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Fragments of Sthiramati's Trimsikavijñaptibhasya in the
Patna collection of Tibetan manuscript materials
by
V. V. Gokhale
Since the first publication by Sylvain Lévi (Paris, 1925) of Vasubandhu's Vijñaptimâtratāsiddhi, Part I-Texts, containing the Sanskrit text of the commentary of Sthiramati on Vasubandhu's Trimśikāvijñaptikārikā, the text has been studied by several eminent Indianists of the West and the East, and has been translated and corrected on the basis of Tibetan and Chinese sources or emended in the light of various contexts.1
After Levi's edition, no new manuscript of this important text is known to have come to light and Ui's list of corrections may be said to present, therefore, the latest revised form of the original text. However, while looking through some of the photographs of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts, discovered by the late Pandit Rahulabhadra Sāmkriyāyana and found at present in the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute at Patna, (which were kindly made available to me by the said Institute through the good offices of the Bombay University), I came across two fragments of this text, which I wish to treat here as a small addenda to the available textual material on the subject.
The photographs in question seem to correspond to what has been described as No. 66 in the VIJI. bundle, found in the Ngor monastery of Tibet and entitled : (“Darśanagrantha") in the list of Palm-leaf mss. in Tibet, published in JBORS, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.33. Actually, we have in this collection four Plates, marked as: “N-Darsana, IA, IB, 2A and 2B", each containing photographs of nine pages, arranged one below the other. These 36 pages contain apparently three different texts, including fragments of Mahāyānasvtralamkara and Cakrasamvaravivrti besides the present fragments of the Trimsikāvijñaptibhäsya. It is probably the general title : Daršana', assigned by Pandit Rahulabhadra to the contents of these Plates coupled with the illegibility of the photographs, which has discouraged scholars from identifying the texts represented in them.
Out of the four Plates, we are concerned here only with the first two Plates, viz., IA and IB, which contain two fragments of our text, covering one full folio (i.e. two pages) and the right half page of another folio. The two fragments as located in Lévi's text are as belaw:
(1) The first fragment is found on the topmost folio (in the Plate
called: “N(i.e. Ngor Darsana IA" only the right half of
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176 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF POONA HUMANITIES SECTION
which has been preserved. It begins with: " ..h/kliste tu manasi" in 1.8 of p.24 of Lévi's text and ends with: "kleśairupaklesais trive.. " in 1.10 of p. 25 of the same. Within this portion of the text there are of course the gaps, represented by nearly the first half of each of the six lines on this page, which are lost.
(2) The second fragment begins on the second folio, from above (in the same Plate), which represents the a-side of the folio and is continued on the b-side of it, which is found on the topmost folio in the Plate called: "N-Darśana IB". It covers the portion in Lévis text from "kṣa cittasamatā.." in 1.29 of p. 27 upto "..bhavatityato nirvastuka".
As about 23 lines of Levi's text are found to cover one continuously written page of these fragments, we can determine by a simple calculation. that between the end of the first fragment and beginning of the second one, three pages of our manuscript are missing. There is a very faint marginal numbering discernible on the full page in Plate IB, which allows itself to be read as:12. This leads us to the surmise, that the first fragment is to be regarded as written on the right half of folio No. 10a and the second fragment on folio No. 12ab of the original manuscript.
On comparison of the photograph of Lévi's codex, attached to his edition of the text, with that of our ms. from Ngor (Tibet) it is found that there are no substantial variations between them in regard to their paleographical characteristics, excepting for the fact that the Gupta style of drawing straight lines to support the letters, which is found in Lévi's ms., is easily distinguishable from the use of the "Nepalese hooks" seen on the tops of the letters in our fragments. This means, that our ms. was written by a Nepalese scribe before it was taken to Tibet, while Lévi's ms. may have been imported into Nepal from Bengal. That these two represent separate recensions, howsoever close to each other, belonging to the XII-XIII. centuries A.D. and that one is not a copy of the other, is proved by the list of variant readings given below, as well as by the comparatively greater correctness of the Ngor codex. As is frequently seen in the Tibetan ms.-material, the Sanskrit text in the present fragments has been revised and corrected in a later hand in the lower or upper margins of the folio, depending upon whichever is nearer, by indicating the place concerned by a kakapada or a cross and noting the number of the line by a figure after the marginal correction.
The following Tables include most of the noteworthy variants, found in the two fragments, described above, side by side with the readings in Levi's edition and those found in the Japanese lists of revisions referred to above in note 1:
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Lévis ed. p. 24, 1.8 to p. 25, Corrections by 1.10. W (Wogihara) and U (= Ui )2
P. 24.
1.9-10 na tasya tarhi nivṛttirasti anivṛtte ca..
FRAGMENTS OF STHIRAMATI'S Trimsikävijñaptibhāṣya
1.15 arhatvaprāptyānantarya..
1.15: arhatvävastha
1.19 ceti/lo..
1.22 tasmadapi
1.23 tpadyate/
1.25 nigamayati
125: tṛtiyapari
Lévi's ed. p. 27, 1.29 to p. 29,
1.17
P. 27.
1.30: audvṛtyam vā
P. 28.
1.1-2: samähitacetaso
1.2 yathabhiyogam
1.2: samasyaiva ya pravṛttih să citta
1.3: nugatăcirabhavitvat |
tato
ceti lo (U)
tpadyate // (U)
nigamayati // (U)
1.16 samyojanam
1.21 saduḥkhasavi
Corrections by
W (Wogihara) and U (= Ui)
auddhatyam (WU)
yathayogam (W)
1.5: vastha citta
1.13: iti rägasca
iti/ (WU)
1.14: duḥkhasamyojanakar- ..samjanana. (WU) makaḥ
1.15 : tṛṣṇavaśadabhinir- tṛṣṇā.. nirvṛtteḥ vṛttiḥ/ato
(WU)
samjananam (WU)
Ngor fragment-1
na tarhi tasya nivṛttirastyanivṛtte ca..
arhattvaprāptävänantarya..
arhadavastha..
ca/lo..
tasmācca
tpadyate/
nigamayati/
177
tṛtiyaḥ pari
Ngor fragment-2
auddhatyam ca
samahitasya cetaso
yathayogam
samasyaiva pravṛttiḥ citta
nugata/acirabhävit
vättato
vastha
iti/rägasca
duḥkhasamjananakarmakaḥll
tṛṣṇā..nirvṛttirato
vihimsācitta
samjananam
saduḥkhaḥ savi
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178 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF POONA: HUMANITIES SECTION
1.22.ttasya ca na
1.22 vidura
1.23: tatpratiṣṭhāpakeṣu he..
1.24 caviparite hetu..
1.25 samkleśaḥ/tasyo..
1.26: nimitta ut..
1.26 : Jutpatteḥ dana- ..karmakamiti/ (U)
karmal
..
1.27 syaiva hi mithya .. samsaya..
1.27 .. karmajanmanām
1.27 pravṛtte
1.28 mano hi nama sarva..
29.
1.1: manyate/
1.2: stabdhata kā..rapraśṛ- ..prasritata (WU) tatā duḥkho 3
1.3 sa ca puna's citto..pi citto nnati
1.7 sadṛsättyägasila..
1.7: śreyasă
1.8 kulavidyādibhiḥ..
1.8 smi vijñānavittādibhir..
pravṛtti- (WU)
1.12 aprāpta uttare..dhi- ..dhigame (WU)
gabhe
1.12-13 bhimanaḥ/unamānah/ba..
1.13-14 kulavidyadibhir
1.14 unamānaḥ/mithyāmānaḥ/a..
1.16 smityanena hi dana
..
ttasya na
durata
tatprapakeṣu ca he..
caviparitahetu..
samkle'sastasyo..
nimittàdut..
Itasya utpatteḥ.. danakarmal
syaiva mithya..samśraya..
..karma/janmanām
pravṛtte
mano hi sarva..
manyetal
stabdhata/kā..raprasṛtata/duḥkho..
sa punaścitto cittasyonnati..
sadṛśadyoguśila..
sreyaso
kulavijñānavittādibhis..
smiti kulavijñānavittädibhir..
pi
aprapte uttare..dhi
game
bhimanaḥ ba..
kuladibhir
unamānaḥ/a..
smiti anena dana..
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________________ FRAGMENTS OF STHIRAMATI's Trimsikavijnaptibhasya 179 Notes (1) A regular list of such corrections (including those of misprints ) was published by U. Wogihara first in the Taisho-daigaku- gakuho, no. 2 (Dec. 1927), later in the Wogihara Unrai Bunshu (Tokyo, 1938). A similar list was presented by "Dignaga" in the Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol.IV.1, Pp. 190-1 ( Calcutta, 1928). A more comprehensive list appeared in the : Anne-Goho : Yuishikisanjujushakurpn by H. Ui ( Tokyo, 1952). Revisions in the text were noted at various places in their translations of this work by Hermann Jacobi Trimsikavijnapti des Vasubandbu, mit Bhasya des Acarya Sthiramati (ed. Walter Ruben, Stuttgart 1932 ) and by Sylvain L:vi, Materiaux pour l'etude du systeme Vijnaptimatra, Pp. 61-124, 175-179 (Paris, 1932 ), as well as by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, La Siddhi de Hiuan-Tsang (Paris, 1928-29; Index, Paris 1948). friend Dr. J. Takasaki of the University of Tokyo. (3) S. Levi has emended this to : " aprasritata, cf. prasrava" in his Materiaux pour l'etude etc, p. 177 (Paris, 1932).