Four Recensions of the Samādhirāja Sūtra
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Description
It has been long demonstrated that a number of Mahāyāna sūtra are preserved in two or more recensions. Chinese translations of Mahāyāna sūtra in some cases record a succession of recensions of an individual text The diversity of the Prajñāpāramitā corpus is especially well known through the work of Conze on the whole body, that of Lancaster on the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, and Lethcoe on the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā.[1] We need only look to the work of Bechert, Regamey, and von Hinüber, concerning the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra, the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra and the Saṅghāṭasūtra respectively, for discussions of distinct recensions of individual titles that are witnessed directly in the Sanskrit language.[2] Especially in the last of these three cases, the manuscripts from the Gilgit collection have played a crucial part in uncovering this textual diversity – the eight mss. that we possess of the Saṅghāṭasūtra, recording distinct recensions, were all recovered from Gilgit.[3]
The Samādhirājasūtra, as it is commonly called in modem scholarship (hereafter SRS4), is a large Mahāyāna Buddhist scripture. It is a miscellaneous and probably composite work that bears certain affinities with the Prajñāpāramitā literature and other early Mahāyāna scriptures. It is known to modem scholarship through the pioneering edition of the complete text by Dutt, [5] and the re-edition, based on Dutt's, by Vaidya.[6] These two editions present us with a work that consists of some 40 chapters, although the text is found in manuscript sources in 40 chapters in an important group of Nepalese mss.,[7] 42 chapters in another important group of Nepalese mss. and a very different arrangement of at least 42 chapters in the Gilgit ms., 39 chapters in the Tibetan translation, and with no chapter divisions at all in the Chinese translation of Narendrayaśas. Whlle Dutt's edition purports to present the text of the Gilgit ms., he also records for us passages which only occur in the Nepalese mss. and Tibetan translation.[8] To confuse matters more, this text goes under at least four names: the colophons of the Nepalese manuscripts give us samādhirājaṃ nāma mahayānasūtram, but in various medieval Indian treatises it is referred to as the Candrapradīpa, the Candrapradīpasamādhi and also as the Mahākaruṇāvatāra.
It is the purpose of the present article to clarify the number and nature of distinct recensions of our text and to co-ordinate these conclusions, so far as seems possible, with the known titles.[9] To avoid ambiguity, in the following discussion I shall take the term recension to refer to a consciously rewritten version of a text. In other words, I understand a recension to be a distinct version of a text intentionally produced by an editor or redactor, thus excluding by my definition variations produced by the many accidental changes wrought over centuries by scribal error of one kind or another. Of course, it remains the case that even the accidental variants that modify and disfigure so many manuscripts of texts in this genre (primarily mss. from Nepal) can in tum become a part of the transmissional history of a given text, so that they too are, as Regamey puts it, 'an historical actuality', [10]
Notes
- E. Conze. The Prajñāpāramitā Literature, 's Gravenhage (1960): L. Lancaster, 'An Analysis of the Aṣṭasāhasrika Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra', dissertation, Madison (1968); N. Lethcoe, 'Some Notes on the Relationship between the Abhisamāyalaṅkāra, the Revised Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā, and the Chinese Translations of the Unrevised Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā', Journal of the American Oriental Society 96 (1976) pp. 499-511.
- H. Bechert, 'Remarks on the Textual History of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka' in Studies in lndo-Asian Art and Culture, vol. 2 (= Acharya Raghu Vira Commemoration Volume, Śata-piṭaka, 96), New Delhi 1973, pp. 21-27; C. Regamey, 'Randbemerkungen zur Sprache und Textüberlieferung des Kāraṇḍavyūha' in ASIATICA. Festschrift Friedrich Weller, Leipzig 1954, pp. 514-527; O. von Hinüber 'Buddhism in Gilgit Between India and Central Asia', in The Countries of South Asia: Boundaries, Extensions, and lnterrelations. ed. P. Gaeffke and D. A. Utz, Philadelphia 1988, pp. 40-48. On the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, more recently, A. Mette, Die Gilgitfragmente des Kāraṇḍavyūha, Swisttal-Odendorf 1997.
- von Hinüber. op. cit. It is regrettable that the edition of this text promised here has not and apparently will not see the light of day.
- l use this qualified abbreviation (SRS) throughout, without reference to any specific recension, but when as SRS l or SRS Il, l use it to refer to two specific recensions which I shall define in this article.
- N. Dutt and V.S.N. Sharma eds., Gilgit Manuscripts. vol. II, part 1 Shrinagar 1941, parts 2-3 Calcutta 1953 and 1954. This was predated by the 'edition' of Das and Vidyābhūshan, 1896, which is, however, a mere transcription of chapters 1-12 and 15-19 of a single highly faulty Nepalese ms. held in Calcutta by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The omitted chapters represent a lacunae in the exemplar from which this ms. was itself copied, and since the editors did not understand this, the chapters of the printed text are numbered consecutively 1-17.
- P.L. Vaidya. Samādhirājasūtra, Darbbanga (1961). For ease of reference, I follow the chapter divisions and numbering of the printed editions of Dutt and Vaidya.
- ms. groups ABC. See below.
- The shortcomings of Dutt's editions are well known and will not be rehearsed here. For a detailed demonstration of the unreliability of Dutt's work, see G. Schopen, 'Sukhāvatī as a Generalised Religious Goal in Sanskrit Mahāyāna Sūtra Literature', Indo-Iranian Journal 19 (1977) pp. 177-210; Appendix III. 'Dutt's edition of the Bhaiṣajyaguru-Sūtra'; and L. Gomez and A. Silk, eds., Studies in the Literature of the Great Vehicle -Three Mahayana Buddhist Texts, Ann Arbor 1989, pp. 41–42, for comments on his edition of the SRS. On the Gilgit ms. itself, see A. Skilton, 'The Gilgit manuscript of the Samādhirāja Sūtra', forthcoming.
- The chapter divisions and chapter titles are addressed in A. Skilton, 'The Chapter Divisions and Titles of the Samādhirāja Sūtra', forthcoming.
- "Man kann natürlich erwidern, dass die typischen Sanskritisierungsfehler auch eine historische Tatsache sind." Regamey op. cit., p. 515. Quite where this leaves the critical editor is, of course, a matter of some debate.
