| 🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins | |
The Question of Rāṣṭrapāla
Book
Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.
Description
An English translation of Louis Finot's text of the Raṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (1901) containing a brief introduction. In English and Sanskrit (roman). Based on the author's doctoral thesis-Utrecht University, 1952.
Citation
Ensink, Jacob, trans. The Question of Rāṣṭrapāla. Zwolle, Neth.: J. J. Tijl, 1952.
Table of contents
- IntroductionIX
- The Language of RPXIII
- AbbreviationsXX
- The Question of Rāṣṭrapāla1
- Appendix I. Major Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (Tibetan Translation)60
- Appendix I. Minor Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (Tibetan Translation)126
- Minor Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā (Translated from the Tibetan)133
- Quotations from the Chinese translations in Chinese characters139
Interconnections
1 Full translation of
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.)
