) are only sparingly provided with notes. However, it is not sufficient to translate a text and to explain briefly some technical terms. Both the introduction and the commentary of a translation ought to give full information on all matters relating to the text.
With regard to translations of Chinese Buddhist texts, Western translators are forced to translate each character into English or another Western language. Japanese translators often do not really translate a Chinese text but rather indicate how a sentence has to be analysed and constructed. All important words and terms are left untranslated, because the Japanese language allows them to maintain the same Chinese characters as those found in the Chinese text. However, such translations fail to do justice to the original texts. It will often be necessary to translate Chinese characters by other Chinese characters. Sometimes, however, it will be difficult to find good equivalents and it will be necessary to maintain the same characters but, in such cases, one needs a note to explain the exact meaning and value of these terms in the Chinese text. Critical translations of Chinese Buddhist texts into Japanese must be based on a searching analysis of the style, vocabulary and terminology of the Chinese text. In the case of Chinese Buddhist texts, translated from original Indian texts, it will be necessary to try and determine, as far as possible, the Indian terms which occur in the original text.
Problems of a different nature arise when one has to translate original Chinese Buddhist texts. In many instances, the authors of these texts have used Buddhist terms but not in the same meaning which they have in Indian texts. In the early period of Chinese Buddhism Taoist ideas clearly exercised a great influence. Often it is difficult to know whether a certain term reflects a Taoist idea or has to be interpreted as a Buddhist idea rendered by a Taoist term. A Japanese translator will be tempted to maintain the same Chinese characters without trying to solve this difficulty. In the case of such texts an English translation would be greatly preferable. Let me quote one example. Sengchao's work has been studied and translated by a group of scholars from Kyoto in the Foron no kenkyū, a splendid publication which shows the excellent
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results which can be obtained by the combined efforts of a group of scholars in the study of one text. In a review of this work in the T’oung Pao Paul Demiéville has expressed his great appreciation of the work done by these scholars. However, he has not omitted to point out that the Japanese translation of the text does not solve all problems related to the interpretation of the text, mainly because difficult terms have not been translated. Demiéville remarks that, in translating the same text into English, Liebenthal had to decide in each single instance how to render a Chinese term into English. Undoubtedly, the ideal solution would be that Japanese and Western scholars would work together in order to translate such texts into English to the benefit of both Japanese and Western scholarship.
In what has been said up to now, the main emphasis has been put on philological problems, such as critical editions of texts, analysis of style and language, critical translations, etc. Buddhist studies, of course, embrace much more than philology but philology is of basic importance. Once texts have been properly edited, interpreted and translated it will become possible to study the development of religious and philosophical ideas. Indian Buddhism has produced a very rich literature, of which much is preserved in Sanskrit and Pāli but even much more in Tibetan and Chinese translations. Moreover, Buddhist monuments show another important aspect of Buddhism. The great wealth of literary and archaeological sources for the study of Buddhism in India will occupy many scholars for centuries to come. However, this mass of material must not make us forget that Indian Buddhism cannot be studied in isolation from its context. It is necessary to study Vedic and Brahmanical literature, Jainism and other Indian religions, Dharmaśāstras, etc. The study of Indian Buddhism has in the first place to be seen as a branch of Indology. In Japan the study of Buddhism has for many centuries been based exclusively on Chinese Buddhist texts. In the last one hundred years Japanese scholars have added to the study of Chinese texts that of Sanskrit, Pāli and Tibetan texts and much has been done by them for the study of Indian Buddhism. However, other branches of Indological studies have not developed to the same extent. Recent years have seen an increasing interest among Japanese scholars for the study of the six darśanas. It is to be hoped that many scholars
2 Vol. 45 (1957), pp. 221-235.
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________________ THE EASTERN BUDDHIST will become interested in other aspects of Indian culture as well. Scholars such as Tsukamoto Zenryu have brilliantly demonstrated that Chinese Buddhism can only be understood when seen against the background of Chinese history and culture. In the same way, Indian Buddhism has to be studied in relation to Indian culture, as one of the manifestations of Indian spirituality. This can only be achieved when scholars are actively engaged in the study of all aspects of Indian culture. The cultures of India, China and Japan cannot be understood without knowledge of Buddhism. In the same way Buddhism cannot be understood without knowledge of the cultures of India, China and Japan. Allow me to terminate by expressing the wish that future generations of scholars, both in Japan and in the West, will closely work together in the study of Buddhism.