New History Of Tantric Lieterature In India

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

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A NEW HISTORY OF TANTRIC LITERATURE IN INDIA
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and a half verses in a text discovered in Java, three quotations in the Pradipodd yota. na, a commentary on the Guh yasamaja, and one quotation each in the Guh yasa māja and in the Sadhanamala. Wogihara Unrai identified the fourteen and a half verses which were quoted in the Sang hyang Kamahayanikam and compared the Sanskrit text with the Chinese translation. M. gives the text of these versions and in the notes refers to both the Chinese and Tibetan translations.
Kongochokyo is the name of the translation of the Sarvatatathāgatattvasamgraha (hence Tattvasamgraha) by Amoghavajra (T. 865), but is also the name of a collection of eighteen texts preached in eighteen assemblies. This extensive text, which is said to contain 100.000 ślokas (i. e. 3.200.000 syllables), is described by Amoghavajra (T. 869). Of the eighteen texts described by him the first is the Tattvasamgraha, and the sixth and fifteenth correspond to the Rishukyo and the Guh yasamajatantra. However, at the time of Amoghavajra these last two texts were much shorter than those now extant. The same must be true of the other texts described by him, with the exception of the first, the Tattvasamgraha. According to tradition, Vajrabodhi lost the larger recension of the Kongochōkyō during his sea voyage to China and was able to save only a smaller recension in 4.000 ślokas. This tradition is not to be relied upon. However, it is possible that at the time of Amoghavajra there existed several texts belonging to the Kongochokyo and many rituals which, together, can be considered as a large recension of the Kongochokyo.
The Sanskrit text of the Tattvasamgraha has been published recently by Horiuchi Kanjin. The Tibetan translation by Sraddhākaravarma and Rin-chen bzan-po dates from the eleventh century. The Tattvasamgraha was translated three times into Chinese, by Vajrabodhi (T. 866), by Amoghavajra (T. 865) and by Shih-hu (T. 882). The last is the most complete text and corresponds to the Tibetan translation. It consists of 26 sections and is divided into five chapters. Amoghavajra's translation corresponds to the first six chüan of Shih-hu's translation in thirty chüan. The manuscript brought from India by Amoghavajra contained four of the five chapters of the recension translated by Shih-hu, but he was unable to translate more than the first chapter. The text translated by Vajrabodhi represents a much shorter recension than the one translated by Amoghavajra.
Shih-hu arrivd in China in 980, and the text translated by him must have been written in India at the latest in the middle of the tenth century. Tibetan versions of three
4 See also J. W. de Jong, 'Notes on the sources and the text of the Sang hyang Kamahāyānan Mantranaya', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 130 (1974), pp. 465-482.