Über das Mahâjâna und Pradschnâ-Pâramita der Bauddhen (Schmidt 1840)
From Bodhicitta
< Articles
Articles/Über das Mahâjâna und Pradschnâ-Pâramita der Bauddhen (Schmidt 1840)| 🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins | |
Über das Mahâjâna und Pradschnâ-Pâramita der Bauddhen
Journal Article
Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.
Description
One of the earliest Western academic treatments of Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine, by the German-Baltic orientalist and Mongolist Isaac Jacob Schmidt (1779–1847), based on his work with Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhist sources at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The essay introduces the Mahāyāna as a doctrinal category and the Prajñāpāramitā teaching of emptiness (śūnyatā), which Schmidt renders into German as Leere ("emptiness") rather than Nichts ("nothingness")—an unusually careful interpretive choice for its time, later cited approvingly by Arthur Schopenhauer as a valuable early introduction to Buddhist thought.
Schmidt then singles out the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (Diamond Sūtra)—Tibetan Rdo rje gcod pa—as a Mahāyāna sūtra devoted exclusively to the Prajñāpāramitā teaching, and, owing to its brevity, well suited to introducing the doctrine to a wider audience. He accordingly presents the Tibetan text of the sūtra in full alongside his own German translation, making this one of the earliest translations of the Diamond Sūtra into a European language directly from Tibetan. The translation opens with the sūtra's frame narrative—the Buddha's alms round in Śrāvastī before the assembled saṅgha and bodhisattvas—and proceeds through the philosophical dialogue with Subhūti at the heart of the text.
Citation
Schmidt, Isaak Jacob, trans. "Über das Mahâjâna und Pradschnâ-Pâramita der Bauddhen." Mémoires de l'Academie Impériale des Sciences de Saint Pétersbourg 4, Série 6 (1840): 123–228.
Interconnections
1 Recension of
One of the most revered and recited scriptures of the perfection of wisdom genre (prajñāpāramitāsūtras), perhaps second only to the Heart Sūtra, both of which became especially popular in the East Asian Buddhist traditions. It is a crucial source for Mahāyāna tenets of selflessness and the emptiness of phenomena, and its discourse is framed as an explanation of how to enter into the vehicle of the bodhisattvas by developing and sustaining their enlightened perspective.
1 Full translation of
One of the most revered and recited scriptures of the perfection of wisdom genre (prajñāpāramitāsūtras), perhaps second only to the Heart Sūtra, both of which became especially popular in the East Asian Buddhist traditions. It is a crucial source for Mahāyāna tenets of selflessness and the emptiness of phenomena, and its discourse is framed as an explanation of how to enter into the vehicle of the bodhisattvas by developing and sustaining their enlightened perspective.
