The Case of the Vanishing Poet: New Light on Śāntideva and the Śikṣā-samuccaya

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

One cannot deny the importance and usefulness of the works of Śāntideva as summary statements of Mahāyāna Buddhism in its fully developed 7th- or 8th-century form.[2] His Bodhicaryāvatāra (or Bodhisattvacaryāvatara) is especially well known, having exerted a strong influence on Tibetan formulations of the bodhisattva path, and has remained a favourite source of inspiration and instruction for followers of the Mahāyāna to this day. Not surprisingly, it spawned many commentaries — one survives in Sanskrit, 10 in Tibetan translation — and has continued to do so into the modem period, in which it has also been frequently translated.[3] Śāntideva's Śikṣā-samuccaya, on the other hand, has generated a much smaller literature. As one might expect, there are translations into Tibetan[4] and Chinese,[5] but virtually nothing in the way of commentaries.[6] While the Sanskrit text is well served by C. Bendall's editio princeps (Bendall 1897- 1902), the work tends to be accessed by most readers through the English translation made by Bendall himself with the help of W. H. D. Rouse, published in 1922.[7] Although excerpts from the Śikṣā-samuccaya (hereafter Śikṣ) translated by others appear in various anthologies,[8] the Bendall and Rouse version remains the only complete translation into a Western language. Yet this translation is frequently problematic, presumably due to Rouse's inability to finish the work to an appropriate standard after the death of Bendall in 1906, an "insufficiency for the task" which he frankly confesses in the preface. Mindful of the inadequacies of the Bendall and Rouse translation, and convinced that the riches of Śāntideva's anthology deserve to be displayed to better effect, J.-U. Hartmann and I have recently embarked on a new English version of the Śikṣ, which we have set about by attacking the work in different places. The present paper grows out of an attempt on my part to produce a draft translation of Chap. XIX, the final chapter, and records the unexpected consequences of an almost random decision to start at the end of the text rather than the beginning. (Harrison, "The Case of the Vanishing Poet," 215–216)

Notes

Note #1 is from the title. It reads: The research findings discussed in this article were first presented in public as part of a paper with a somewhat wider scope read at a conference held in Oxford in September 2004 to mark the retirement of R. Gombrich. This article, however, is the first publication in print of a discovery relating specifically to the verse portions of Śāntideva's Śikṣā-samuccaya. I wish to thank my colleagues A. Saitō and J.-U. Hartmann for their critical comments on an earlier draft, and A. Saitō in particular for generously sharing his research on the work of Śāntideva with me and for sending me inter alia an unpublished transcription of Chap. IX of the Dunhuang mss of the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra in Tibetan translation. Naturally, all errors, omissions and wild surmises remain my own responsibility. It is my pleasure to be able to dedicate this paper to M. Hahn, as a token of friendship and in recognition of his many contributions to the study of Buddhist verse.
The date of Śāntideva is given variously as 7th or 8th cent. Saitō (1993: 13) , for example, puts him at ca. 650-700, but revises this in Saitō 2001: 1 to ca. 690-750. Pezzali (1968: 38-40) reasons that the productive period of his life must have fallen in the years 685-763. In his critical review of Pezzali's work, De Jong (1975: 179 f.) expresses reservations about the arguments used to arrive at this conclusion.
See especially Crosby & Skilton 1996, and Wallace & Wallace 1997. For details of other versions and a comparative study of the merits of some of them, see Gómez 1999, which contains a useful bibliography.
bSlab pa kun las btus pa (Tōhoku 3940), translated in the early 9th cent. by Jinamitra, Dānaśīla and Ye shes sde. Hereafter referred to as ŚikṣTib. The version used is that of the Derge edition.
T. 1636, Dasheng ji pusa xue lun 大聲疾菩薩學論, a title that could perhaps be turned into Sanskrit as *Mahāyāna-bodhisattva-Śikṣāsamuccaya-sūstra. The work is ascribed to Facheng 法藏 (= Dharmakīrti?), and the translation was made by Fahu 法護 (= Dharmapāla?) et al. in the first half of the 11th cent. Hereafter referred to as ŚikṣChin.
See Bendall 1897-1902: viii-xiii for references.
Cecil Bendall & W. H. D. Rouse, tr., Śikṣā-samuccaya: A Compendium of Buddhist Doctrine. London 1922. Referred to in this paper as BR.
For details see Pfandt 1986: 94 f., 140f.

Citation

Harrison, Paul. "The Case of the Vanishing Poet: New Light on Śāntideva and the Śikṣā-samuccaya." In Indica et Tibetica: Festschrift für Michael Hahn, Zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden und Schülern überreicht, edited by Konrad Klaus and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, 215–48. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2007.

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1 Chapter or part of

Klaus, Konrad, and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, eds. Indica et Tibetica: Festschrift für Michael Hahn; Zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden und Schülern überreicht. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 66. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2007.

Books2007About this item

Nepal hat seit den siebziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts eine wichtige Rolle in der Laufbahn vieler deutscher Indologen und Tibetologen gespielt. Das Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project bot nicht nur einen zeitweiligen Arbeitsplatz, der es ermoglichte, in einem fill Forschungen aller Art ungemein fruchtbaren Umfeld Landeserfahrung zu sammeln; als gemeinsamer Bezugspunkt verband es auch alle diejenigen, die dort arbeiteten und forschten, und bot es den Jüngeren die Gelegenheit, femab der heimischen Begrenztheiten in unmittelbaren, oft sehr persönlichen Kontakt zu den Autoritäten innerhalb des eigenen Faches zu treten. Das daraus entstandene Beziehungsgeflecht hat die heutige deutsche Indologie durchaus mitgeprägt. So sind auch Michael Hahn und wir, die Herausgeber des vorliegenden Bandes, seit den gemeinsamen Tagen in Kathmandu, die nun schon bald 30 Jahre zurückliegen, durch feste Freundschaft verbunden.
      In jener Zeit in Nepal haben wir den Jubilar als äußerst kenntnisreichen und anregenden Gelehrten kennengelemt, der nicht müde wurde, uns Jüngeren, noch ganz am Anfang Stehenden etwas von der Faszination zu vermitteln, die ihm aus der Beschäftigung mit seinen Forschungsgegenständen erwuchs. Gleichzeitig verstand er es, durch seine offene und aufgeschlossene, Alters- und Wissensunterschiede ignorierende Art die Wurzeln für eine dauerhafte Freundschaft zu legen. Dafür und für all das, was wir seither an Anregung und Förderung von ihm erfahren haben, sind wir dankbar, und wir freuen uns, ihm mit dem vorliegenden Band wenigstens einen kleinen Teil jener Dankesschuld abstatten zu können.
      Wir haben davon abgesehen, den Band in einen engeren thematischen Rahmen zu stellen, etwa durch die Forderung nach einem Bezug zu Nepal oder die Beschränkung auf Beiträge zu den engeren Forschungsgebieten des Jubilars. Michael Hahn ist mit Kollegen aus vie len Bereichen unseres Faches in alter Welt verbunden, und selbst die Arbeiten seiner Schüler umfassen ein so weites Spektrum, daß uns eine thematische Öffnung sinnvoll und notwendig erschien, um niemanden seiner zahlreichen Freunde und Schüler von vomherein von der Mitwirkung an dem Band auszuschließen.
      Unser besonderer Dank gilt Herrn Dr. Helmut Eimer für sein sorgfaltiges Korrekturlesen. Herrn Peter Wyzlic, M. A., haben wir dafür zu danken, daß er stets mit Rat und Tat zur Seite stand, wenn es um die Lösung von Font-Problemen ging, insbesondere von solchen mit chinesischen und griechischen Zeichensätzen. Herr Prof. Dr. Ernst Steinkellner schlug uns vor, als seinen Beitrag zu der Festschrift den Band in die renommierte Reihe der Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde aufzunehmen, und diesem Vorschlag sind wir sehr gerne gefolgt. So danken wir ihm und den jetzigen Herausgebern, Frau Dr. Birgit Kellner, Herrn PD Dr. Helmut Krasser und Herrn Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher, fur die Veröffentlichung des Bandes in ihrer Reihe. (Die Herausgeber, preface, 7–8)

1 Scholarship on

Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Śikṣāsamuccaya [शिक्षासमुच्चय]. bslab pa kun las btus pa [བསླབ་པ་ཀུན་ལས་བཏུས་པ།]. [The Compendium of Training]. Tengyur, RKTST 3281 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3281&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

Śikṣāsamuccaya (T. Bslab pa kun las btus pa; C. Dasheng ji pusa xue lun; J. Daijōjū bosatsugakuron; K. Taesǔng chip posal hak non 大乘集菩薩學論). In Sanskrit, "Compendium of Training," a work by the eighth-century Indian Mahāyāna master Śāntideva. It consists of twenty-seven stanzas on the motivation and practice of the bodhisattva, including bodhicitta, the six perfections (pāramitā), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and the peace derived from the knowledge of emptiness (śūnyatā). The topic of each of the stanzas receives elaboration in the form of a prose commentary by the author as well as in illustrative passages, often quite extensive, drawn from a wide variety of Mahāyāna sūtras. Some ninety-seven texts are cited in all, many of which have been lost in their original Sanskrit, making the Śikṣāsamuccaya an especially important source for the textual history of Indian Buddhism. These citations also offer a window into which sūtras were known to a Mahāyāna author in eighth-century India. The digest of passages that Śāntideva provides was repeatedly drawn upon by Tibetan authors in their citations of sūtras. Although Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra and Śikṣāsamuccaya both deal with similar topics, the precise relation between the two texts is unclear. Several of the author's verses appear in both texts and some of the sūtra passages from the Śikṣāsamuccaya also appear in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. One passage in the Bodhicaryāvatāra also refers readers to the Śikṣāsamuccaya, but this line does not occur in the Dunhuang manuscript of the text and may be a later interpolation. (Source: "Śikṣāsamuccaya." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 821. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)