Reviews Of Diffeent Books

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

Page 31

REVIEWS
225
In translating passages from the Blue Annals Snellgrove does not always correct mistakes made by Roerich. For instance, on p. 476 he follows Roerich in restoring Tshad-ma rgyan to Nyāyālamkāra. Tshad-ma rgyan translates Sanskrit Pramānālamkāra of which the full title is Pramānamahabhāsyavārttikālamkāra.12 In another passage Roerich's translation is correct and Snellgrove has misread the text. Roerich has: “Better than this trance, is the trance of the gods of the rüpa and arupa dhātus who are able to meditate throughout an entire cosmic period” (Roerich, The Blue Annals, II, p. 455). Snellgrove mentions a trance devoid of sensations (p. 495) but the Tibetan text has: mi 'chor-ba'i tin-ne-'dzin ‘a trance which does not pass away' and not mi 'tshor-ba'i tin-ne-'dzin.
Snellgrove's book contains an extensive bibliography but many books and articles mentioned in the notes, often without sufficient details, are not mentioned in it. Information on texts is not always correct. For instance, Snellgrove says that the editions of the Catuhấataka by Bhattacharya and Vaidya contain the edited Sanskrit and Tibetan texts for chapters VIII—XVI and that the Sanskrit is missing for the earlier chapters (p. 85, n. 69). There are fragments of the Sanskrit text of both the verses and Candrakīrti's commentary for all sixteen chapters. Both Bhattacharya and Vaidya have not only edited the Sanskrit text of the verses found in the fragments but have also tried to reconstruct the text of the verses not found in them. Snellgrove states that Emmerick has translated the Tibetan version of the Śūrangamasamādhisūtra supplemented by a fragmentary Khotanese version (p. 632). However, Emmerick has only translated from the Tibetan passages missing in the Khotanese and has not translated the sections to which nothing corresponds in the Khotanese.
To sum up. Snellgrove's book is an important contribution to the study of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and especially the two long chapters on Tantrism and The Conversion of Tibet deserve the highest praise. Minor flaws in the philological study of the texts do not impair the value of this work and have only been pointed out because Snellgrove himself (and rightly so) sets a high value on philological exactitude.
NOTES
Cf. Asia Major 17 (1971), p. 110. 2 Akira Hirakawa, "The Rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism And Its Relationship to the Worship of Stupas', Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 22 (1963), pp. 57-106. 3 Cf. Takushu Sugimoto, Studies on Buddhist Stüpa-cult in India (English title] (Kyoto, 1984), pp. 40-41. + 'Sur la formation du Mahāyāna', Asiatica, Festschrift Weller (Leipzig, 1954), p. 379. 5 Tibetan Studies (Budapest, 1984), pp. 231-232.