Who Is Byan Chub Rdzu Phrul

Author(s): Ernst Steinkellner
Publisher: Ernst Steinkellner

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Who is Byan chub rdzu 'phrul? Tibetan and non-Tibetan Commentaries on the Samdhinirmocanasūtra - .
A survey of the literature.*
Ernst Steinkellner
The considerable and, until now, seemingly unnoticed import of the Samdhinirmocanasūtra and the commentaries written on it - particularly in connection with its tenth chapter - for those Indian and Tibetan scholars who took part in the translation, interpretation and propagation of Buddhism and its scriptures in Tibet towards the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century forced itself upon me during my study of the methods of proof applied in Prajñāsena's 'Jig rten pha rol sgrub pa, a treatise from the treasures of Tun-huang. 1 In the light of this impression a first inspection of the commentaries actually extant in the Tanjur is somewhat disappointing: four works have come down to us, two of them rather small, bearing the title of commentaries on the Sūtra, and one work may be added to this group because it is in fact a commentary on a section of the Sūtra's tenth chapter: the bKa' yan dag pa'i tshad ma - attributed to the king Khri Sron lde btsan.
The Sūtra itself is considered as one of the fundamental texts of the Yogacāra tradition and is therefore often referred to and has also attracted the attention of modern, especially Japanese, scholarship. The commentaries, except for the shorter ones, have, however, hardly been studied and analysed.
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This paper was presented at the Csoma de Körös-Symposium, Sopron 1987. Cf. STEINKELLNER 1988, II, pp. 14-19.
BIS 4/5.1989
229