Remarks on the Kāśyapaparivarta Commentary
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Remarks on the Kāśyapaparivarta Commentary
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Description
This article surveys scholarship on the Indian commentary to the Kāśyapaparivarta (KPCy), preserved only in Tibetan and Chinese translation, occasioned by the 2008 publication of Ōtake Susumu's annotated Japanese rendering in the Shin Kokuyaku Daizōkyō series. Silk highlights the KPCy's close structural relationship to the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī of the Yogācārabhūmi, which shares substantial wording with the commentary's "extended commentary" (kōshaku) portion, and reviews the scholarly debate over which text is prior. He also addresses the vexed question of the KPCy's authorship, traditionally attributed in Tibetan sources to a Sthiramati — an attribution Silk finds doubtful given discrepancies with the well-known Yogācāra scholar of that name, suggesting instead that more than one significant author may have shared the name. Drawing on Suguro's hypothesis, Silk proposes that the KPCy's distinctive two-part structure (a word-by-word "abbreviated commentary" combined with a more philosophical "expanded commentary") arose because its author based the latter on the earlier *Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī} while adding original, sūtra-focused analysis of his own. The article includes two comparative tables mapping the commentary's structure against Ōtake's edition, the Chinese and Tibetan canons, and the corresponding sections of the Kāśyapaparivarta sūtra itself. (Abstract generated by Claude.ai Aug 11, 2026])
Citation
Silk, Jonathan. A. "Remarks on the Kāśyapaparivarta Commentary." In Pāsādikadānaṃ: Festschrift für Bhikkhu Pāsādika, edited by M. Straube, R. Steiner, J. Soni, M. Hahn, and M. Demoto, 381–97. Marburg: Indica et TibeticacVerlag, 2009.
Interconnections
1 Scholarship on
This commentary, attributed to Sthiramati (slob dpon blo brtan), offers an extensive explanation of the Kāśyapaparivarta. It is preserved in Tibetan translation (Tengyur, RKTST 3349) and in a Chinese translation, Da Baoji jinglun 大寶積經論, attributed to Bodhiruci (I) of the Later Wei dynasty (508–535 CE); the commentary's own Indic title is not securely known. The work combines two distinct modes of exegesis: a close, word-by-word gloss on the sūtra's terminology, followed by a more discursive, philosophical treatment that closely parallels the wording of the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī section of the Yogācārabhūmi.
See Resource: Silk, Jonathan A. "Remarks on the Kāśyapaparivarta Commentary." In Pāsādikadānaṃ: Festschrift für Bhikkhu Pāsādika, edited by M. Straube, R. Steiner, J. Soni, M. Hahn, and M. Demoto, 381–97. Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 2009.
