Buddhism And Equality Of Four Castes

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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J. W. DE JONG
has been assumed by Yutaka Iwamoto 29. The Vajrasūcī was translated into Chinese in 986-987 A.D. 30. Quotations from Vedic texts, the Mahābhārata and the Harivamsa are the only indications for a terminus a quo.
Also difficult to date is another text in which the claims of the brahmans are attacked, namely the Sārdulakarṇāvadāna, the thirty-third story of the Divyavadana, which was first studied by Burnouf 30. Cowell and Neil published a part of this avadāna: the full text was published only in 1954, by Sujitkumar Mukhopadhyaya 32. It is interesting to see that one finds almost the same arguments used in this text as in the Vasetthasutta of the Suttanipäta: cf. Suttanipata 608-610:
na kesehi na sisena na kannehi na akkhihi
na mukhena na nāsāya na oṭṭhehi bhamūhi vā 608 na gīvāya na amsehi na udarena na pitthiya na soniyā na urasă na sambādhe na methune 609 na hatthehi na pädehi na angulihi nakhehi vā na jamghāhi na ūrūhi na vaṇṇena saṛena vā lingam jātimayam n'eva, yatha aññāsu jātisu. 610 Divyavadana p. 626.18-23:
na kešena na karṇābhyam na śīrṣeṇa na cakṣuṣā / na mukhena na nāsayā na grīvayā na bāhunā || norasă 'py atha pārkvabhyam na pṛṣṭhenodareṇa vā norubhyām atha janghābhyām pāṇipādanakhena ca || na svarena na varnena na sarvāmśair na maithunaiḥ / nānāviseṣaḥ sarveșu manuṣyeșu na vidyate ||
The Chinese Tripitaka contains two translations (T, nos 1300, 1301) which correspond rather closely with the Sanskrit text. In his study on the Chinese translations of the Śārdulakarṇāvadāna, W. Zinkgräf tried to show that they cannot have been translated before the sixth century 33. However, a detailed study of the terminology of these two Chinese
29 Cf. IIJ 12, 1969-1970, 58-59.
30 Cf. Nakamura, op. cit., 291, n. 9.
31 Op. cit., 205-210.
32 The Divyâvadâna., ed. E. B. Cowell and R. A. Neil, Cambridge 1886, 611-659; The Sārdulakarṇāvadāna, edited by Sujitkumar Mukhopadhyaya, Santiniketan 1954.
33 W. Zinkgräf, Vom Divyâvadâna zur Avadâna-Kalpalatâ, Heidelberg 1940. Important is F. Weller's review, OLZ 45, 1942, Sp. 67-79. According to Tomojiro Hayashiya, T. no. 1301 was translated by Chu Fa-hu who translated texts in the period 265-313, and T. no. 1300 was translated after the Sung and Ch'i dynasties (420-502) by an unknown translator, cf. Iyaku kyōrui no kenkyu, Tokyo 1945, 524-541.