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Description
. . . 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].
Recensions
| Sanskrit | संघरक्षितावदान, Saṃgharakṣitāvadāna.
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| Tibetan | དགེ་འདུན་བསྲུངས་ཀྱི་རྟོགས་པ་བརྗོད་པ།, (dge 'dun bsrungs kyi rtogs pa brjod pa). In འདུལ་བ་གཞི་ལས། རབ་ཏུ་འབྱུང་བའི་གཞི། 'dul ba gzhi las/ rab tu 'byung ba'i gzhi (Vinayavastu Pravrajyāvastu). rKTs (Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies) Link: https://www.istb.univie.ac.at/kanjur/rktsneu/verif/verif2.php?id=1-1.
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