The Story of Saṅgharakṣita (Stories 23–25)

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The Story of Saṅgharakṣita, Part 1; The Story of a Young Nāga; and The Story of Saṅgharakṣita, Part 2

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Sutras (Sanskrit)

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

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Stories 23–25 [of the Divyāvadāna] constitute a cycle of stories about the monk Saṅgharakṣita, but their ordering and relation to each other require some explanation.[347] Each of these stories has close parallels in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, which can offer some context. Only some of the original Sanskrit for these materials is extant,[348] but Tibetan and Chinese translations are available.[349] Story 23 begins abruptly, including some of the frame story that precedes it in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya. Likewise in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, story 23 is followed immediately by story 25, and story 24, which is a continuation of the framestory that preceded story 23, appears immediately after that.[350] (Rotman, preliminary remarks, 135)

Notes

347. For summaries of the story, see Mitra 1981: 64–65 and Panglung 1981: 8–9.
348. Although a version of chapters 23–25 of the Divyāvadāna appears in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, the text of the narrative found in Nalinaksha Dutt's edition of the text (MSV iv, 27–51, 52–72), as well as in S. Bagchi's (1967–70: ii, 86.13–99.7, 99.8–109.8), is not from the manuscript finds in Gilgit, as is the rest of the text. It is, in fact, a reconstruction based on the Divyāvadāna itself. Folios 43–49, which correspond to Divy 335.7–388.3, were, as Vogel and Wille (GM-Saṅgh 247) explain, entrusted "for inspection to Sir. A. Stein and committed by him to L. D. Barnett, the librarian of the British Museum, who in turn forwarded them for treatment to S. Lévi. After the latter's publication in 1932 of folios 49v3 to 55v10 [Journal Asiatique 220: 26ff.], they remained untraceable until 1949 when, along with some photographs of the Stein Collection, they were delivered anew to the British Museum and deposited there under the shelf-mark Or. 11878A. Since the leaves were not available when he was preparing his edition of the Vinayavastu, N. Dutt resorted by way of a stopgap to reprinting—with some changes and transpositions—the abridged Divyāvadāna parallel and Lévi's specimen respectively; so did, relying on him, S. Bagchi. After Raghu Vira had obtained a microfilm of them as early as the mid-1950s, they were ultimately included in then ten-volume facsimile reproduction of the New Delhi Collection [GBM 6, nos. 686–707]." V. Näther published an edition and German translation of the missing text in 1975; Vogel and Wille published a revised edition of the text and an English translation in 1996. Nevertheless, as Vogel and Wille (GM-Saṅgh 248) note, "The whole former part of the Nāgakumārāvadāna and roughly the first quarter of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna have been lost in the original Sanskrit."
349. Helmut Eimer (1983) has critically edited from the Tibetan the Pravrajyāvastu portion of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, which contains versions of the Nāgakumāra-avadāna (1983: 247.17–260.22, 302.1–306.25) and the Saṅgharakṣita-avadāna (1983: 260.23–301.27). Ware (1938) has edited and translated into English the first part of the Nāgakumāra-avadāna, from both Tibetan and Chinese.
350. See Dutt's comments at the bottom of MSV iv, 46. According to Vogel and Wille (GM-Saṅgh 248), "Owing to a mistake by its compiler, the Divyāvadāna also gives the final portion of the tale of the present relative to the Nāgakumārāvadāna, which is hardly comprehensible by itself . . ." In fact, at the end of that story, as Cowell and Neil (Divy 346n8) observe, "all the mss. add here 23 (for 24?)," indicating some discrepancy in ordering.

Citation

Rotman, Andy, trans. "The Story of Saṅgharakṣita, Part 1; The Story of a Young Nāga; and The Story of Saṅgharakṣita, Part 2." (Chaps 23–25.) In Divine Stories: Divyāvadāna, Part 2, 135–66. Classics of Indian Buddhism. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017.

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Works related to this item

1 Scholarship on

Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna [संघरक्षितावदान]. dge 'dun bsrungs kyi rtogs pa brjod pa [དགེ་འདུན་བསྲུངས་ཀྱི་རྟོགས་པ་བརྗོད་པ།]. [The Spiritual Biography of Saṃgharakṣita]. Translated by Sarvajñādeva, Dharmākara, Palgyi Lhünpo, Vidyākaraprabha, Kawa Paltsek, Yijing, Tao-shih. Kangyur, D1. http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=1-1&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

The following description of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna is an extract from: Vogel, Claus, and Klaus Wille, ed. and trans. The Pravrajyāvastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. Göttingen: Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden, 2014. http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil_elib/VoW014__Vogel_Wille_The_Pravrajyavastu_of_the_Mulasarvastivada_Vinaya.pdf. . . . Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna, that is, the legend of a merchant's son named Saṃgharakṣita, who, after entering the Buddhist congregation, happened to get into the submarine world of serpent-demons and, back on earth, to reach various places of recompense[9]. It is meant to illustrate the precept that a monk shall not teach the Law without request[10], which was violated in this case inasmuch as Saṃgharakṣita was deemed to have been kidnapped by the serpent-demons for the purpose of preaching[11]. The said precept was formulated by the Buddha in the context of another legend, the so-called Nāgakumārāvadāna, which treats of a serpent-demon having turned monk[12] and makes up, as it were, the frame story of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna, with the tale of the present preceding and that of the past succeeding it. The aim of this superordinate Avadāna is to exemplify the maxim that a so-called phantom creature — an animal able to transform itself into a human being — must be removed from the congregation[13].
      The whole former part of the Nāgakumārāvadāna and roughly the first quarter of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna have been lost in the original Sanskrit; they are, however, still extant in a Tibetan translation of the Vinayavastu dating from the latter half of the eighth century[14] and handed down in the Kanjur division of the Lamaist canon[15].
      The gap at the outset of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna may be filled in a measure by means of the Divyāvadāna, the celebrated Mūlasarvāstivāda-oriented compilation of Buddhist legends probably dating from the third century, chapters XXIII and XXV of which are a shortened version of the same Avadāna but in a form subsequently vitiated by errors and alterations[16]. Owing to a mistake by its compiler, the Divyāvadāna also gives the final portion of the tale of the present relative to the Nāgakumārāvadāna, which is hardly comprehensible by itself and hence caused many a difficulty of interpretation and classification[17].
      There are at least two canonical translations of the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. One introduces the fourth fascicle of the 出家事 Ch'u-chia shih[18]; done between 703 and 710 by I-ching, it sets in with the five hundred merchants sailing back to the seashore after Saṃgharakṣita's reappearance from the realm of serpent-demons[19]. The other is a separate sūtra from the time of the Eastern Chin dynasty (317-419) bearing the title 因緣僧護經 Yin–yüan Seng–hu ching[20]; it opens with a résumé of the tale of the present of the Nāgakumārāvadāna[21] and has the Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna proper start with the five hundred merchants making up their minds to go on a business voyage, and to ask Saṃgharakṣita to keep them company and teach them the Law[22]. The latter version, without the 'preamble', has been quoted almost in full by Tao-shih (d. 683) towards the close of fascicle 92 of his 法苑珠林 Fa yüan chu lin[23].