Reviews Of Diffeent Books

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

Page 49

REVIEWS
243
Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Das Varnārhavarnastotra des Mātrceta. Herausgegeben und übersetzt (Abh. d. Ak. d. Wiss. in Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl. Dritte Folge Nr. 160; Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden XII). Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987. 372 pp. DM 198,
Fragments of the Varnārhavarnastotra were edited by Hoernle in 1916, Siegling in 1922, Shackleton Bailey in 1950, Pauly in 1964 and Couvreur in 1966. In 1968 Schlingloff published facsimiles of the Berlin fragments. Apart from these publications Hartmann has been able to make use of 71 newly discovered fragments in the collections in Berlin and London. According to Hartmann, Shackleton Bailey had at his disposal about 58% of the original text. The publications by Pauly and Couvreur and the newly discovered fragments make it possible to recover about 82% of the original text. Shackleton Bailey had tried to reconstruct the lost parts as far as possible on the basis of the Tibetan translation. Hartmann shows that often many different Sanskrit words are rendered by one and the same Tibetan word and that it is therefore difficult to reconstruct the original Sanskrit text. He is very critical of Shackleton Bailey's reconstructions. Shackleton Bailey remarked that "the supplements here put forward may always be taken as fairly representing Mātņceta's meaning" (BSOAS XIII, p. 673), and it is certainly useful to see how an editor has understood the Tibetan translation even if his reconstructions can never be more than an educated guess.
Hartmann writes that in 1964 Pauly made the Varņārhavarna fragments of the Pelliot collection accessible in transcription and facsimile. This is not quite correct. Pauly's article in the Journal asiatique (CCLII, 1964, pp. 197—271) was not accompanied by facsimiles. Hartmann refers to my article on the Varņārhavarṇastotra (IIJ 10, 1967–8, pp. 181–183) and remarks that I had not consulted the facsimiles (cf. p. 45). However, the facsimiles were only added later by Pauly in 1965 in a separate publication of the fragments which was not available to me when I wrote my comments on Pauly's publication.
In his introduction Hartmann discusses the sources for the biography of Mātņceta without adding anything new to the information already given by Shackleton Bailey. In the second part of his introduction he lists the works attributed to Mātņceļa, and quotations of the Varņārhavarņa (VAV) and Prasādapratibodbhava (PPU). Hartmann has been able to collect no less than 27 quotations. He points out the importance of the quotations for determining Mātņceta's date. Hartmann has discovered a long quotation in the Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa' (T 1509, p. 222c22ff.; Lamotte, Traité
Indo-Iranian Journal 32: 1989.