Notes On Text Of Asoka Legend

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

Page 1

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE ASOKA LEGEND
The Sanskrit text of the Aśoka legend is found in the Divyāvadāna (ed. E. B. Cowell and R.A. Neil, Cambridge 1886): chapter 26: Pāmśupradāna (p. 348-382); chapter 27: Kunāla (p. 382-419); chapter 28: Vītaśoka (p. 419-429); chapter 29: Asoka (p. 429-434). The greater part of the text (p. 369.8-434) was translated by E. Burnouf in his Introduction à l'histoire du buddhisme indien, Paris 1844, p. 358-432.
The Sanskrit text of the Asoka legend is not well preserved. Not only is the text in many places hopelessly corrupt, but the compilers of the Divyāvadāna seem to have changed the order of the chapters. It is only with the help of the two Chinese translations that it is possible to reconstruct the original order of the chapters. The first Chinese translation (Ch. 1) is due to the Parthian Fa-ch'in, who translated the text about 300 A.D. His translation, entitled A-yü-wang-chuan (Taisho no. 2042), was rendered into French by Jean Przyluski in his La légende de l'empereur Açoka, Paris 1923, p. 223-427. The second Chinese translation (Ch. 2) was made by a monk from Fu-nan, Seng-ch'ieh-p'o-lo, who translated several texts between 506 and 520 in Nanking. The title of the Chinese version is A-yü-wang-ching (Taisho no. 2043). Przyluski pointed out that the fragments of the Asoka legend in the Divyāvadāna are very close to the corresponding chapters of Ch. 2, whereas Ch. 1 differs from all known recensions and contains important passages which are not found elsewhere (Przyluski, p. XIII). Przyluski indicates in the notes to his translation of Ch. 1 the corresponding passages of the Divyāvadāna and Ch, 2, but it is not easy to see at first glance which passages correspond in the three recensions. Moreover, Przyluski refers to the Tokyo edition of the Tripitaka and not to the Taisho edition. In 1963 Sujitkumār Mukhopadhyāya published a new edition of the Aśokāvadāna (New Delhi 1963). In this edition the chapters are published in the following order: Pāmśupradāna, Vītaśoka, Kunāla and Asoka. The recent translation of the Aśokāvadāna by John S. Strong is based on Mukhopādhyāya's edition (The Legend of King Asoka, Princeton 1983, p. 166-303). Strong remarks that, following the lead of the Chinese texts, it inverts the order of two of the four chapters of the
See our review in IIJ 12, 1969-70, p. 269-274.