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Contemporary Buddhism
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The letter of the law and the lore of letters: The role of textual criticism in the
transmission of Buddhist scripture
Andrew Skilton a
a
Cardiff University,

Online Publication Date: 01 May 2000

To cite this Article Skilton, Andrew(2000)'The letter of the law and the lore of letters: The role of textual criticism in the transmission of
Buddhist scripture',Contemporary Buddhism,1:1,9 — 34
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14639940008573719
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639940008573719

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The Letter of the Law and the
Lore of Letters: The Role of
Textual Criticism in the
Transmission of Buddhist
Scripture
Andrew Skilton
Cardiff University
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Western Buddhists are the victims of a harsh stroke of fate. Born as they are in
societies that are far removed in time, language and ethos from those which saw
the birth of most Buddhist scripture, access to this literature is usually achieved
through intermediaries. As such they qualify as denizens of one or more of the
aksana, those unfortunate states which were described by the Buddhist tradition as
not conducive to contact with the dharma.1 If we also think of the massive loss of
original Indie materials after the demise of Buddhism in its homeland, such that,
for example, the bulk of Mahäyäna scripture now survives only in ancient
translations into Chinese or Tibetan, their fate can only be deemed more cruel.
Marooned in languages remote from those of the surviving texts, the majority
of western Buddhists can only speculate on the substance of this literary heritage
that is preserved in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese — to name only the major
languages involved — since its bulk remains untranslated.2 Even the English
translation of the Pali canon, available for the most part by the middle of this
century, is still not complete3 and a substantial part of what has been done now
cries out for revision. Restricting discussion to the Pali canon ignores the
substantial non-canonical Buddhist literature in Pali that was produced across
South and South East Asia during the 20 centuries that have passed since the
canon was put into writing and thus 'fixed' at the end of the first century BCE.
Access to Buddhist literature is thus acquired by two means and two only: the
time consuming and often impractical task of learning one or more of these
languages, or the reliance upon one of the aforementioned intermediaries — I am
of course referring to the translators.
It could be said that there are two extremes of translation: the literal and the
interpretative. Certainly there have been those who have tried to maintain, for
example, that it is possible to seek consistent word for word equivalents in source
and target languages, or who claim that it is possible to prepare a literal
translation, as if there were some basic meaning to language which will somehow
'do' for any text, even if other parties wish to complicate life by pulling fancy or

9
Contemporary Buddhism

fine distinctions out of the air. My own view is that this approach is inadequate.
Translators seek to 'carry across' the meaning of their source text into another
language. Language is dependent in a number of ways upon the community that
uses it, and differences between languages often reflect substantial differences
between respective geographical and conceptual communities. Because of this,
the process of meaningful translation usually involves more than the simple
substitution of words from the source language with words from the target
language. With the absence in the new language of artefacts or concepts that are
explicit or implied in the source text, the translator is often engaged in the creation
in the target language of a new text — a text that is new because it eschews
mechanical lexical correspondences in favour of new 'gestures' that the translator
thinks will better indicate the ideas and experiences of the source text. Hence, our
interpretative translators.
Perhaps this account will provoke the reader-response critic, who asserts that
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all texts are 're-created' in the process of reading on the part of each reader, but this
solipsistic diagnosis reflects a relativism that is hardly compatible with the
assumptions of most western Buddhist practitioners — namely, that the dharma is
concerned with the transmission of 'the' truth as embodied in privileged
experiences that transcend time and culture.4 I do not intend here to engage in this
debate, and instead will take for granted, for the meantime, the assumption that the
Buddhist tradition is concerned with the transmission of such trans-cultural and
trans-temporal insights. In so doing, I bring our discussion straight back to our
intermediaries, the translators.
Translators can also be twofold in a sense other than the divide between
literalists and interpreters. Some translators see themselves as translating words
and others as communicating experiences. Of course, especially where we are
dealing with an interpretative translation, we can see that there will be no clear cut
distinction between these roles, but now I am thinking of what we might
characterise as the distinction between linguists and teachers. By teachers I mean
those who understand themselves as functioning explicitly within the Buddhist
tradition, whereas the linguist need not be a Buddhist and might have no
ideological sympathy with that of the text being translated.5 The streetwise
western Buddhist will have her own assessment of the virtues of each variant that
I have outlined, and probably reads translated materials with a rudimentary sense
in most cases of which type of translator it is upon which she is dependent. This
state of affairs would hardly matter if it were not the case that so much of the
canon, especially of the Mahäyäna canon, is available in only single translations,
if it is available at all. To take just one example, even so oft-translated a text as
the SaddharmapundarTka Sutra (Lotus Sütrá) is not adequately served. Of the 6
or 7 English translations that have appeared over the years, only one is from the
Sanskrit text, while all the rest have been made from a single source —
Kumârajïva's Chinese translation. This hardly does justice to the surviving
Chinese translations, of which there are a further three, while that from the
Sanskrit was amongst the very first translations of a Mahâyâna text made into a

10
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

European language, by a translator whose knowledge of astrology was in the


'ascendant' over his knowledge of Buddhism.6 Another text that has a claim to
being perhaps the most significant Mahäyäna sütra in the Indo-Tibetan tradition,
the Astasähasrikäprajnäpäramitä, still has only one translation, from the
Sanskrit.7
If this seems something of a counsel of despair, I should warn that, in turning
now towards the intended subject of this article, matters only get worse. For,
while Western Buddhists might often address the question of who has translated
their scripture and what that person's qualifications might be, they rarely get so far
as to enquire what it is that this translator has translated. How does the source text
itself arrive at the translator's desk? Here I want to focus attention not on the
intermediary, but upon the source text itself, for whereas readers can and do
question the credentials of a translator, they rarely examine those of the source
text. I am not thinking here of questioning the religious affiliation of individual
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texts, but rather of questioning the assumption that the source text somehow exists
'out there', pristine, inviolate, waiting for a treatment, good or bad, by the
translator — for this is just what we do not have. The idea that the original text is
'handed to us' perfectly formed, transmitting verbatim buddhavacana has no basis
but in hope or piety. These texts arrive at the translator's desk as the result of a
process, and it is this process, that of textual criticism or textual editing and some
of the issues that it raises, on which I wish to reflect. In so doing, in surveying this
territory, I am of course going where many a biblical and classical scholar has
been before, and in this respect we need to admit with due humility that the
scholarly treatment of Buddhist literature lags in many years of maturity behind
these other disciplines.8
The process of textual editing is required because, before the use of the printing
press, this literature was transmitted by hand through the laborious copying of
manuscripts — on palm leaf, birch bark or paper, the most common media. These
media are fragile and the process of copying decidedly fallible. As a result
individual manuscripts have lacunae, both large and small, and some have
interpolations of material from other sources. Slips of hand and eye on the part of
the scribe introduce all sorts of errors. Entire pages can simply be lost. Strangest
of all, scribes often copied all the pages of a text before adding page numbers to
the folios. It is not unknown that the folios became jumbled before numbering. It
is only in the rarest of cases that we possess an ancient manuscript of a Buddhist
text — ancient in so far as it may come within half a millennium of the time of its
composition.9 Most manuscripts of most Mahäyäna texts preserved in Sanskrit
date from the 17th century onwards, with occasional exceptions dating from as
early as the 11th century.m These manuscripts thus carry a text that has been
transmitted by a form of literary 'Chinese whispers' for something up to 15
centuries in the majority of cases. Reading such a manuscript is rarely
straightforward, and later mss. often carry their full share of one and a half
millennia of copyists mistakes.11 It can be guaranteed that no manuscript version
of a given text will be identical to another.

11
Contemporary Buddhism

The following paragraph, extracted from a later part of this present article, has
been adapted in a variety of ways that illustrate, admittedly at the extreme degree,
how a late Nepalese manuscript of a Mahäyäna sütra might read before touched
by an editor. The language is English.
The rrecottutyonoffa textasha conbeyorrofmeaninginthe Htelally
ratherrtthansymvolicsenshe. requiredanhishtolicalperrspettive
thatextendsveyondatthopology. atpresettwedonutknowwhenorrwhere the
finaldemishe ofthe srrsasha nitteligivle texttookprace thisqueshtyonare
provavly neberrto ve anshweredwithany confidence, notleastvecaushe
theshe two functyonshofatextis notandpresumavly neverrwere exclusibe ash
Shchopenhauer shayspoittedoutshuchlituralfiinctyon shaveprovavly
veenamajolushe ofmahäyäna shcriptureshfromthe earrliestperyod. *****
with the lackof textualccriticishm shuggestthatacoherett shavepprovavly.
veenamajolushe ofrnahäyäna shcriptureshí&omthe earrliestperyod .
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thenepalesemshswith theirrlackof textualcriticishm shuggestthatacoherett


moderrttranshlatyon swill not fairrlyyreppresett the shrrs. ashanactuar
religyousovjectinnepalshince atleastthel7cetturry. anditmay ve due sholely
to the fflagility ofthe media of transmishsyonthatwe cannotpushhthisdate
severalcetturyesftirrtherrvack.

The text editorial process begins with the collection of all extant witnesses, i.e. all
surviving manuscripts, and their comparison and collation.12 On the basis of this
data, the editor must then decide which readings are the 'correct' readings and
compile these as the basis for a printed version ofthe text in question. While this
is a précis account of the full process, the important point to note is that the
resulting text which will be printed and later used by translators is not one which
exists as such in any extant source — most, if not all, the imperfections of the
manuscript medium will have been ironed out, and such a 'perfect' text has never
been available to Buddhists of earlier centuries since they have always been
dependent upon the more or less faulty manuscript medium. The text to be
translated has thus been put together, word by word, by a technician, the textual
editor, and in this very important sense has been very thoroughly 'processed' en
route from its source (whatever that may have been) to the translator. Of
particular importance are the criteria used by the textual editor to decide which
readings are 'correct' and thus warrant inclusion as a part of the printed text.
Discussion of such criteria warrants a major study in its own right, and I can only
offer comments on some criteria later in this paper. In an ideal world we would
look for a 'technician' who combines an understanding of the linguistic issues
involved with practical knowledge of the technicalities of manuscript
transmission, and an understanding ofthe text, or at least ofthe subject matter of
the text. Thus, for a Mahäyäna Buddhist text, we might expect proficiency in
Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, along with Tibetan and Chinese (for
comparison with the ancient translations), knowledge, for example, of at least 5

12
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

different scripts or alphabets used for the Sanskrit text alone, and a good
grounding in the realict and issues of early Mahäyäna Buddhism in India as well as
some sense of Mahäyäna Buddhism as a viable and meaningful religion. This is a
daunting range of skills which few individuals acquire in full, and hence the value
of collaborative projects such as that published in Gomez and Silk in which a large
range of competencies can be pooled.13 More often a single scholar is biased
towards one side or another of this triangle of competence, and textual editions are
compiled typically by linguists or philologists who concentrate primarily on
grammatical and stylistic considerations, with occasional forays into doctrine.
From the point of view of the mere Buddhist, such people are the least qualified to
decide what does and does not constitute scripture. Even from an academic point
of view, there is a very real sense in which the textual editor can be accused of
inventing a text that has no historical reality, and for this reason textual editing has
fallen under something of a cloud in some quarters in recent decades.
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My own engagement with this process has arisen from my interest in the
substantial Mahäyäna sütra known as the Samädhiräja Sütra (hereafter SRS).
This interest started c.1989 when I became aware that this text existed, that there
was no complete translation of it available in a European language14, but that there
had been published two printed editions of the Sanskrit text, edited by Dutt and
Vaidya respectively.15 These both purport to be editions of the Gilgit manuscript
of this sütra. There had even been published a complete facsimile of the ancient
Gilgit manuscript, although I was later disappointed to find that due to its poor
quality this facsimile was often illegible.16 While at first I had assumed that I
could launch myself immediately into a process of translation and interpretation of
the SRS, my 'faith' in the printed texts of Dutt and Vaidya was eventually
undermined. It soon became apparent that the editorial practice of each left much
to be desired. I shall explain.
The first thing that must be understood is that Vaidya's edition is essentially a
reprint, with modifications, of Dutt's edition. The explicit purpose of the
publication series in which Vaidya's edition appeared was to make available
important texts of the Buddhist Sanskrit corpus in affordable devanagari
editions.17 This involved reprinting texts that had either appeared originally in
European editions or that were by that time rare or unavailable in the original
Indian edition. Editorial input was therefore minimal, and in the case of the SRS
involved the substantial pruning of Dutt's critical apparatus. Thus, footnotes
recording variants in the manuscripts used by Dutt were drastically reduced in
number, often lengthy passages found in some sources were extracted from
footnotes and relocated to an Appendix, and the main text was occasionally
emended in accordance with Vaidya's understanding of "modern editorial
practice" and of the nature of Buddhist Sanskrit.18 Given the nature of these
revisions, it is easy to understand that we should turn to Dutt's edition as the
primary source for this text — at the very least, it contains a much fuller account
of the original editor's sources, which included the manuscript of the SRS from
Gilgit, two late Nepalese mss. and the Tibetan translation.

13
Contemporary Buddhism

Unfortunately, Dutt disappoints too. Allowing for permissible orthographic


variants, it became clear that Dutt's text abounds to a remarkable degree with
incorrect readings, additions, omissions, and false attributions. While his editorial
practice has already been critically discussed in print19, I shall illustrate my
dilemma with examples of the problems that I found in using Dutt's edition. I
summarise below my notes arising from a comparison of his chapter 24, a chapter
of a 21 lines of prose and 67 verses, with that reproduced in the facsimile of the
ms. on which his edition is supposedly based.
In the first line of verse 3, Dutt's printed text reads: yathä nirvana gambhïram
Eabdenäsamprakäsitam. The same verse as it appears in the manuscript is: yathä
nirvänu gambhïram aabdenosamthäiitä. The reading iabdeno- is attributed in
Dutt's notes to his ms. B, whereas it is the reading of the Gilgit text. This appears
to be one of nine instances in this chapter in which readings attributed to other
mss. are from the Gilgit ms. itself. These instances are distinct from those five
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occasions where a supposed variant reading from the Gilgit ms. is recorded
incorrectly. The passage represented in Dutt's text by samprakâsitam is hard to
read in the facsimile edition, but can nevertheless be made out with a fair degree
of confidence. Dutt's note to this gives the reading -Sita, but it is clear that where
he reads three syllables preceding this, there are in fact only two, and that -prakä-
should be read as -thä-.
Dutt does not make clear his rationale for introducing the square-bracketed
passages in the prose introduction to chapter 24, since they are clearly not a part of
the Gilgit recension. There are five such passages, amounting to 2 out of 21 lines
of text. That they are editorial additions is obscured by his use of square brackets
in earlier chapters to denote passages lost through damage to the ms. that have
been reconstructed from his Nepalese sources. Less accountable still is his use of
square brackets in vv. 8, 11 and 51 for words or characters which are clearly
readable in the Gilgit text! There are also 32 incorrect readings or unremarked
emendations (the latter more likely?) printed in the text, along with three
unremarked omissions from the Gilgit text and three unremarked additions to it.
There are 5 instances in which visarga is omitted unremarked, and likewise 26
occasions in which it has been supplied. Anusvara has been omitted in 9 places
and added in 11, all without notice.
While this catalogue of error might seem too obscure or technical to bother the
reader who is not also a textual editor, there are other 'emendations' which have a
broader significance. In chapter 16, in the context of a lengthy passage which
describes the ways in which the Buddhist sañgha will degenerate in future times,
Dutt prints the following verse.

vihäru krtvâna ta anyamanyam


vyäpädadosämS ca khilam janetvä
abhyäkhya datvä ca parasparena
lapsyanti prämodya karitva päpakam 16.26

14
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

which we can translate as:

Constructing monasteries, and begetting malice, hatred and hardness of


heart towards each other, making slanderous accusations against one
another, they will find pleasure by doing evil.

This curious statement suggests that for the community by which the Samädhiräja
Sütra was produced, the building of monasteries was seen as a problematic
activity, at the least a cause of serious dissent. But there is not a single manuscript
of the SRS which carries the term vihäru, 'monastery', at this point, and the true
reading, attested by all sources, is vivada, 'quarrel'.20 The verse thus reads:
Quarrelling with each other and begetting malice, hatred and hardness of
heart, making slanderous accusations against one another, they will find
pleasure by doing evil.
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thus making a rather different point.


A similar unmarked substitution mars a verse in chapter 17. Here a lengthy
series of verses recapitulate a prose list of terms that appears in chapter 1. Dutt
prints naukä ayant deSita päragäminäm, as the first line and we can translate this
as, "This, taught as a boat for those going to the further shore...".21 But all
manuscripts unambiguously read, kolo ayant detita päragäminäm, "This, taught
as a raft for those going to the further shore...". In addition to being inauthentic,
Dutt's edition obscures the allusion here to the metaphor of the raft, and what is
thus a reference to an important sütra of the Srävaka canon, one which we know
in Pali as the Alagaddüpama Sutta.22 There is no acknowledgement of, let alone
explanation, for this substitution.23
Finally, there is a major feature of the Gilgit manuscript that is effectively
suppressed in Dutt's edition. I am referring to the chapter divisions. Dutt prints a
text that is divided into forty chapters, but these divisions are derived from an
important group of Nepalese manuscripts, whereas the Gilgit ms. itself had at least
44 chapters and 15 of these do not correspond at all to the chapter divisions of the
Nepalese version.24 Any literary analysis of this text based on Dutt's edition will
thus assume that a literary structure that is only concretely attested from the 12th
century onwards underlay a version of the SRS that was in circulation in the 6th
century.
These examples illustrate some of the problems that characterise Dutt's edition
of this text. Once aware of them, one retains little faith in any particular reading
that he prints. How can one proceed to translate and interpret a text when any
single part of it may be the unexplained invention of the editor?25 Thus the choice
is not between Dutt and Vaidya, nor even between either and both, but lies
between a non-historical text created by one or another textual editor and the mass
of'raw' material to be found in various manuscripts and ancient translations.26
This mass of raw material turns out to consist of a present total of 43 Sanskrit
manuscripts, of which 38 are from Nepal, and which range in date from as early as

15
Contemporary Buddhism

the 5th century CE to the late 19th century. There is also a Tibetan translation,
made in the 9th century, and three Chinese translations: two incomplete, made in
the 5th century, and one complete, made in the 6th century CE. The Sanskrit
manuscripts have an immediate and obvious claim upon one's attention, since they
record the text in its language of composition, but quite what to do with this
number of sources is another problem. Imagine the following purely hypothetical
scenario. Let us pretend that for chapter 17, verse 111, there really are some
manuscripts that record the term naukä and others that have kolo. How are we to
select the correct term? What if, out of 40 mss., 30 have naukä and only 10 have
kolol We might be tempted to say that naukä is correct, because most mss. say it
is so, and one comes across editions where this argument is used. This is
essentially a statistical approach, in which sheer numerical superiority is deemed
sufficient authority to establish the text. But our 30 mss. saying naukä may have
all been copied from a single source ms. in which the scribe substituted naukä for
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kolo. The numbers of manuscripts that survive are determined by the accidents of
history, but mere counting would still be an unreliable guide even if all copies ever
made were available to us in our study. Another version of the statistical approach
is to nominate one manuscript as 'the best manuscript' because one has noticed
that it has a tendency to produce the 'correct' reading more often than the other
mss. available. On this basis one then uses it as an arbiter when faced with
otherwise imponderable choices. One's observation of correctness leads one to
inductive conclusions that are simply statistical and do not indicate a necessary
truth — like people, all manuscripts tell the truth until the first time they lie.27
There is a further problem, that of sheer volume of data. Collating even a short
chapter of this lengthy text from c.40 mss.28 can further blunt even the dullest
mind and is disproportionately fatiguing. It is an urgent desideratum to reduce this
total and work if possible from a more manageable number, perhaps c.12. Even
this modest number will keep one from seeing the sunshine more than one's doctor
would deem healthy. We thus need a strategy that achieves two goals: that
reduces the sheer number of sources on a rational basis; and that saves us from the
failings of a purely statistical basis for one's choice of readings to go in the text.
For these reasons, one can turn to a technique of analysis refined in the field of
Classical studies since the beginning of the last century, by which one attempts to
establish the genealogy of all one's manuscripts. If the analysis works, the
product, called the stemma codicum, is something resembling a family tree for all
one's manuscripts, and like a family tree, this is often expressed diagrammatically
with each manuscript neatly sitting on its branch and each branch (or twig) leading
back eventually to the main trunk, which represents the source of our text.
There are three important questions that arise from this process. How do we do
it? What further conclusions arise from such an analysis? How can it go wrong?
Taking the first, we do it by comparing errors. If one scribe makes an error in his
copy, another scribe who later uses that copy to make yet another cannot help but
transmit that error. By tracing the patterns of distribution of errors we can
establish the forks in the tree trunk, the branches and even the little twigs. Further

16
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

conclusions that arise include the possibility that we identify manuscripts that are
direct copies of other existing mss. Where this is the case we can happily discard
the copy, since it will tell us nothing that is not in its exemplar.29 We can also
isolate emendations made to the text during its transmission, and which on face
value could have been the true readings. The stemma codicum will clearly show
us such features characterising an isolated branch of the tree. We can now choose
an appropriate selection of mss. from all the major branches of the tree — without
this guidance we might accidentally select our 12 mss. from a single branch, for
reasons which have no ultimate bearing upon their contents.30 Our analysis goes
drastically wrong, is sometimes fatally holed below the waterline, when a copyist
consulted more than one text in making his copy. Editors call this 'contamination',
an alarming term that reflects the trauma experienced when the lifeline of
stemmatic analysis seems about to snap in one's hand. Unfortunately the analysis
of patterns of error only works when all parties used a single manuscript to make
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their copy. Despite my earlier characterisation of the late manuscript tradition as


execrable, it is also the case that at points in the transmission history of most such
texts there have been copyists that have consulted more than one manuscript, and
at least some part of the stemma codicum will in all likelihood be contaminated.
Unless one can unravel the sources used by the copyist in this situation (an
unlikely event), there is nothing to be done to salvage the situation, and if the
contamination is extensive, one loses stemmatic analysis as an editorial tool
altogether.
The genealogical metaphor of the tree sometimes fails us in another way. It is a
slightly suspicious feature of most such stemmata that the main trunk exhibits a
primary bifurcation, i.e. such analysis seems to suggest that the 'source' or
archetype of the text was always first copied into two (not three or more)
manuscripts.31 Leaving aside whether such a situation would have been
historically true (a stemma codicum is always a symbolic representation
constructed on the basis of available data), an unfortunate consequence of this is
that we are sometimes faced by two sets of evidence between which we cannot
choose. The structure of the tree is such that where these two symbolic first
copies each appear to have carried a reading that is viable, there is no basis for us
to say that one rather than the other must be the reading of the archetype. Even
more alarming is a situation where this dilemma is general rather than specific,
and there appear to be two (or more) trunks to the tree. This situation is described
as an 'open' rather than a 'closed' tradition. Again, it is impossible to establish the
text of a single archetype.
An open tradition has important consequences for our understanding of our
text. The terminology and indeed the entire ethos of this type of analysis has
evolved within the context of Western Classical studies. One of the major
assumptions of this methodology is that one is dealing with a text that has a single
source, obviously the author. For example, the Classical editor has no doubt that
Aristophanes existed as an historical personality, and that he was the author of
dramas. When engaged in text critical work on The Frogs, an editor is happily

17
Contemporary Buddhism

committed to reconstructing the text of that play produced by the hand of


Aristophanes. She assumes this in two important ways: firstly, that she can in
good conscience remove passages that appear to be later interpolations, solely
because they were not written by Aristophanes; and secondly, in the sense that
there must have been one source text, what we call the 'autograph' text, which was
produced by the hand of Aristophanes and was approved by him as the complete,
finished and 'perfect' text — the autograph text represented The Frogs as he
wanted it to be.32 Unless there is some very unfortunate problem with the
transmission of this drama, it will be possible to establish that first text, not least
because such a first text actually existed at one time. If we could find the
autograph manuscript, Aristophanes' original written copy, all would be well and
the critical editor would be out of a job. The belief that such a manuscript once
existed is a crucial component of her methodology.33
It is an uncomfortable fact that we know almost nothing about the
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circumstances of the composition and early transmission of Buddhist scripture. In


the case of what is called Mstra, the texts were authored by historical individuals
in an unexceptionable way entirely parallel to the case of Aristophanes, but in the
case of sütra, the literature is by definition anonymous and its historical source
obscured. Of course, the Buddhist tradition defines all sütra as buddhavaccma, the
word of the Buddha, and transmits 'stories' of how these texts were produced, but
historical scholarship is beginning to shed interesting light on these stories.34 For
Mahäyäna sütra the situation is particularly obscure. Scholarship generally
accepts that these texts were authored after the time of the historical Buddha, and
the earliest of them, the Astasähasrikäprajnäpäramitä, is assigned a date just prior
to the beginning of the common era. Mahäyäna Buddhists regard these texts as
buddhavacana, but some early Mahäyäna sütra admit that the Érâvaka community
was frankly sceptical of this provenance:

... at some future time bhiksus and bodhisattvas who are conceited, who
have not cultivated their bodies, not cultivated their minds, not cultivated
wisdom, who are immoral... [etc.]... when they hear this samädhi of Direct
Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present expounded, they will not give
ear to it or listen to it, will not have faith in it, nor accept, master, keep, or
read it, to say nothing of expounding it in full to others....
'With the intention of belittling it, with the intention of deriding it, and
with the intention of reviling it they will say:
"The proliferation of these scriptures, this appearance in the world of the
likes of the bhiksu Änanda, and the appearance of sütras like this are indeed
great wonders!"
and going to a secret place they will revile it, saying to each other:
"Sütras like this are fabrications, they are poetic inventions; they were not
spoken by the Buddha; nor were they authorised by the Buddha!" ...
and 'certain other beings':
When they hear this samädhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the

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Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

Present, they will not understand, have faith in, believe, or incline strongly
towards it. Far from it, when they hear it they will laugh at it, deride and
revile it. Going off in secret they will abuse it among themselves and reject
it, saying:
"These bhiksus have a real nerve! These bhiksus talk nonsense! It is a
great wonder indeed that they should give the name surra to something
which was not spoken by the Buddha, which is a poetic invention of their
own fabrication, a conglomeration of words and syllables uttered merely in
conversation!"
And saying: "These sutras were not spoken by the Buddha," they will
make other people believe so too.... 35

and in a similar vein, but from another text:


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(Some) scoff with words such as these: 'You are teaching the doctrine on
your own inspiration, for this is not what was taught by the Tathägata. You
have made this doctrine to please yourselves. The doctrine you teach has
your own creation as its source, so there is no need for you to show it
respect, no need to show it veneration'.36

Nor was this scepticism limited to the early Mahäyana period, for we find the
same debate surfacing in the Bodhicaryävatära of Säntideva, the 8th century
Mädhyamika37, and we read in Dharmasvämin's biography that, in the 14th
century, he was turned away from the Bodh Gaya temple by the frävaka
incumbents because he was carrying a Mahäyana sütra at the time!38 There can
be no doubt that the sustained view of Mahäyana sütra on the part of the Érâvaka
community in India was that they were trash. Even if the Mahäyana community
held only that their scripture was inspired by the Buddha (and there are some sütra
that claim just this39), in the face of such critical pressure from the rest of their
community, they had a vested interest in hiding the true authorship. Most of the
large Mahäyana sütra appear to be composite texts, probably compiled over a
considerable length of time, and in this sense at least were the product of
communities rather than individuals, inspired or otherwise. This last consideration
may account for another important consideration for the text editor.
An open tradition can come about through two processes which are not
altogether dissimilar. Either, at some point in the transmission of the text, that text
is changed (not necessarily intentionally) in some way that on its intrinsic merits
makes the changes of equal value in the eyes of the editor, and all evidence of the
priority of the original state is lost so that no historical research can re-establish its
priority; or, the text has circulated in distinct recensions from the start. Now it is
often the assumption where one has to deal with two or more recensions of a text,
that one of them is the 'original' and the rest have been produced by redactors who
have intentionally changed that original text for some purpose that may or may not
be possible to discern. However, even the considerations concerning the

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Contemporary Buddhism

composition of Mahäyäna stttra just outlined should alert us to the possibility that
this model may be simplistic. For example, a text produced through some process
of communal composition or legitimation might circulate in several forms,
perhaps forms that have been generated or approved by different parts of that
community. The same text might be written down in different ways in
geographically distinct communities where different religious or social conditions
pertain.40
Either way, it is quite possible that the editor can be faced by a mass of raw
material which eventually yields to a picture in which we have several recensions
of a text with no basis on which to prefer one over another as the 'original'. This is
just the situation that we have with the SRS. Analysis of the various witnesses of
the text shows that: there are extant 4 distinct recensions of this text; that at least
three were in circulation contemporaneously; that there is no absolute basis for
giving priority to any one of these three; and that only one (the fourth) is
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dependent upon another in the sense of being demonstrably a rewriting of that


other recension.41 Clearly the textual editor faced by a situation such as this has to
make responsible decisions about the treatment of her material, the most pressing
consideration being that she should not conflate these distinct recensions so as to
create, in yet another sense, a non-historical text. Overall, this last problem arises
from a failure to address the total body of witnesses to the text being edited.
Partial access to the total data available makes one vulnerable to incorrect policy
decisions, even assuming one cares to make them. A persistent problem for all
editors of SRS material has been the failure to recognise that the Nepalese mss.,
which they have always used in small numbers, actually record two distinct
recensions, and while one of these is clearly a rewriting of the other, previous
editors have persistently favoured the readings of the dependent recension because
they are in 'better' Sanskrit, i.e. a Sanskrit more in keeping with the rules of
Sanskrit grammarians. Since the SRS was written in a distinctive, semi-vernacular
language (Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit), such details are relevant to the transmission
history of the text but not to its original composition, and unless the editor is
specifically concerned with editing this revised recension, she is simply
introducing another level of contamination.
Nor must we make the mistake of assuming that the texts available in one or
another of the xylographie editions of the Tibetan bKa' 'gyur are free from these
concerns. It is all too easy to look to the Tibetan translation of a text in a readily
available edition and point out that it is relatively easy to read, both graphically
and in meaning, and thereby contribute to the false view that we can thus
conveniently bypass all the problems presented by the Sanskrit texts of which I
have been writing. This false view reaches absurd heights in statements such as
the following:
It has become apparent in the last twenty years that serious Buddhist
scholarship must, where possible, base itself primarily upon the Tibetan
sources and use extant Sanskrit texts as an aid, not vice versa. n

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Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

The Tibetan bKa'-'gyur and bsTan-'gyur are extraordinary monuments to


collaborative collection, translation and preservation, but the processes involved in
their compilation and modern use are entirely comparable to those I have already
described for the modern editor, and if one wishes to employ the Tibetan
translation of an Indian text, one is immediately confronted with an editorial
problem on a scale equal to that of the Sanskrit text itself.
Sanskrit mss. were sought out far and wide by these ancient translators, so that
sometimes a text may have been translated into Tibetan several times, at widely
separate times and perhaps from different recensions. The resulting surfeit of
manuscript versions was used in different ways and at different times to compile a
number of early collections, also manuscript. In the present day there are at least
seven xylographie editions of the bKa' 'gyur 43, and another seven manuscript
editions,44 not to mention individual mss.45, all of which provide another mass of
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variant textual material which must be assessed. Through the exacting work of
Eimer and Harrison, however, much headway has been made in our understanding
of the relationships of these materials to each other, and several attempts have
been made to delineate a stemma codicum for them.46 The result of these labours
for the bKa' 'gyur can be summarized briefly as follows.47
In the early 14th century the translated texts of the Tripitaka were collected and
copied at the Narthang monastery and this 'Old Narthang' bKa' 'gyur was
disseminated in manuscript copies, eventually to form the basis of the majority of
later editions. These later traditions can be grouped into two major strands: one,
derived from the Them spangs ma manuscript of 1431 CE, includes the Stog
Palace, Tokyo and London mss., together designated as the Thems spangs ma line;
the other, derived from the Tshal pa manuscript, and including the Peking edition,
called the Tshal pa line.48 In addition to these Thems spangs ma and Tshal pa
strands there are several independent manuscript editions which appear not to be
derived from the Old Narthang edition: Phug brag, Newark and Tabo. Later
blockprint editions, such as those from Derge, Cone and Lhasa, have been shown
to be conflated editions prepared from exemplars from both the Thems spangs ma
and Tshal pa strands. They may read well, but they are the result of recent
traditional editorial activity and are relatively useless for text critical purposes, or
indeed for any work that puts a premium on the exact meaning of the text.
Uncritical use of these late editions can best be described as naïve.
As an attempt to apply the principles of Classical textual editing to an
anonymous Mahäyäna Buddhist scripture, my own work on the SRS has been
confronted by all these problems. At the same time, I have been aware of
criticisms of this type of project, and have noted with some interest and sympathy
the introductory comments in a recent and important study and partial translation
of the SRS. Here the authors explain the editorial methodology adopted by the
translation team that worked on the SRS chapters translated in that volume.
The classical versions of the surra were also considered in our discussions,

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Contemporary Buddhism

but not as different limbs of some imaginary conflated text. Therefore, the
multilingual approach was conceived of as an interpretative tool, not as a
criterion for editorial emendation. Only one recension, that of the Nepalese
manuscripts, was chosen as the primary object of translation. We utilised the
edition of Matsunami, since it is the only critical edition of these
manuscripts. Other editions and recensions were used as hermeneutical
devices. Only in the most obscure passages, where Matsunami's text or his
manuscripts defied translation, was any attempt made to correct the
Nepalese recension, or Matsunami's edition, in the light of other recensions.
Otherwise it was assumed that Matsunami's readings were "correct," in the
sense that they represent an actual textual tradition, not a mere scribal
accident. This principle was followed even when, occasionally,
Matsunami's text appeared to be grammatically irregular or doctrinally
inconsistent with other sources.
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Accordingly, the translation team abstained from any attempt at


reconstructing the "original," "early" or "complete" version of the text by
conflating the available recensions. In this way we feel we are presenting
the translation of a real text, an actual religious object, and not simply a
scholar's idea of what the Samädhirqja must have been at some
undetermined point in time.49

I should state at the outset that I am in full agreement with what I understand to be
the main thrust of these remarks — viz. that the editor must use her sources
responsibly, consistently and with due restraint. The very same volume contains a
critique of bad editorial practice, which highlights a number of pitfalls that await
the unwary, cavalier or opinionated editor.50 However, not least because we are
making contributions to the study of the same text, I must take issue with other
opinions both expressed and implicit in this passage.
The authors are correct in criticising the conflation of recensions. The first
problem facing the reader and the textual editor is to judge at what point we are
dealing with recension and at what point mere corruption. Mere corruptions can
legitimately be corrected by comparison of shared material recorded in different
recensions. However, this only begs the question of what we mean by a
'recension' of a text. The definition of recension with which I have approached the
tasks involved in my own work on the iS7?S is that a distinct recension of a text is
an independent redaction or consciously rewritten version ofthat text. A text that
happens to differ in some minor, and particularly an accidental, matter cannot
legitimately be classed as another recension. Thus, an entire family of mss. may
omit a verse or a chapter, but only because of a scribal accident in their archetype,
and however numerous the mss. derived from this accidentally changed text, this
difference is not an a priori justification for calling them representatives of a new
recension, the integrity of which we then must defend.
Adventitious modifications to the text may also be entirely intelligible. In such
cases one is surely justified in removing even intelligible corruptions by way of

22
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

deference to the original intentions of the redactor, so far as these are recoverable.
It is entirely justifiable on the textual evidence alone that such modifications
should be made good by the editor and duly sign-posted in the apparatus, but at
the least, they must be based on a holistic knowledge of the complete text. Her
decision about items in this category need to be informed by the extent to which
any adventitious modification, once introduced, became a significant part of the
text and formed an integral part of the text in its later exegesis. Any such decision
by the editor requires an act of judgement, often of whether such changes are
intentional, and each such judgement might in the long run be shown to be wrong.
Thus, I have been able to adjust parts of Matsunami's edition of the samädhi list
from chapter 1 of the SRS, but this does not amount to a critique of the editorial
enterprise in which both he and I have been engaged — rather a vindication.51
The correct view to take is not that Matsunami was wrong, but that the successes
of scholarship are incremental.
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The authors also admit the need for emendation, or 'conflation' as they
condemn it, whenever they come across a passage that is problematic — when the
text "defied translation". Resolving corruptions that defy translation is one of the
major tasks of the textual editor. That such problems had still to be resolved by
such cross-reference only suggests that the original editor had apparently not done
the job completely.52 Furthermore, it is only possible for the authors to adopt this
position because they have (except for the problematic passages where they do
resort to standard editorial practice) abdicated responsibility for editorial matters,
and this they can do only because someone, in their case Matsunami, has come
before to shoulder those responsibilities. In reality, the position adopted by the
translation team is perhaps intentionally similar to the presumed position of the
Buddhist community that utilised the original mss., in that they express a belief
(should it be 'faith'?) that Matsunami's text is "correct" and need not be examined
critically. Their inconsistency in adhering to this principle, in that they do resort to
critical emendation when the text is incomprehensible, reveals the real distance of
their attitude from that of the presumed 'believing Buddhist'. If their position is
adopted out of convenience, i.e. to restrict the amount of technical work on the
text prior to translation, it is entirely reasonable, but not if expressed as a critique
of the editorial enterprise.
But how appropriate is this picture of the uncritical believer? The Buddhist
tradition has utilised its scriptures in two ways. On the one hand there have been
those who have handled texts as literary items, to be read, understood, expounded
and if necessary corrected. On the other hand, there have been communities
where the text is utilised as part of a system for the generation of religious merit,
and in this sense a text is not apprehended primarily as an intelligible document,
but rather as a powerful totem which must be ritually and magically manipulated.
This brings me to a second strand of the argument in the passage quoted from
Gomez and Silk. Towards the end of the above extract the authors make a
derogatory distinction between the text of the SRS as "a real text, an actual
religious object" and an edition, which they dismiss as "simply a scholar's idea of

23
Contemporary Buddhism

what the Samädhimja should have been at some undetermined point in time".
Presumably a part of the opprobrium expressed in this passage is directed towards
any artificially conflated text. It is not stated if they had any specific edition in
mind, although both Dutt's and Vaidya's editions are seriously faulted in this way.
Be that as it may, the passage also appears to reflect some undisclosed hostility
towards what is seen as the merely theoretical reconstitution of texts when
compared to the anthropology of religious practice.
Without doubt the Nepalese manuscripts of the SRS have been produced in a
community primarily concerned with the generation of merit, as is evidenced by
the almost total lack of correction of the often grotesque scribal errors which
abound in each and every manuscript. Since such corruptions make an intelligible
reading of an unrevised manuscript, qua "actual religious object", impossible, we
are justified in concluding that any translation which seeks to present to the reader
a fully intelligible rendering is false to that text as "an actual religious object", at
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least for the community which produced our manuscripts. It must be understood
that there is no such thing as 'simply reading a manuscript' as a strategy that
bypasses the alleged obfuscation and falsification of the textual critic. Every
manuscript is corrupt to some degree, and once one begins to read, one is drawn
into the task of textual editing, i.e. making corrections, as surely as one seeks to
draw an intelligible text from one's manuscript.
My point is underlined by the observations of the anthropologist, David
Gellner:
Few seem to realize that in a traditional society, where literacy is a minority
accomplishment and study of the scriptures is carried on only by a minority
of that minority, most of the priests — let alone the laity — are simply
ignorant of the contents of these scriptures. Priests learn liturgies by heart,
they know how to perform rituals, and often have a deep intuitive
understanding of their own tradition. But only a tiny number are actually
pandits, that is to say, spend their time reading the original scriptures.53

Moreover, in a paper in which he discusses the ritual recitation of the


Astasähasrikäprajnäpäramitä, it is clear that public 'recitation' does not mean
'reading aloud for the edification of the listeners', but rather an unintelligible
chorus as the text is divided into ten sections which are read aloud simultaneously
by ten vajräcäryas.54 Hodgson, writing over a century earlier, claimed:
Copies of the Rakshä BhägavatI or Prajnä Päramitä are very scarce. I am of
the opinion, after five years of enquiry, that there were but four copies of it
in the [Kathmandu] Valley,... No one had, for some time, been able fully to
understand its contents; no new copy had been made for ages; and those few
persons who possessed one or more khands or sections of it, as heir-looms,
were content to offer to sealed volumes the silent homage of their püjä
(worship).55
Buddhist texts, in particular the navadharma, of which the SRS is one, were

24
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

preserved for the sake of the merit-making acts of recitation and preservation, or
as physical symbols of the dharma, rather than for the sake of access to the text
contained therein. As "an actual religious object" its intelligibility was not at issue,
as it is for us, as curious 'outsiders'. It makes sense that, if one is to engage in the
labour intensive pastime of textual editing at all, one should work towards
establishing a text that was read in the sense that we understand this sort of
cognitive activity, rather than simply recited. Mutatis mutandis, if we are
interested in reading any scripture for the sake of its content, then we are
automatically committed to an interest in a text that is intelligible. Our very
interest in reading these works assumes the existence of such a text at some point
in its history.
I have no doubt that this situation is characteristic of the bulk of ms. evidence
for Mahäyäna sütra literature. By contrast, there survive mss. of Buddhist texts,
usually of non-sütra material, which contain abundant marginalia and provide
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direct evidence that they were used as texts to be read and their contents studied
and compared with other mss. — in other words, they provide direct evidence that
where mss. were read for their content, as we now wish to do, past readers have
shared our textual and commentarial concerns, i.e. where the tradition itself reads
its own literature for the purpose of understanding, it also engages in textual
criticism. It is false to the tradition of Buddhist scholarship to presume that text
critical work is the preserve of a falsifying modern scholarship that is removed
from the reality of the religious tradition.56 A relevant example of such traditional
scholarship occurs in Bu-ston's discussion of the recensions of the
Bodhicaryävatära {BCA), a discussion that only differs from that of a modern
textual scholar by the implicitly religious orientation of the author and the data to
which he had access in the 14th century. Bu-ston links the matter of recension to
the translation process. " The BCA was translated into Tibetan three times: the
first time, in the 9th century, by Sarvajñadeva and dPal-brstegs on the basis of a
manuscript from Kashmir; the second time, in the early 11th century, on the basis
of a manuscript from the Madhyadeáa (the homeland of Buddhism, i.e.
Bihar/Uttar Pradesh); and the third time, in the late 11th century, revising this
second version. In the 17th century, the Buddhist historian Täranätha discussed
the same problem, but gave different information: he mentions a version of 1000
verses plus known to the Kashmiri pandits, a 700 verse version preserved by the
'easterners', and a version of 1000 verses known in the Madhyadeáa.58 Both
Täranätha and Bu-ston resolve the problem of recensional primacy by recounting
a story that all three were in circulation during áántideva's life and that, after he
had left Nälanda, he was traced by a delegation of three pandits who asked,
amongst other things, which version was authentic, aäntideva replied that it was
the 1000 verse recension from the Madhyadeáa. Part of this discussion is
circumstantially confirmed by the discovery, amongst the manuscripts recovered
from Tun-huang, of a translation of the BCA by Sarvajfiadeva and dPal-brstegs in
701.5 verses rather than the 912 verses of the canonical version. That this short
version is not just the product of an idle or arbitrary hand is suggested by the

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Contemporary Buddhism

existence of three manuscripts that record it, in different hands, and that two of the
ten commentaries on the BCA that are preserved in the bsTan 'gyur are
commentaries on this short version.59 Primarily through the work of Akira Saito,
we now know that the short version is probably the original text, and that the
longer version was produced by the addition of 200 plus verses which in a number
of places spoil the structure and argument of áüntideva's original text. We do not
know who added these extra verses.60
Just as it is false to assume that the Buddhist tradition was itself 'innocent' of
text critical concerns, so is it also to assume that the product of the sophisticated
literary milieu through which this literature passed (whatever its origins) can be
properly and fully assessed without the help of modern textual critics and
historians. Prajñákaramati, the ?llth century commentator on the
Bodhicaryävatära, made text critical judgements concerning this text. For
example, in the ninth chapter, in a passage that debates the authenticity of the
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Mahäyäna sütra, he judges that three verses, 9:49-51, are not genuine because
they break the flow of the chapter and they are also disrespectful to Mahäkäayapa,
an important disciple of the historical Buddha.
You accept that whatever text might be in accordance with the Discourses
was spoken by the Buddha. So why are the Mahäyäna scriptures not
accepted as equal in value to your own Discourses?
If the whole lot is faulted because one part is not accepted, why not treat
the lot as spoken by the Conqueror because a single part is the same as in
the Discourses?
Who will bar acceptance of the teaching over which those led by the
great Kaáyapa hesitated, simply because you do not understand it? 61

His first point is quite reasonable, since they revive an argument that starts in
verse 41 and appears to conclude by verse 44. His point about Mahäkäayapa is
less so, for he appears to have forgotten that this is a reference to a significant
episode in the fourth chapter of the Saddharmapundarïka Sütra in which
Mahäkäayapa and three companions confess the arrogance that had held them
back from accepting the teachings of this sütra. Comparison with the Tun-huang
recension of the BCA shows that these verses are indeed later interpolations, and
so modern historical research vindicates Prajñákaramati's editorial judgement.
Unfortunately the same comparison also shows that the previous verses (41 and
43-52) are all interpolation. Prajñákaramati appears to have been right for the
wrong reasons.
The reconstitution of a text as a conveyor of meaning in the literary rather than
symbolic sense requires an historical perspective that extends beyond
anthropology. At present we do not know when or where the final demise of the
SRS as an intelligible text took place. This question is probably never to be
answered with any confidence — not least because these two functions of a text
are not and presumably never were exclusive. As Schopen has pointed out, ritual

26
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

functions have probably been a major use of Mahäyäna scriptures from the earliest
period.62 The Nepalese mss., with their lack of textual criticism, suggest that a
coherent modern translation will not fairly represent the SRS as "an actual
religious object" in Nepal since at least the 17th century, and it may be due solely
to the fragility of the medium of transmission that we cannot push this date several
centuries further back.
Returning to my point of departure, since we cannot define in time or place the
point at which our text was last an intelligible document but are committed to
doing so through the very assumption that our text should be intelligible, we are
without question committed likewise to establishing an "idea of what the
Samädhiräja must have been at some undetermined point in time".
The editor's responsibilities include: to gather as many witnesses to the text as
are available, and are within her competence to assess; to establish whether or not
there is more than one recension of the text, and if there is, the character of the
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relationship between them; to determine the adherence of specific manuscripts and


translations to individual recensions, and for each recension to establish a
genealogy of these manuscripts, i.e. to prepare a stemma codicum. The editor
must then choose which recension will be presented as the text of his edition, and
how to present the other recensions (if any) in relation to it. The editor must at all
times preserve the integrity of each recension, but without losing the benefit of
each as a witness to material that is held in common between the recensions. The
most judicious and responsible application of resources to the task of editing
Buddhist scriptures at the present is for the preparation of synoptic (rather than
conflated) editions of intelligible texts, however far back into the past one must
reach for them to be intelligible.
I hope to have presented a case for textual criticism as one tool that can be used
to help in the presentation of an intelligible and coherent text, without becoming
enslaved to the chimera of 'the original' text. As work on the SRS has shown,
Buddhist scripture can be surprisingly fluid in terms of both structural and
philological features.63 It may be that academic fashion will change so that it will
become no less contentious to speak even of specific recensions as fixed,
unchanging entities, than it now seems to be to speak of 'reconstructing' a text.
Far from fulfilling the assumption that textual criticism alienates us from 'real'
religious communities, we can see, I hope, that this vital discipline draws us
towards at least one constituency of textual users, insofar as it allows us to
reconstruct real texts that were used for reading purposes, and is a discipline that is
not foreign to the Buddhist tradition itself. Beyond these considerations, textual
criticism is an essential tool without which our access to the literary side of the
Buddhist tradition would be well nigh impossible.

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portions of Pali canonical sutta texts and their mnemonic function, Studia Philologica

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Contemporary Buddhism

Buddhica Monograph Series XII, Tokyo


Blackburn, A.M. (1996) The Play of the Teaching in the Life of the Sasana: Sararthadipani
in Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago
Burnouf, E. (1852) Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi, Paris (new edition 1925; reprinted 1973)
Chimpa, Lama and Chattopadhyaya, A. (1990) Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India,
Delhi (originally published Simla 1970)
Collins, S. (1990) On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon, Journal of the Pali Text Society, XV,
pp.89-126
Conze, E. (1958) Astasāhasrikā Prajnāpāramitā, Calcutta
Conze, E. (1973) The Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines, San Francisco
Conze, E. (1979) The Large Sūtra on Perfect Wisdom, Delhi
Crosby, K. and Skilton, A. (1996) The Bodhicaryāvatāra, Oxford
Cüppers, C. (1990) The IXth Chapter of the Samādhirājasütra — A text critical contribution
to the study of Mahāynā sūtras, Stuttgart
Dearing, V.A. (1974) Principles and Practice of Textual Analysis, Berkeley, California
Dutt, N. and Sharma, V.S.N. (1941, 1953 and 1954) eds. Gilgit Manuscripts, vol.11
(Samādhirāja Sūtram), part 1 Shrinagar, parts 2-3 Calcutta
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Edgerton, F. (1924) The Pancatantra Reconstructed, New Haven


Edgerton, F. (1957) On Editing Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Journal of the American Oriental
Society, 77, pp. 184-92
Eimer, H. (1983) Some Results of Recent Kanjur Research, in Schuh, D. and Weiers, M.
(Eds.) Archiv für Zentralasiatische Geschichtsforschung, Sankt Augustin, pp.3-21
Eimer, H. (1988a) The Position of the 'Jan Sa tham/Lithang Edition Within the Tradition of
the Tibetan Kanjur, in Eimer, H. (Ed.) Indology and Indo-Tibetology: Thirty Years of
Indian and Indo-Tibetan Studies in Bonn (Indica et Tibetica 13), Bonn, pp.43-52
Eimer, H. (1988b) A Note on the History of the Tibetan Kanjur, Central Asiatic Journal, 32,
pp.64-72
Falk, H. (1997) Die Goldblätter aus Śrī Ksetra, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- (und
Ost)asians, 41, pp.53-92
Filliozat, J. (1963) La mort volontaire par le feu et la tradition bouddhique indienne, Journal
Asiatique, 251, pp.21-51
Gellner, D. (1990) Monk, Householder, and Priest: What the Three Yānas Mean to Newar
Buddhists, in Skorupski, T. (Ed.) Buddhist Forum: Seminar Papers 1987-8, London,
pp.115-132
Gellner, D. (1996) The Perfection of Wisdom — A Text and Its Uses in Kwā Bahā,
Lalitpur, in Lienhard, S. (Ed.) Change and Continuity in the Nepalese Culture of the
Kathmandu Valley, Turin
Gomez, L. and Silk, A. (1989) eds. Studies in the Literature of the Great Vehicle — Three
Mahāyāna Buddhist Texts, Ann Arbor
Harrison, P.M. (1990) The Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present,
Tokyo
Harrison, P.M. (1992a) The Druma-kinnara-rāja-paripŗcchā-sūtra: A Critical Edition of the
Tibetan Text (Recension A) based on Eight Editions of the Kanjur and the Dunhuang
Manuscript Fragment, Tokyo
Harrison, P.M. (1992b) Meritorious Activity or Waste of Time? Some Remarks on the
Editing of Texts in the Tibetan Kanjur, in Ihara, S. and Yamaguchi, Z., (Eds.) Tibetan
Studies: Proceedings of the Vth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan
Studies, Narita, Japan, August-September 1989, Narita
Harrison, P.M. (1994) In Search of the Source of the Tibetan Kanjur: A Reconnaissance
Report, in Kvaerne P. (Ed.) Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the
International Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, vol.1, Oslo, pp.295-317
Harrison, P.M. (1996) A Brief History of the Tibetan bKa1 'gyur, in Cabezon J. and Jackson
R. (Eds.) An Introduction to Tibetan Literature (Geshe Sopa Festschrift), Ithaca, New

28
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

York.pp.70-94
Harrison, P.M. (undated) Philology in the Field: Some Comments on Selected mDo mang
Texts in the Tabo Collection, draft paper
von Hinüber, O. (1980) Remarks on the Problems of Textual Criticism in Editing
Anonymous Sanskrit Literature, in Proceedings of the First Symposium of Nepali and
German Sanskritists 1978, Kathmandu, pp.28-40
von Hinüber, O. (1991) The Oldest Pāli Manuscript. Four folios of the Vinaya-Pitaka from
the National Archives, Kathmandu, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur,
No.6, Mainz
von Hinüber, O. (1993) Pāli und Lānnā (Nord-Thai) in Kolophonen alter Palm-blatt
Handshcriften aus Nord-Thailand, Festschrift für Helmut Rix, Indogermanica et Italica,
pp. 223-236
von Hinüber, O. (1994) Traces of Khmer Influence in Northern Thai Pāli Manuscripts, in
Bizot F. (Ed.) Recherches Nouvelles sur le Cambodge, École française d'Extrême-
Orient, Paris, pp. 97-100
von Hinüber, O. (1996) Chips from Buddhist Workshops, Scribes and Manuscripts from
Northern Thailand, Journal of the Pali Text Society, XXII, pp.35-57
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Tibet, London
Hundius, H. (1990) The Colophons of Thirty Pāli Manuscripts from Northern Thailand,
Journal of the Pali Text Society, XIV, pp. 1-173
Katre, S.M. (1941) Introduction to Textual Criticism, Bombay
Kern, H. (1884) Saddharma-Puņdarīka or The Lotus of the True Law, Oxford (since
reprinted)
Lethcoe, N. (1976) Some Notes on the Relationship between the Abhisamayālamkāra, the
Revised Pañcavimśatisāhasrikā, and the Chinese Translations of the Unrevised
Pañcavimśatisāhasrikā, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 96, pp.499-511
Maas, P. (1958) Textual Criticism, Oxford
Matsunami, S. (1975) Ed. Samādhirāja-sūtra Taishō Daigaku Kenkyū Kiyō, Memoirs of
Taisho University, The Departments of Buddhism and Literature, 60, pp.244-188 (=SRS
chapters 1-4); 61, pp.796-761 (=SRS chapters 5-7)
Regamey, C. (1990) Three Chapters from the Samādhirājasūtra, (originally published
Warsaw 1938) reprinted New Delhi
Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N.G (1991) Scribes and Scholars — A Guide to the
Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Oxford, 3rd edition
Rockwell, J. (1980) Samādhi and Patient Acceptance: Four Chapters of the
Samādhirāja-sūtra, unpublished M.A. thesis, Nāropa Institute, Colorado
Roerich, G and Altekar, A.S. (1959) The Biography of Dharmasvāmin, Patna
Saito, A. (1993) A Study of Aksayamati (=Śāntideva)'s Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra as Found in
the Tibetan Manuscripts from Tun-huang, Miye (Japan)
Salomon, R. (1999) Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra — The British Library
Kharosthī Fragments, London
Sangharakshita, (1976) The Endlessly Fascinating Cry, private publication
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Sāñkrtyāyana, R. (1937) Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf mss. in Tibet, Journal of the
Bihar and Orissa Research Society, xxiii, pp. 1-57
Schopen, G (1975) The phrase sa pŗthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet in the Vajracchedikā:
notes on the cult of the book in Mahāyāna, Indo-Iranian Journal, 17, pp.147—181
Schopen, G (1977) Sukhāvatī as a Generalised Religious Goal in Sanskrit Mahāyāna Sūtra
Literature, Indo-Iranian Journal, 19, pp. 177-210
Schopen, G (1985) Two Problems in the History of Indian Buddhism: The Layman/Monk
Distinction and the Doctrines of the Transference of Merit, Studien zur Indologie und
Iranistik, 10, pp.9-47

29
Contemporary Buddhism

Schopen, G (1997) If you Can't Remember, How to Make It Up: Some Monastic Rules for
Redacting Canonical Texts, in Kieffer-Pülz, P. and Hartmann, J.-U. (Eds.)
Bauddhavidyāsudhākarah, Indica et Tibetica Verlag, Swisttal-Odendorft, pp.571-582
Skilton, A. (1997) The Samādhirāja Sūtra: a study incorporating a critical edition and
translation of Chapter 17, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford
Skiiton, A. (1999a) The Dating of the Samādhirāja Sūtra, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 27,
pp.635-652
Skilton, A. (1999b) Four Recensions of the Samādhirāja Sūtra, Indo-Iranian Journal, 42
pp.335-356
Skiiton, A. (forthcoming 2000) The Gilgit Manuscript of the Samādhirāja Sūtra, Central
Asiatic Journal
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Oriental and African Studies, xxi, pp.620-623
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(originally New Delhi 1983)
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Sukthankar, V.S. (1933) Prolegomena to the critical edition of the Ādiparvan of the
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West, M. L. (1973) Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique, Stuttgart

Notes
1
The tradition appears to be in agreement that there are 8 of these states, even if there is
slight divergence between particular lists. In both Pali and Sanskrit sources we are
warned against rebirth in the pratyantajatrapada, i.e. 'border countries or barbarian
regions' (Edgerton). I would say that we qualify on both counts. Buddhist literature
that deals with proselytising such regions is an interesting but uninvestigated genre.
2
There is no comprehensive and up-to-date catalogue of Buddhist scripture translated
into modern languages, nor indeed any single comprehensive catalogue of existing
Buddhist scripture.
3
Two texts of Abhidhamma still await translation — the Yamaka and the Patthāna.
4
There are commentaries on Buddhist texts by modern Buddhist teachers that seem to
have little to do with the text nominally being expounded. The text acts as a
springboard, from which the exegete jumps to a variety of topics on which they wish
to speak, but which have no direct connection with the text under study. Thrangu
Rinpoche (1994), based on the Samādhirāja Sūtra, and Sangharakshita (1976), based
on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, could be seen as examples of this.
5
This distinction has been explored, in autobiographical mode, in Sangharakshita (1985).
6
1 am referring to that of Kern (1884). The very first Western translation of this text was
made into French by Burnouf (1852). It would be unfair to suggest that the situation

30
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

remains that bad, since the last decades of this century have seen a minor
efflorescence of sound translations of Mahāyāna sūtra into European languages.
7
Conze (1973) and an earlier version by the same translator, (1958).
8
It is not my intention to give a definitive account of this complex process. On the
general principles and, more importantly, the practice of textual criticism see: Dearing
(1974); Katre (1941); Maas (1958); Reynolds and Wilson (1991); Sukthankar (1933);
and West (1973). More specific observations can be gleaned from: Edgerton (1924
and 1957); von Hinüber (1980); Srinivasan (1967).
9
The Gilgit collection, a small library of 50 plus Sanskrit Buddhist texts found by
accident in the 1930s, is one such case. It is thought, on the basis of one of the scripts
employed, to predate the year 630 CE. Manuscripts have also been discovered
amongst the ancient oasis towns of Central Asia, and recently some very early mss.
have been recovered from Afghanistan (ancient Gandhāra). The British Library
kharosthī mss., which contain material from the śrāvaka canon, appear to date from
the first 50 years of the 1st century CE (see Salomon 1999). Other very ancient mss.
from the same region containing sections of a Prajñāpāramitā text, have been
provisionally dated to the 2nd century CE.
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10
These exceptions are usually late Indian or early Nepalese mss. preserved in Nepalese
or Tibetan libraries — although a good number have since been acquired by Western
museums and libraries. The standard 17th century or later ms. of a Mahāyāna text
comes from Nepal and represents what might be fairly described as the demise of the
scribal tradition. The situation is somewhat worse in the case of Pali mss., since there
seem to be far fewer ancient survivals, there being relatively few Pali mss. older than
17th century. Recently Lānnā Pāli mss. from Northern Thailand dating from the 15th
century have begun to receive attention from Western scholars: von Hinüber (1993,
1994 and 1996) and Hundius (1990). The manuscript tradition of Central and
Southern Thailand was extensively destroyed by a Burmese (mainly Buddhist) army
of invasion in 1767. Von Hinüber (1988) estimates that only 35 mss. from Central
Thailand predate 1767. Northern Thailand missed out on the depredations of this
period and thus preserves a larger number of mss. that date from the textual revival in
the region of the 15th century. Early exceptions to this dismal picture are the
6th-century golden leaves of the Khin Ba Mound, Burma (Falk 1997) and the
9th-century vinaya fragment from Nepal (von Hinüber 1991). These facts serve to
remind us that Buddhists have been at times responsible for the mindless destruction
of their own scriptural heritage.
11 Many Western Buddhists imagine an erudite, conscientious and unflagging pandit
reproducing treasured buddhavacana with meticulous care and profound faith. Alas!
While such people undoubtedly existed and occasionally may have copied
manuscripts, those that we have were almost always produced by jobbing scribes,
who did not necessarily understand the language they were copying and who were
being paid for the job by the number of syllables reproduced. The standard scribal
measure of text was the anustubh verse, containing 32 syllables, and the final tally
was sometimes noted in the colophon to the manuscript (like an invoice?). In the case
of the Prajñāpāramitā corpus, these measures were used to differentiate the
recensions of the text. The care lavished upon the reproduction of a manuscript is no
guarantee of the accuracy of its contents, as many textual editors have found. Our
Western Buddhists would be dismayed by the condition and appearance of many mss.
The Buddhist tradition has itself produced attempts to stimulate the scholarly
understanding of the content of texts and the copying of mss. for merit rather than for
money (i.e. subtle rather than financial gain) as was the case in 18th-century Sri
Lanka under the reform of Saranarnkara and King Kīrti Śrī Rājasimha. See Blackburn
(1996), p.33.

31
Contemporary Buddhism
12
Where they exist, an editor is also wise t o consult translations of t h e text made in
antiquity, since these sometimes give us insights into the text as it existed at that time.
The editor of a Mahāyāna sūtra is thus often compelled to look at ancient Chinese and
Tibetan versions of a text, even if the Sanskrit itself survives. Rarely will Sanskrit
mss. predate these ancient translations, and usually they are many centuries younger.
13
1 9 8 9 , section 1.
14
By that date 8 out of 40 chapters had been published in English translation: Cüppers
(1990), text and translation of ch.9; Gomez and Silk (1989), translation only of
chs.1-4; Regamey (1990), text and translation of chs.8, 19 and 22. I later discovered
translations of a further four chapters in two American M.A. theses: Rockwell (1980),
Tibetan text and translation of chs.4, 6, 7 and 9; and Tatz (1972), Tibetan text and
translation of ch.11. In addition to these we have: Filliozat (1963), a partial French
translation of ch.33; and Weiler (1973), a partial German translation of ch.34.
15
Dutt and Sharma (1941, 1953 and 1954) and Vaidya (1961). T h e first seven chapters
of the Sanskrit text were re-edited by Matsunami (1975).
16
Vira and Chandra (1974). For a description and discussion of this ms., see Skilton
(forthcoming 2000).
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17
Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, published by The Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies
and Research in Sanskrit Learning, Darbhanga. Devanagari is the main script used
for Sanskrit in modern Indian publications, but, apart from a generic similarity to
earlier Indie scripts, has no a priori relevance to Buddhist texts. In m y own
experience devanagari is only used in the very youngest and least useful mss., from
the end of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. For Nepalese mss. one needs a
knowledge of Newari script and its variants, and for Indian mss. knowledge of a
variety of Gupta scripts, śāradā or proto-Bengali scripts, as well as decorative scripts
such as rañjanā. For early Indian mss. Brahmi and for very early mss. even
Kharosthī scripts will be needed. All these are scripts and are entirely distinct from
the languages that they are used to transmit. For mss. of the Pali canon, another range
of scripts used in the different regions of South and Southeast Asia is required.
18
Thus, for chapter 24 the total number of variants recorded by Dutt is 141, but this
number is reduced to 18 by Vaidya.
19
E.g. Schopen (1977), Appendix III, Dutt's Edition of the Bhaisajyaguru-Sūtra, pp.
208-210.
20
H e does record the reading vicāru, from the Gilgit ms., but this is a misreading of the
ms.
21
Dutt, 17.111.
22
Majjhima Nikāya, i.l30ff. In this text, t h e B u d d h a asserts t h e need t o grasp t h e
meaning rather than just the letter of the Dharma. Since it is just a means t o an end,
even the Dharma must eventually be discarded, just as one leaves behind a raft after
one has used it to cross a river.
23
Such editorial errors and lapses are not without a certain unwitting entertainment
value: thus, Vaidya's edition of the Kārandavyūhasūtra reads, te satpurusāh ye āryās
tān gomārgāya vāsam upavasanti, 'those good people, the noble ones them who live
life for a cattle track', where surely we should have ...ye āryā astāngamārgāya vāsam
upavasanti, 'those who live life for the sake of the eightfold path of the noble ones'; or
in the next line, te satpurusāh ye dharmadandikām ākotayanti, 'those good people
who beat [others] with the stick of the Teaching', where we should surely have te
satpurusāh ye dharmagaņdikām ākotayanti, 'those good people who beat the gong of
the Teaching' (Vaidya 1961, p.264). From a manuscript of a mediaeval Pali text, the
Upāsakamanussavinayavannanā, 'Description of the Code of Conduct for Good
Buddhists', we have: yo bhikkhu vā pandito vā sūkarampi vāhinī paresam dhammam
desesi so addhakappa niraye patanti, 'The monk or learned person who teaches the
Dhamma to others while holding a pig as well will go to hell for half an aeon1, where

32
Andrew Skilton: The Letter of the Law

w e should have, yo bhikkhu vāpaņdito vā suram pivāhinī..... 'The m o n k or learned


person who, drinking alcohol, teaches the D h a m m a t o others will go....'. (I o w e this
last example to m y colleague, Kate Crosby.)
24
See Skilton forthcoming 2000.
25
F o r example, the results of two studies of the metre of SRS verse b y K. Mitsuhara
based in good faith on Dutt's edition are thus rendered doubtful.
26
It is wrong t o assume that all editors are this fallible. Also, t o the less hard of heart, all
this m a y seem unfair o n Dutt. Despite the fact that many of these features listed are
the result of sheer error (to be polite) rather than the exercise of judgement, there is a
sense in which I am inclined to agree with this sentiment, since he w a s working on
the SRS and other materials before the landmark publication of Edgerton's analysis of
the grammar and vocabulary of what is called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, t h e language
of Mahāyāna sūtra. T o be fair in another way, I should also point out that he w a s not
alone in committing acts of editorial heresy. The great pioneer of the Prajñāpāramitā
literature, Edward Conze, was held to account during his own life. See the
Introduction to his The Large Sūtra on Perfect Wisdom (1979, p.x) for h i s o w n
unrepentant response to such criticism. See Schopen's introduction t o his
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transcription of the Vajracchedikā for a recent account of the problems Conze created
in one piece of work ( G o m e z and Silk 1989, pp.96-7). Further examples could easily
be adduced.
27
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics", Mark Twain (attributed
to Disraeli).
28
I use this round figure since three of the 4 3 mss. mentioned are single folios (from
Central Asia) and not all of those remaining are complete for all chapters.
29
B y this means, only one of the 38 Nepalese mss. of the SRS can be excluded!
30
It is very easy to favour readings from a well written manuscript, or from manuscripts
that carry a text that is easy to read but are the product of relatively late emendation
by a pandit.
31
T h e suspicious aspect of this is discussed in brief in Reynolds and Wilson (1991).
32
It is possible that Aristophanes revised his own work during his life, thus producing
another autograph text, and the editor will doubtless accept the challenge of" trying t o
distinguish the t w o states of the text.
33
This point is all the more relevant because a large proportion of Western textual editors
of Indie texts began their training as scholars of the Western Classical tradition. I d o
not know of a n y autograph ms. of a Classical text. I know of only o n e Indian
Buddhist autograph ms. — Sānkrtyāyana found in Tibet a copy of Manorathanandin's
glossary on the Pramānavārtlika written by a young scholar from the sacked monastic
university of Vikramaśilā called Vibhūticandra, t o which this young m o n k appended
various apparently autobiographical verses. H e arrived, as a member o f the entourage
of the famous Śākyaśribhadra, in Tibet in 1203 C E and was clearly an unhappy exile
there. This ms. is an interesting and poignant find, but not of great significance for
the Buddhist textual tradition (Sānkrtyāyana 1937).
34
This is not the place to address this important and interesting area. Although there is
no comprehensive treatment of it, the reader who wishes to read more is directed to:
M. Allon (1997); Collins (1990); Salomon (1999); Schopen (1985); Schopen (1997).
These are all pertinent to the canon of the śrāvaka tradition, rather than the Mahāyāna
corpus.
35
From the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi Sūtra, Harrison 1990, from
pp.55-58. Ellipsis mine.
36
F r o m the Adhyāśayasamcodanasūtra, Snellgrove (1958).
37
Chapter 9.4I ff. In fact, these verses are interpolations into Śāntideva's original text
and in all likelihood post-date the 8th century.

33
Contemporary Buddhism
38
Roerich and Altekar (1959). Śrāvaka opinion of tantric texts w a s equally hostile, of
course.
39
e.g. the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhāvasthitasamādhi Sūtra, Harrison (1990).
40
This point begs t h e question of the degree to which oral transmission played a part in
the origination of Mahāyāna sūtra. There are many more considerations that could be
drawn into this picture of uncertainty.
41
T h e technical arguments for these conclusions are discussed in Skilton (1999b).
42
Sparham (1986), p.9. Although the author later (p.20) makes show of textual
sophistication b y explaining that the basic source text, from the sNar-thang edition,
was compared with that in t h e sDe-dge edition, and that 'most of t h e differences'
found were in spelling, it is a matter of demonstrated fact that the sDe-dge edition is
derived primarily from a manuscript source shared with t h e rNar-thang edition! O n e
also wonders what exactly is covered b y the term 'most' in this instance. Furthermore,
there is always a mass of spelling errors in such media, and they will always be
statistically predominant. This inevitable statistical predominance tells u s nothing
about the other kinds of 'difference'.
43
C o n e , Derge, K u m b u m , Lhasa, Narthang, Peking, Urga, a n d Yongle; summarised from
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Eimer (1983) and Harrison (1992).


44
Berlin, London, Newark, Phug brag, T o g Palace, Tokyo; ibid.
45
O f particular note are the 8 manuscripts of the SRS (all incomplete) that have recently
come to light in t h e Tabo collection, (v. Harrsion, undated). There are also mss. from
Dunhuang in Paris and London, v. Cüppers (1990) p.xiv.
46
See Eimer (1983,1988a and 1988b); and Harrison (1992a and b, 1994 and 1995).
47
T h e following information is summarized from Eimer (1988) and Harrison (1992).
48
See Harrison (1994) p.296.
49
G o m e z and Silk (1989) p. 12-13. T h e authors appear to acknowledge 3 of the 4
recensions, although Matsunami himself only differentiates 2.
50
Section 2, pp.96-97. The author is also a member of the team that produced Section 1.
51
S e e Skilton (1997).
52
The editor cannot b e criticised for working within explicit, self-defined limits.
53
Gellner (1990), p.l25.
54
Gellner (1996). A vajrācārya is a Buddhist tantric priest.
55
Hodgson (1874) p.14. T h e Raksā Bhagavatī is the Śatasāhasrikāprajnāpāramitā
Sūtra.
56
These same comments apply t o t h e transmission and interpretation of other anonymous
Indian literature, e.g. t h e Epic and Purāņic traditions. A s von Hinüber points out,
Madhva assesses t h e virtues of different mss. of the Mahābhārata in his commentary,
Mahābhāratatatparyanirnaya (von Hinüber, 1980, p.29).
57
In this account I follow that given in Saito (1993). This information is drawn from the
colophon to the canonical translation of the BCA, but Saito points out is based on
Bu-ston's Catalogue of bsTan 'gyur. O n the role of Bu-ston in the formation of the
Tibetan canon, see Harrison (1996).
58
Chimpa and Chattopadhyaya (1990), pp.217-218.
59
Saito, op.cit. p.23.
60
A resume of Saito's work and detailed discussion of known differences is provided in
notes in Crosby and Skilton (1996). At present only chapters 5, 9 and 10 have been
compared (see bibliography t o previous work). An examination of chapter 8 by the
present author is under way.
61
Chapter 9, verses 4 9 - 5 1 , from Crosby and Skilton, op.cit.
62
Schopen (1975).
63
See Lethcoe (1976) and Harrison (1990 p.xxxiii f.) o n the 'fluidity' of texts.

34

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