Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 73

APRIL
1933)
THE GANDISTOTRA
THE GANDISTOTRA.
BY E. H. JOHNSTON, M.A. AMONG the minor Buddhist works which have been brought to light by modern research few are more interesting than the Gandistotra, the Sanskrit text of which was recovered by Baron A. von Stael-Holstein from a transcription into Chinese characters with the help of a Tibetan translation and published in Bibliotheca Buldhica XV in 1913. The reconstitution of the poem from such scanty materials raised a number of troublesome problems, the great majority of which were successfully solved by the editor's skill and acumen ; and the full apparatus provided by him smoothes the way for others who have the advantage of starting where he left off. So far as I can ascertain, the text has not been critically considered by other students, who have perhaps been put off by a valuable introduction and notes being written in a language so little known generally as Russian, and it seems, therefore, worth while publishing my results. My emendations are in the direction of bringing the readings into closer accord with the Chinese transcription and the Tibetan translation, but in view of their number it is easiest to make them intelligible by printing a fresh version of the original. As the poem has never been translated, I add a fairly literal rendering into English ; this procedure has the further advantages of emphasizing the weak and doubtful places of the text and of enabling me to cut down the bulk of the notes.
A few introductory remarks are necessary. The Chinese transcription, which I call C, is published as No. 1683 in the Taisho Issaikyo edition of the Chinese Tripitaka under the name of Chien-Chih-Fan-T'san. Chien-Chih (i.e., gandi transliterated) is spelt, wrongly probably, in the Bibl. Buddh. edition Chien Ch'ui, the difference between the two characters (Giles, no. 1871 and 2823) being only the short cross stroke which is added to radical 75 to make it radical 115. I follow C in omitting the word gatha in the title, which appears to be an unauthorised addition by the Tibetan. The transliteration was executed by Fa T'ien, whose name was later altered to Fa Hsien, a monk of Nalanda, who worked in China in the last quarter of the tenth century A.D. It was intended for ceremonial recitation, for which purpose an absolutely accurate text was not apparently thought essential. Study of C shows a number of mistakes which could only proceed from the use of a faulty Sanskrit MS. and which might, one would think, have been easily corrected by anyone with an elementary knowledge of that language. These errors are of a type occurring in medieval Nepalese MSS. of, say, the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as the confusion of dha, ba and va, which disfigures almost every verse, of pa and ya, of su and sta, of kşa and sa, etc., so that, when C is at fault, we are entitled to try anything which we might expect to find in corresponding Nepalese MSS. The Tibetan translation, which I call T, is as literal as usual, but not always easy to turn back into Sanskrit ; and I therefore give the Tibetan in the variants where the restoration is not certain. The editor's own readings and views I quote under the letter H, but I have not adopted his numbering of each páda consecutively; his notes follow this numbering and contain some conjectures by other scholars.
The editor follows T in attributing the verses to Asvaghoşa, giving as additional reasons the tradition connecting that poet with a gandi la long piece of wood struck with a wooden pestle to summon the monks, which for lack of an English equivalent I call a gong) and the similarity of the style to that of a verse given to him in the Kavindravacanasamuccaya. These grounds in themselves have little force, and the ascription is not followed by C or even considered worth mention by the editors of Hobogirin in the Fascicule Annexe. The verse in the anthology is written in a style entirely different to that of Ašvaghoga, of whom enough is preserved to enable us to form a clear conception of his poetic methods, and the Chinese and Tibetan translations attribute works to him almost at random. Nor can I see much in the Gandistotra which reminds me of him. Many of the words in it are not to be found