Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahayana

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Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra

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Sutras (Tibetan)

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

Bodhisattvas of the Forest delves into the socioreligious milieu of the authors, editors, and propagators of the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra (Questions of Rastrapala), a Buddhist text circulating in India during the first half of the first millennium C.E. In this meticulously researched study, Daniel Boucher first reflects upon the problems that plague historians of Mahayana Buddhism, whose previous efforts to comprehend the tradition have often ignored the social dynamics that motivated some of the innovations of this new literature. Following that is a careful analysis of several motifs found in the Indian text and an examination of the value of the earliest Chinese translation for charting the sutra’s evolution.

The first part of the study looks at the relationship between the bodily glorification of the Buddha and the ascetic career—spanning thousands of lifetimes—that produced it within the socioeconomic world of early medieval Buddhist monasticism. The authors of the Rastrapala sharply criticize their monastic contemporaries for rejecting the rigorous lifestyle of the first Buddhist communities, an ideal that, for the sutra’s authors, self-consciously imitates the disciplines and sacrifices of the Buddha’s own bodhisattva career, the very career that led to his acquisition of bodily perfection. Thus, Boucher reveals the ways in which the authors of the Rastrapala co-opted this topos concerning the bodily perfection of the Buddha from the Mainstream tradition to subvert their co-religionists whose behavior they regarded as representing a degenerate version of that tradition.

In Part 2 Boucher focuses on the third-century Chinese translation of the sutra attributed to Dharmaraksa and traces the changes in the translation to the late tenth century. The significance of this translation, Boucher explains, is to be found in the ways it differs from all other witnesses. These differences, which are significant, almost certainly reveal an earlier shape of the sutra before later editors were inspired to alter dramatically the text’s tone and rhetoric. The early Chinese translations, though invaluable in revealing developments in the Indian milieu that led to changes in the text, present particular challenges to the interpreter. It takes an understanding of not only their abstruse idiom, but also the process by which they were rendered from an undetermined Indian language into a Chinese cultural product. One of the signal contributions of this study is Boucher’s skill at identifying the traces left by the process and ability to uncover clues about the nature of the source text as well as the world of the principal recipients.

Bodhisattvas of the Forest concludes with an annotated translation of the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra based on a new reading of its earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript. The translation takes note of important variants in Chinese and Tibetan versions to correct the many corruptions of the Sanskrit manuscript. (Source: University of Hawai'i Press)

Citation

Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra. Studies in the Buddhist Traditions. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008.

Publisher Link

https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/bodhisattvas-of-the-forest-and-the-formation-of-the-mahayana-a-study-and-translation-of-the-rastrapalapariprccha-sutra/

Table of contents

Acknowledgmentsvii
Abbreviationsix
Introductionxi

Part I: Asceticism and the Glorification of the Buddha’s Body:
The Indian Text of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra

Chapter One: The Physiognomy of Virtue3
Chapter Two: Former Life Narratives and the Bodhisattva Career20
Chapter Three: Wilderness Dwelling and the Ascetic Disciplines40
Chapter Four: "Profit and Honor”: A Critique of Sedentary Monasticism64

Part II: Indian Buddhism through a Chinese Lens:
Dharmarakṣa's Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra

Chapter Five: The Role of Translation in Reconstructing the Early Mahāyāna87
Chapter Six: Mistranslation and Missed Translation101

Part III: An Annotated Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra

One: Prologue113
Two: The Story of Puṇyaraśmi142

Notes171
Bibliography251
Index283

Interconnections

Works related to this item

1 Full translation of

Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchāsūtra [आर्यराष्ट्रपालपरिपृच्छानाममहायानसूत्र]. 'phags pa yul 'khor skyong gis zhus pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo [འཕགས་པ་ཡུལ་འཁོར་སྐྱོང་གིས་ཞུས་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ།]. [The Sūtra of Rāṣṭrapāla's Questions (84000)]. Translated by Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, Munivarman, Ye shes sde, Jñānagupta, Dānapāla, Dharmarakṣa. Kangyur, RKTSK 62 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=62&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (T. Yul 'khor skyong gis zhus pa; C. Huguo pusahui [jing]; J. Gokoku bosatsue[kyō]; K. Hoguk posal hoe [kyǒng] 護國菩薩會[經]). In Sanskrit, "The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla," one of the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras; the terminus ad quem for its composition is the third century CE, when Dharmarakṣa (c. 233–310) translated the sūtra into Chinese (c. 270 CE), probably following a manuscript from the Gandhāra region in the Kharoṣṭhī script. (The extant Sanskrit recension is much later.) There are also two later Chinese translations, one made c. 585–600 by Jnānagupta and other c. 980 by Dānapāla. The Raṣṭrapāla represents a strand of early Mahāyāna (found also in such sūtras as the Kāśyapaparivarta and the Ugraparipṛcchā) that viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation because of their need for constant fund-raising from the laity and their excessive entanglements in local politics. The Rāṣṭrapāla strand of early Mahāyāna instead dedicated itself to forest dwelling . . . away from the cities, like the "rhinoceros" (khaḍgaviṣāṇa), and advocated a return to the rigorous asceticism (S. dhūtaguṇa) . . . that was thought to characterize the early saṃgha. To the Rāṣṭrapāla author(s), the Buddha's own infinitely long career as a bodhisattva was an exercise in self-sacrifice and physical endurance, which they in turn sought to emulate through their own asceticism. The physical perfection the Buddha achieved through this long training, as evidenced in his acquisition of the thirty-two major marks of the superman (mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa), receives special attention in the sūtra. This approach is in marked contrast to other early Mahāyāna sūtras, such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, which were suspicious of the motives of forest dwellers and supportive of cenobitic monasticism in the towns and cities, where monks and nuns would be in a better position to serve the laity by preaching the dharma to them. (Source: "Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 700. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)

1 Scholarship on

Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchāsūtra [आर्यराष्ट्रपालपरिपृच्छानाममहायानसूत्र]. 'phags pa yul 'khor skyong gis zhus pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo [འཕགས་པ་ཡུལ་འཁོར་སྐྱོང་གིས་ཞུས་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ།]. [The Sūtra of Rāṣṭrapāla's Questions (84000)]. Translated by Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, Munivarman, Ye shes sde, Jñānagupta, Dānapāla, Dharmarakṣa. Kangyur, RKTSK 62 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=62&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (T. Yul 'khor skyong gis zhus pa; C. Huguo pusahui [jing]; J. Gokoku bosatsue[kyō]; K. Hoguk posal hoe [kyǒng] 護國菩薩會[經]). In Sanskrit, "The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla," one of the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras; the terminus ad quem for its composition is the third century CE, when Dharmarakṣa (c. 233–310) translated the sūtra into Chinese (c. 270 CE), probably following a manuscript from the Gandhāra region in the Kharoṣṭhī script. (The extant Sanskrit recension is much later.) There are also two later Chinese translations, one made c. 585–600 by Jnānagupta and other c. 980 by Dānapāla. The Raṣṭrapāla represents a strand of early Mahāyāna (found also in such sūtras as the Kāśyapaparivarta and the Ugraparipṛcchā) that viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation because of their need for constant fund-raising from the laity and their excessive entanglements in local politics. The Rāṣṭrapāla strand of early Mahāyāna instead dedicated itself to forest dwelling . . . away from the cities, like the "rhinoceros" (khaḍgaviṣāṇa), and advocated a return to the rigorous asceticism (S. dhūtaguṇa) . . . that was thought to characterize the early saṃgha. To the Rāṣṭrapāla author(s), the Buddha's own infinitely long career as a bodhisattva was an exercise in self-sacrifice and physical endurance, which they in turn sought to emulate through their own asceticism. The physical perfection the Buddha achieved through this long training, as evidenced in his acquisition of the thirty-two major marks of the superman (mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa), receives special attention in the sūtra. This approach is in marked contrast to other early Mahāyāna sūtras, such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, which were suspicious of the motives of forest dwellers and supportive of cenobitic monasticism in the towns and cities, where monks and nuns would be in a better position to serve the laity by preaching the dharma to them. (Source: "Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 700. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)