On the Sanskrit Manuscript of the Śikṣāsamuccaya

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On the Sanskrit Manuscript of the Śikṣāsamuccaya
Journal Article
Influence and Reception of Śāntideva's Works in India and Beyond


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Description

To date, a unique Sanskrit Ms. of Śāntideva's Śikṣāsamuccaya has been found in the Wright Collection, now preserved in Cambridge University Library. Although the critical edition of this text was published by C. Bendall as early as in 1902, some of the characteristics of this Ms. have not yet been made clear, especially with regard to the date of its copy. From his discussion on both the colophon of this Ms. and the life history of Vibhūticandra, the present author draws the conclusion that the Ms. was copied in all probability in the beginning of the 13th century by Jagaddala Mahāpaṇḍita Vibhūticandra, whose name, as the contributor of this Ms., is found in its colophon. The same Vibhūticandra is most likely to have copied the Ms. at Sa skya region and brought it later into Kathmandu where the Ms. was found.
Citation
Sasaki, Kazunori. "On the Sanskrit Manuscript of the Śikṣāsamuccaya." Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies) 55, no. 2 (2007): 92–96. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ibk1952/55/2/55_2_937/_pdf/-char/en.
Interconnections
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Classical WorksAbout this item
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.)