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E. Steinkellner
Samdhinirmocanasūtra
According to general scholarly opinion45, this work has not been actually composed by the king. A first survey by TUCC146 already revealed its highly technical character and that it is in fact a commentary on a section of the tenth chapter of the Samdhinirmocanasūtra which deals with the "four methods" (rigs pa bãi, catasro yuktayaḥ).47 This term refers to one of the exegetical methods for treating the contents of Buddhist revelation which were developed or rather incorporated during the early Yogācāra-tradition and transmitted in the prominent position of the Sūtra's last chapter. The "four methods" must have been a most influential instrument for structurizing and organizing the practical life of the preaching and transmitting Buddhist missionary especially in the crucial period of the religion's official establishment in Tibet, and it seems fully justified that the king added his authority to a text of this kind.
That the king was interested at all in commissioning this text is due to this particular character as a summarizing survey of the methods of investigating and explaining the dharma. It is not of course, what it is usually taken
45- LALOU 1953, p. 318 translates the title of this list (cf. n. 41 above) as "Ouvrages
exécutés (par ordre du roi Khri-sron-lde-bcan", TUCCI 1958, p. 151 simply denies the attribution to the king on several grounds, and MACDONALD 1971, pp. 367-373 refers to it as a "tradition d'un ouvrage de logique" (367) but sees the meaning in the attribution to the king in the introduction which contains a declaration of king (367f.). This introduction has again been studied in STEIN 1980, pp. 331-333 who follows LALOU in assessing the authorship of the king; cf. also STEIN 1979, p. 551 where he states that the work was "inspiré (et sans doute écrit en majeure partie) par son ami et conseiller, le moine bouddhiste indien Çantaraksita".
It seems that so far only URAY is of the opinion that the king actually had a greater share in creating this work than only giving the orders to write it, when he says: "The treatise was written ... by King Khri Sroń Ide btsan under the guidance of his kalyanamitra Dar ma Sāntighosa, i.e. Santarakṣita ..." (URAY 1983, p. 407).
A final judgement will not be possible however, I think, without more detailed study of this text and its parallel texts. 46 TUCCI 1958, pp. 122-125; some additional observations on the character of the
work in STEIN 1980, p. 333. 47 For this "exegetical methodology" of the early Yogācāra-tradition cf. my introduc
tion in JPhG II, p. 15ff. (particularly nn. 32, 33).
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