Śāntideva: The Author and His Project

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Śāntideva's Life and Cultural World

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

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The other chapters of this book address themselves primarily to the Bodhicaryāvatāra (the Guide) of Śāntideva, with only occasional reference to his second major work, the Śikṣāsamuccaya or Training Anthology (the Anthology).[1] The two works are quite different in various ways. The Guide is a unified and extended verse composition, which is, as far as we can tell, entirely the creation of its author, and as poetry it is crafted with a fair degree of skill and art.[2] The Anthology, by contrast, is a much longer composite work, in which Śāntideva's own words, in both prose and verse, are combined with extensive citations from a wide variety of scriptural texts, over 110 in number. Written in an equally wide variety of registers, the passages cited also consist sometimes of prose, sometimes of verse, which is to be expected given the standard prosimetric style of the Mahāyāna sūtras to which Śāntideva gives pride of place; he quotes Mainstream Buddhist or Śrāvakayāna texts much less frequently, and even then not at great length.
The general style of the Anthology is consequently quite uneven, more prosaic and expository than artistic and evocative, although occasionally the verses that Śāntideva inserts, whether his own or taken from his canonical sources, rise to the heights of expressiveness achieved in the Guide. The Guide and the Anthology are thus very different in form and style, but what about their purpose? In this chapter we will make an attempt to understand who Śāntideva was and what he was about, asking whether each of these two works has its own agenda or somehow contributes to one coherent and comprehensive project clearly initiated by a single person.[3] We will see in the end that the Guide and the Anthology do serve a common agenda, and that neither work can be fully understood independently of the other. (Harrison, introductory remarks, 27–28)

Notes

The Sanskrit text of the Anthology as we know it has survived in a single manuscript now in the Cambridge University Library, which was first edited by Cecil Bendall, Çikshāsamuccaya: A Compendium of Buddhistic Teaching. It has been translated twice into English, almost a century ago by Bendall himself in collaboration with W. H. D. Rouse, Śikshā-samuccaya, and recently by Charles Goodman, The Training Anthology of Śāntideva. Goodman's translation is superior to that of Bendall & Rouse, and we recommend its use. References to the Anthology will be in the form B52:G55, where B stands for Bendall's edition of the Sanskrit text, G for Goodman's English translation.
This makes it challenging to translate. We will refer in this chapter to the English rendition by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton, Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra, which is enhanced by useful chapter introductions and notes. Also well worth looking at is the almost complete translation made by Luis Gómez, "How to Be a Bodhisattva."
Modern scholarship generally follows the Tibetan tradition in accepting the attribution of the two works to Śāntideva, and I see no good reason to call this into question. For a useful survey (in French) of material relating to questions of ascription and to Śāntideva's life, see Pezzali, Śāntideva: mystique bouddhiste des Vlle et VIIIe siècles. See also Saitō, "Facts or Fictions: Reconsidering Śāntideva's Names, Life, and Works," for a concise summary of the issues.

Citation

Harrison, Paul. "Śāntideva: The Author and His Project." In Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth, 27–44. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Publisher Link

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/readings-of-santidevas-guide-to-bodhisattva-practice/9780231192675

Interconnections

Works related to this item

1 Chapter or part of

Gold, Jonathan C., and Douglas S. Duckworth, eds. Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Books2019About this item

This book serves as a companion to the Bodhicaryāvatāra. The fifteen essays contained here illuminate the Guide's many philosophical, literary, ritual, and ethical dimensions.

1 Scholarship on

Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Bodhicaryāvatāra [बोधिचर्यावतार]. byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa [བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ།]. [The Way of the Bodhisattva]. Tengyur, RKTST 3216 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3216&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.