Śikṣāsamuccaya (Anthology of Instruction)

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Śikṣāsamuccaya (Anthology of Instruction)
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The section "Śikṣāsamuccaya (Anthology of Instruction)" is from Chapter 5, Commentary and Anthology in Buddhist India.

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The Śikṣāsamuccaya [Anthology of Instruction] (SK) is attributed to Śāntideva, who was among the more influential Indian Buddhist scholastics and intellectuals.[47] As a result much hagiography accumulated around his name,[48] and it is no longer possible to separate from these stories information that a positivistically inclined historian might think of as being historically reliable.[49] All that matters for my purposes is that Śāntideva probably lived from the last quarter of the seventh century to early in the second half of the eighth, and that he probably did much of his work at Nālandā. The SK is in classical Sanskrit (except when the works from which it takes excerpts are not).
      Counting by syllables and verses, the SK contains about 192,000 syllables (6,000 verses). At the standard recitation speed of nine verses to the minute, it would take about eleven hours to recite. Almost all of it consists of excerpts from other works: my estimate is that Śāntideva's own words comprise between 3 and 5 percent of the whole work. Most of these words are very brief phrases introducing an excerpt and giving the title of the work from which it was taken, just as with Nāgārjuna's SS. But there are places where Śāntideva says more, for instance in his introductory remarks at the beginning of the whole work (3–4), and sometimes when he introduces a new topic, summarizes one just dealt with, or indicates where to find more on a topic (41, 69-70, 146, 187). There are also a few places where he offers a digest or paraphrase of what is said in some other work or works rather than a direct quotation (11-12, 66, 81, 92, 147). But even counting all questionable cases, Śāntideva's own words, as auctor rather than compilator to recall Bonaventure's way of putting things, do not amount to more than 5 percent of the whole. (Griffiths, "Śikṣāsamuccaya (Anthology of Instruction)," 133)

Notes

47. I quote and translate from P. L. Vaidya, ed., Śikṣāsamuccaya (Darbhanga, 1961)—parenthetical numbers in my text refer to the pages of this edition. I've also profited from the English version by Cecil Bendall and W. H. D. Rouse, Śikṣā-samuccaya (Delhi, 1981; first pub. 1922).
48. For an example of traditional Buddhist hagiography on Śāntideva see Losang Norbu Tsonawa, Transl., Indian Buddhist Pandits (New Delhi, 1985), 60–64.
49. Examples of contemporary historical treatment of Śāntideva are Pezzali, Śāntideva, 3–45; J. W. de Jong "La légende de Śāntideva," Indo-Iranian Journal 16 (1974), 162–182.

Citation
Griffiths, Paul J. "Śikṣāsamuccaya (Anthology of Instruction)." In Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion, 133-39. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Śikṣāsamuccaya (T. Bslab pa kun las btus pa; C. Dasheng ji pusa xue lun; J. Daijōjū bosatsugakuron; K. Taesǔng chip posal hak non 大乘集菩薩學論). In Sanskrit, "Compendium of Training," a work by the eighth-century Indian Mahāyāna master Śāntideva. It consists of twenty-seven stanzas on the motivation and practice of the bodhisattva, including bodhicitta, the six perfections (pāramitā), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and the peace derived from the knowledge of emptiness (śūnyatā). The topic of each of the stanzas receives elaboration in the form of a prose commentary by the author as well as in illustrative passages, often quite extensive, drawn from a wide variety of Mahāyāna sūtras. Some ninety-seven texts are cited in all, many of which have been lost in their original Sanskrit, making the Śikṣāsamuccaya an especially important source for the textual history of Indian Buddhism. These citations also offer a window into which sūtras were known to a Mahāyāna author in eighth-century India. The digest of passages that Śāntideva provides was repeatedly drawn upon by Tibetan authors in their citations of sūtras. Although Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra and Śikṣāsamuccaya both deal with similar topics, the precise relation between the two texts is unclear. Several of the author's verses appear in both texts and some of the sūtra passages from the Śikṣāsamuccaya also appear in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. One passage in the Bodhicaryāvatāra also refers readers to the Śikṣāsamuccaya, but this line does not occur in the Dunhuang manuscript of the text and may be a later interpolation. (Source: "Śikṣāsamuccaya." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 821. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)