JIABS 31.1-2

JIABSJournal of the International

Association of Buddhist Studies

Volume 31 Number 12 2008 (2010)

The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (ISSN 0193-600XX) is the organ of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Inc. As a peer-reviewed journal, it welcomes scholarly contributions pertaining to all facets of Buddhist Studies. JIABS is published twice yearly. Manuscripts should preferably be submitted as e-mail attachments to: [email protected] as one single le, complete with footnotes and references, in two dierent formats: in PDF-format, and in Rich-Text-Format (RTF) or OpenDocument-Format (created e.g. by Open Oce). Address books for review to: JIABS Editors, Institut fr Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Prinz-EugenStrasse 810, A-1040 Wien, AUSTRIA Address subscription orders and dues, changes of address, and business correspondence (including advertising orders) to: Dr Jrme Ducor, IABS Treasurer Dept of Oriental Languages and Cultures Anthropole University of Lausanne CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland email: [email protected] Web: http://www.iabsinfo.net Fax: +41 21 692 29 35 Subscriptions to JIABS are USD 55 per year for individuals and USD 90 per year for libraries and other institutions. For informations on membership in IABS, see back cover. Cover: Cristina Scherrer-Schaub Font: Gandhari Unicode designed by Andrew Glass (http://andrewglass.org/ fonts.php) Copyright 2010 by the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Inc. Print: Ferdinand Berger & Shne GesmbH, A-3580 Horn

EDITORIAL BOARDKELLNER Birgit KRASSER Helmut Joint Editors BUSWELL Robert CHEN Jinhua COLLINS Steven COX Collet GMEZ Luis O. HARRISON Paul VON HINBER Oskar JACKSON Roger JAINI Padmanabh S. KATSURA Shry KUO Li-ying LOPEZ, Jr. Donald S. MACDONALD Alexander SCHERRER-SCHAUB Cristina SEYFORT RUEGG David SHARF Robert STEINKELLNER Ernst TILLEMANS Tom

JIABSJournal of the International Association of Buddhist StudiesVolume 31 Number 12 2008 (2010)

Obituaries Jonathan A. SILK In memoriam, Erik Zrcher (13 Sept. 1928 7 Feb. 2008) . . . . . . 3 Articles Diwakar ACHARYA Evidence for Mahyna Buddhism and Sukhvat cult in India in the middle period Early fth to late sixth century Nepalese inscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Early Chinese Buddhist translationsContributions to the International Symposium Early Chinese Buddhist Translations, Vienna 18 21 April, 2007

Guest editor: Max Deeg Max DEEG Introduction 79

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Max DEEG Creating religious terminology A comparativeapproach to early Chinese Buddhisttranslations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Hubert DURT Early Chinese Buddhist translations Quotations from the early translations in anthologies of the sixth century . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Toru FUNAYAMA The work of Paramrtha: An example of Sino-Indian crosscultural exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

2

Contents

Andrew GLASS Guabhadra, Boyn, and the Sayuktgama . . . . . . . . . . 185 Paul HARRISON Experimental core samples of Chinese translations of two Buddhist Stras analysed in the light of recent Sanskrit manuscript discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Elsa I. LEGITTIMO Reopening the Maitreya-les Two almost identical early Maitreya stra translations in the Chinese Canon: Wrong attributions and text-historical entanglements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Jan NATTIER Who produced the Da mingdu jing (T225)? A reassessment of the evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Jungnok PARK () A new attribution of the authorship of T5 and T6 Mahparinirvastra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Jonathan A. SILK The Jifayue sheku tuoluoni jing Translation, non-translation, both or neither?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Stefano ZACCHETTI The nature of the Da anban shouyi jing T 602 reconsidered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 ZHU Qingzhi On some basic features of Buddhist Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Book review Tsunehiko SUGIKI David B. Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra (The Discourse of r Heruka): A Study and Annotated Translation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 Notes on the contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

543

In memoriam Erik Zurcher(13 September 1928 - 7 February 2008)

Jonathan A. Silk

Erik Zurcher was born in Utrecht, in the center of the Netherlands, where he was educated through secondary schooP Although he originally intended to study Egyptology, when he came to the University of Leiden he began the study of Sinology with Gan Tek Chiang, later curator for the Chinese department of the National Museum of Ethnology (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) in Leiden. Zurcher was soon invited to join more advanced classes with Jan Julius Lodewijk (J. J. L.) Duyvendak (1889-1954). During this time his interests in art led him to Sweden, where he worked with Osval Siren (1879-1966), this resulting in one of his first publications, "Imitation and Forgery in Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy," Oriental Art (1956): 141-156. Later he was to publish a few other papers also concerned with art and material culture, although this never became a major research interest. At Leiden1 I have been fortunate to be able to make use of a variety of materials including Stephen Teiser's Foreword to the third edition of Zurcher's Buddhist Conquest ("Social History and the Confrontation of Cultures"), Tim Barrett's "Erik Zurcher, 1928-2008: Buddhism and the European Understanding of China" (The China Quarterly 196 [December 2008]: 919-923), the memorial note by my colleague Barend ter Haar found at http://www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/medewerkers/forum/index-l08/im-zurcherengl-108.html, and the remarks of Wilt Idema in Levensberichten en herdenkingen 2009 of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen,2009): 100-108.

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 31 Number 1-2 2008 (2010) pp. 3-22

4

Jonathan A. Silk

Zurcher worked under Duyvendak's successor, tp.e historian Anthony Francois Paulus Hulsewe (1910-1993), who served as his doctoral supervisor. In 1961 Zurcher himself took up what had been the chair of Colonial History, renamed "Far Eastern History, in particular the contacts between East and West." Important formative influences included Zurcher's study in Paris with Paul Demieville (1894-1979) and his friendship, if not rivalry, with Jacques Gernet, whose interests were so very similar to his own in many respects. From 1976 to 1992 Zurcher was co-editor together with Getnet of T'oung Pao, which had always been a joint Leiden-Paris effort, and remains the oldest continuously published sinological journal. In the preface to his Buddhist Conquest of China (see below), Zurcher also mentioned his appreciation of his "honoured friends Et[ienne] Balazs ... and P[iet] van der Loon" and his "commilitones A[rthur] F. Wright ... and L[eon] Hurvitz." These connections with the most excellent ranks of Sinologists and students of Chinese Buddhism were clearly important for his trajectory as a scholar. Zurcher was, among other things, a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (from 1975) and Correspondant etranger de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres in Paris (from 1985), and his close connections with the tradition of French sinology are thus obvious in mUltiple dimensions. It is impossible to come to terms with any full scholarly life, certainly that of a great scholar like Zurcher, in the few words alloted for a memorial, and the bare facts of his career offer little hint to Zurcher's impact on his chosen fields of study. One thing to be made clear is that, despite the contributions discussed below, Zurcher himself would not have characterized his field as Buddhist Studies pur sang, but rather perhaps as Chinese History, with a focus on the integration and naturalization of the foreign into Chinese culture. In particular, at least in so far as they are preserved in the form of written documents, Zurcher's scholarly interests were almost equally split between (earlier) Chinese Buddhism and Christianity in China. Here I will attempt nothing more than a brief appreciation of his contributions to the field of Chinese Buddhism. 2 The

2

For an appraisal focused on Zurcher's work on Christianity in

Erik Ziircher (13 Sept. 1928 - 7 E::b. 2008)

5

importance of these contributions may be capsulized by saying that they were, in a much overused but here entirely apt characterization, seminaL They are represented, however, relatively sparsely: one monograph, a small general book, a volume of translation and some thirty papers. But oh, what a monograph! This study, with which he launched his career, is of course the monumental The Buddhist Conquest of China, being his doctoral thesis, first published in 1959 and reprinted in 1972 and 2007. 3 The main theme of Zurcher's research was cultural interaction, which in the case of Buddhism meant the ways in which this foreign religion found, or forged, a home in China. Or perhaps this is the wrong way to put it for Zurcher, since he was not interested in seeing the process - pace the provocative title of his book - from the point of view of the foreign invaders, as it were, but on the contrary squarely from the side of the Chinese themselves. 4 As will be men-

China, see Nicolas Standaert, "Erik Zurcher's Study of Christianity in Seventeenth-Century China: An Intellectual Portrait." In the press in China Review International 15/4 (2010): 472-502. 3 These are referred to by the publisher as new editions, but in fact are virtually identical as far as content is concerned, only the typography having been updated: in the second edition Zurcher's elegant but poorly reproduced calligraphy was replaced with type-set Chinese characters; in the third edition the whole text is reset and the romanization changed to Pinyin, but the pagination is retained. It is a pity that this recent reprint appears not as the original in two volumes, with text and notes separated, but in a single binding, making reference to the extensive notes laborious. 4 From another point of view, see also Arthur Wright's comment in his review of Buddhist Conquest (see 2d in the list of publications): "The title is surely a misnomer, for this is a close and careful study of two cultures - Chinese and Buddhist - interacting with one another, with neither, at the period's end, 'conquering' the other. I doubt that military metaphor is ever applicable to studies of culture contact and acculturation. It certainly is not here." Zurcher was not altogether unaware of this imbalance of his study. In the preface to the 1972 reprint, he wrote: "The reader may feel that in describing the process of acculturation I have somewhat overstressed the Chinese side. The reader is right: it takes two to acculturate. More stress

6

Jonathan A. Silk

tioned below, he found the contrast with the case of Christianity in China interesting and challenging. Zurcher approach~d both sets of questions of acculturation (or 'inculturation,' although he did not use this missiological term, as far as I have noticed) entirely from the side of reception. He paid careful attention to early ChInese translations of Buddhist scriptures, for example, but even in his grammatical discussions almost never entered into considerations . of the sources the Chinese (or Central Asian) translators were attempting to render, although he could not avoid such obvious 'issues as the introduction of mid-sentence vocatives, previously unknown in Chinese and appearing only as a calque on Indic sentence order. This concentration on the Chinese reception of Buddhism yields many advantages, but at least as far as translation goes, one cannot escape the conclusion that a rather great deal may be learned by studying both the input as well as the output of the process, as it were, as recent work by Seishi Karashima and Stefano Zacchetti, for instance, attempts to do. It is worth noting that both of these scholars benefitted from Zurcher's advice. Although he did touch upon later Chinese Buddhism in some publications, the lion's share of Zurcher's attention was devoted to the earlier periods, with the fifth century a tacit upper limit (and he more than once explicitly limited his interest to the period between the first and fifth centuries). The primary thrust of Zurcher's research was to build up, stone by stone, as comprehensive a mosaic of early Chinese Buddhism as possible. He began this effort with his Buddhist Conquest of China which was, however, as he acknowledged, largely concerned with literate, socially and politically prominent elites. In his Foreword to the 2007 reprint, Stephen Teiser wrote (p. xv):The most important sources come from two classes of Chinese Buddhist writing. One class consists of the early biographies of famous monks and nuns and a history of the formation of the Chinese Tripitaka. The second class is what ZUrcher terms "early apologetic

could have been given to the 'donor' side - the way in which the foreign missionaries consciously or unconsciously responded to the Chinese public and its demands."

Erik Zurcher (13 Sept. 1928 - 7 Feb. 2008)

7

and propagandistic literature," that is, works written by Buddhist devotees, both lay and monastic, designed to defend the faith from the criticisms of its cultured despisers .... [W]e should pause to note what Zurcher is leaving out and to appreciate the weight of the unannounced tradition that he is arguing against. Zurcher intentionally ignores the great number of texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon that were translated during this period from Sanskrit and other Indian languages. As Zurcher writes elsewhere, the canon is an embarrassment of riches; its sheer volume seems to suggest how well it represents Chinese Buddhism. Teiser's points here are, first, that Zurcher's sources belong to the small slice of elites at the top of the Buddhist pyramid, second that the texts in question are mostly self-consciously propagandistic, and last that he turns away for the most part from translations in favor of native compositions. It could certainly be argued that to a very great extent these choices alone strongly determined the kind of picture Zurcher was able to paint. Teiser goes on to point out hOw reliant Zurcher is on the work of the Chinese scholar Tang Yongtong ~ffl~ and his History of Buddhism during the Han, Wei, Two lin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties (Han Wei Liangjin Nanbeichao fojiao shi >lft mElmjc'A{~fj(~), published in 1938. But he concludes, interestingly (p. xix): In the end, I believe that Zurcher's reliance on Tang's work is in fact a strength. As an in-depth, modern guide through the complexities and problems of the primary sources, Tang's book remains the indispensable starting point for any serious work in early Chinese Buddhism. Zurcher's use of Tang is a testament to the interconnections between two great traditions of modern scholarship, both a sign of the past and an augur for the future. 5

5 It should further be pointed out that unlike the work of Tang or the Japanese scholar Tsukamoto Zenryfi ~*~~, Zurcher was compelled not to quote his sources in the original Chinese but to offer an interpretation in the medium of translation, a far from trivial task with such difficult materials. From this point of view, even a mere translation of Tang's study, along the lines perhaps of Hurvitz's rendering of Tsukamoto's Chugoku Bukkyo Tsushi $1lI{~~lm~ (1968) as A History

8

Jonathan A. Silk

Teiser further points out that "since 1959 no original work in a western language broadly covering the same period of Chinese Buddhist history has been published." This is certainly due to several factors - the excellence of Zurcher's book, a growing recognition of the availability of previously unexplored sources (niuch of this awareness in its turn thanks to Zurcher's own further studies), and an appreciation of the difficulty of such comprehensive surveys. For, tackling big questions requires big theoretical assumptions, which are out of favor in some quarters these days, especially among the more philologically minded who dare to delve into the very difficult old materials which provide the fodder for such research. Teiser devotes a number of pages of his Foreword to criticism of Zurcher's book, some of which concerns these very theories. In this respect, one point of interest is that although Teiser notes in his bibliography Arthur Wright's review of Buddhist Conquest, implicitly noted by Zurcher himself in his 1972 Preface when he avers that he would not again use the term 'gentry,' for example, Teiser does not anywhere actually refer to Wright's review, nor, as far as I know, did Zurcher himself explicitly acknowledge the sometimes detailed critiques his book evoked from Wright and others. He did write in the 1972 edition: "It goes without saying that a new version would bear the marks of beneficial criticism, made by masters and colleagues in reviews and personal correspondence," and the reprint contains two pages of corrections of Zhou Yiliang (hidden after the index). But G. E. Sargent's corrections of Zurcher's translations, for instance, are passed over in silence by all concerned. This, however, certainly does not mean that Zurcher considered the work begun in Buddhist Conquest completed by that work. In fact, he evidently regarded this study as a mere beginning, in part because of the range of materials which it considered; he more than once characterized the types of information available from

of Early Chinese Buddhism, From Its Introduction to the Death of Huiyuan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985), would have constituted a substantial contribution. What Zurcher accomplished is, however, much more than this.


9

written sources as not only biased but distorted out of all proportion. But such "official" sources of information are not in fact the only ones available. A similar distinction has been pointed out vividly for a later period by the lamented Antonino Forte in hi.s review of Stanley Weinstein's Buddhism Under the T'ang, in which Forte praises Weinstein for exhausting traditional sources, but critiques him for, inter alia, ignoring other materials,6 many of which Forte himself mined to such brilliant ends. For the earlier periods under Zurcher's lens, however, even such unofficial materials are rarely available; how can one learn to see the invisible? His thesis seems to have taken the wind out of Zurcher's sails, and through the 1960s and most of the 1970s he published very little on Buddhism, save a couple of general surveys. He was not idle, however, and the next decades reveal the fruit of his work (and of course, he was extremely active on other fronts during this period, including initiating the highly successful Documentation and Research Center for Contemporary China). In 1980 Zurcher published his survey "Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism: A Survey of Scriptural Influence," followed quickly by "Eschatology and Messianism in Early Chinese Buddhism" and '''Prince Moonlight': Messianism and Eschatology in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism." These papers reveal more than Zurcher's vast reading in the Daoist canon (of which he seems to have made little use thereafter). While they certainly stand as a contribution to Daoist Studies, I read them differently. I think they mark the first sustained effort to try to overcome the horrible imbalance Zurcher lamented in his evidence about early Chinese Buddhism. The problem to which he returned again and again is how to squeeze from sources which do not explicitly deal with Buddhism information nevertheless relevant to its reception in China. In early texts of Daoism he thought he found a way to backlight, as it were, the types of concerns which could only have shone or reflected onto Daoist surfaces from otherwise invisible Buddhist faces. In other words, what he looked for in seeking out Buddhist6

Toung Pao, 2nd Series, 75/4-5 (1989): 317-324.

10

Jonathan A. Silk

influences on Daoism were Buddhist elements in contemporary Chinese society which left no palpable trace elsewhere. Almost as with the fossilized impression of a dinosaur's skin left in mud, Zurcher sought in these papers to learn about Buddhism by studying the impressions it made on another object, in this case, the formative thought of Daoism. Few efforts have been made to follow up this methodological insight. Despite his rather clear, if tacit, presupposition of the nature of correCt and proper normative Buddhism, Zurcher is especially interested in what he does not find reflected in Daoist texts: the "complete absence of typically scholastic terminology" indicates "a very low level of doctrinal sophistication" (Buddhist Influence p. 119). "Taoism," he writes further, "was not influenced by 'professional' Buddhism, but through the distorting and simplifying filter of lay Buddhism; we must assume that the human contacts which formed the channel of transmission must not be sought in the monasteries or the ch'ing-t'an salons where learned monks were present to explain the doctrine ... but rather in lay society where Taoists and Buddhist devotees met. ..." (p. 143). This leads him to conclude (p. 146) that "the selection of Buddhist ideas, particularly at the level of complex borrowings that we find in Taoist literature, gives a very valuable clue as to what ideas were the 'focal points' in Buddhism with the strongest appeal - so strong that they could influence Chinese thought beyond the limits of the Buddhist community and be accepted by its greatest riva1." He immediately continues:But if we agree with the conclusion drawn above, that Taoism in fact got its Buddhist impulses from lay Buddhism, the information is even more valuable. We actually know very little about that sector of Buddhist religion in mediaeval China .... It could well be that a more detailed analysis of Buddhist complexes mirrored in Taoist literature could teach us much about contemporary lay Buddhism, in spite of all misunderstandings and distortions. But perhaps such misunderstandings and distortions were also widely spread among the simple Buddhist believers themselves. Perhaps we are - as so often happens - handicapped by the fact that we can only observe Buddhism and Taoism at the very highest level, that of the religious "professionals" and their written texts - the tops of two pyramids. We may consider the possibility that at a lower level the bodies of the pyramids merged


11

into a much less differentiated lay religion, and that at the very base both systems largely dissolved into an indistinct mass of popular beliefs and practices.

In his studies on eschatology, Zurcher directed his attention to materials which either fell below the radar of the official arbiters of Buddhist norms, or which were actively suppressed by them. He linked these in a number of cases to the Buddho-Daoist substrate which he postulated to run beneath, as it were, the high traditions as a common river. And this pattern can be detected in other studies as well, although perhaps not in exactly the same manner. For example, Zurcher devoted a number of studies to the earliest translations and translators. On the one hand, this topic involves the court and official sanction or canonization of translations. At the same time, much translation, and other scripture production, as withcertain eschatological texts, took place outside of and alongside official channels. Zurcher's interest in these translations extended to the language in which they were composed, and while it is hard to say which came first, this interest in the translations as preserving evidence of the early sources of Chinese Buddhism also proved to be a key to thinking about early vernacular Chinese language. The way in which texts were rendered from foreign tongues by those outside the educated literate elite allowed Zurcher to speculate that it is possible to discern traces of "the living language of second century Loyang" among these earliest works by An Shigao and a few others. The problems were naturally not only linguistic; as Zurcher says in ''A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts" (p. 278), "The question will be to what extent, and in what ways, these archaic translations can be made to yield information about the intellectual and social context of the very first stage of Chinese Buddhism." I mentioned above that despite few publications on Buddhism during this period, Zurcher was evidently not idle during the 1960s and 1970s. One fruit of this period remains almost unknown, and might even appear to be a non-scholarly product. That is his Ret leven van de Boeddha (Life of the Buddha) of 1978. Published in a popular series, without a single Chinese character in evidence, this is nevertheless a monument of learning, an integral translation of

12

Jonathan A. Silk

the Xiuxing benqi jing ~~1'T.2/=m~ (T. 184) and Zhpng benqi jing c:p.2/=m.i[ (T. 196), the two-part hagiography dating to the second century. That this work remains nearly unknown is due, without doubt, entirely to the fact that it is written in Dutch. It is impossible to discuss all of Zurcher's papers here, of course.? Nevertheless, it is good to draw attention to his important remarks on "Buddhism and Education in T'ang Times" and "Buddhist Art in Medieval China: The Ecclesiastical View," subjects which are hardly noticed by other scholars, or at least not by scholars sufficiently equipped to deal with them. (Recent publications on Chinese Buddhist art, at least by scholars writing in English, seem all too frequently to highlight the vast chasm separating those who specialize in visual culture from those trained to read written sources. Scholarship by the fonner in particular sometimes contains statements that make a textual scholar cringe.) I referred above to Zurcher's parallel interest in Christianity in China. These two interests were clearly not distinct for him and, on the largest scale, they form two poles, as it were, of a common problem. In fact, Zurcher explicitly confronts this issue in a short but extremely interesting paper translated into English as "The Spread of Buddhism and Christianity in Imperial China: Spontaneous Diffusion Versus Guided Propagation." Here Zurcher attempts to understand why it is that the foreign religion Buddhism succeeded in implanting itself in Chinese soil, and why Christianity, in the form of Roman Catholicism, failed. Zurcher's conclusion is as follows:We find a whole range of contrasts and oppositions. Spontaneous infiltration versus guided introduction. Unprepared roaming monks versus well-trained missionaries. Monastery versus church and mission house. Free Buddhist laity versus bound Christian converts. Pluriformity versus uniformity. Indigenous sources of income versus external funding. Homogenous status versus a broken, dissonant role

7 A more comprehensive version of the present short appreciation will be included as the introduction to the volume I am now editing in which most of these papers will be reprinted; it will be published from Brill in the near future.

Erik ZUrcher (13 Sept. 1928 - 7 Feb. 2008)

13

pattern. Many oppositions, that yet have one thing in common: they all are related to the character of the Jesuit mission as a guided process. And that is the great paradox. Planning and guidance were factors of weakness, whereas Buddhism was strengthened by the very absence of planning and central guidance, by its spontaneous and totally uncoordinated development.

There are naturally some topics which Zurcher intended to address but never did. In his "Eschatology and Messianism," for example (p. 42) he promises to examine theories of mofa ('decline of the teaching'), a project of which we hear no more. Perhaps the most disappointing loss is the apparent disappearance of a draft grammar of Kumarajlva's translation of the Lotus Sutra. I have been assured of its one-time existence by my colleague Barend ter Haar, but am so far unable to locate a copy. It must come as something of a surprise to realize that Zurcher only directed two doctoral theses on Buddhism, those of Barend ter Haar (published as The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History [1992]), and Valentina Georgieva, "Buddhist Nuns in China from the Six Dynasties to the Tang" (2000, regrettably still unpublished; the advisor was Tilmann Vetter, with Zurcher as co-advisor). Through his published writings, however, he leaves a much greater number of students around the world, who join with his more direct disciples in mourning his passing.

14

Jonathan A. Silk

Erik ZUrcher (Xu Lihe ~t:E.lfD /1959

it1f.fO)

1. "Zum Verhaltnis von Kirche und Staat in China wahrend der

Frtihzeit des Buddhismus." Saeculum 10/1: 73-81. 2. The Buddhist Conquest of China: the Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Sinica Leidensia 11 (Leiden: E. J. Brill: 1959; 2nd ed. 1972; 3rd ed. 2007, with a new Foreword by Stephen Teiser, pp. xiii-xxxvii). . 2a. Japanese: Eriku Churuhya x- I) '/' T::L Iv 1:: -t' - , Bukkyo no Chugoku Denrai {b~G')r:pOO{~*. Trans. Tanaka Sumio ES r:pMl5lj, Watarai Akira 5M -:x:s'j~!MjJE,

in Guhanyu yanjiu cj~liJf% 2 (1997); 55-57. More recently, Zhang Chunxiu 5K~j', "Dui Xu Lihe jiaoshou 'Zuizao de fojing yiwenzhong de Donghan kouyu chengfen' yiwen de zaibuchong" :x]i,f:f"fD~~ {m!:!f.S/;J {5I!3~~:x:cps/;J*&Di.gRX::51-> -:x:s/;Jf!fW3'E, in Hechi xueyuan xuebao 5EJ 5fu~~J'G~f~ 28/1 (2008).


17

the Sinological Institute of Leyden University, December 8-12, 1980 (Leiden: E. J. Brill): 34-56.

1982 12. "'Prince Moonlight': Messianism and Eschatology in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism." T'oung Pao 67: 1-75. 13. "Perspectives in the Study of Chinese Buddhism." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1982: 161-176. 14. "Chinese Chan and Confucianism." In: H. Brinker, R. P. Kramers, C. Ouwehand, eds., Zen in China, Japan, East Asian Art. Swiss Asian Studies. Research Studies 8 (Bern: Peter Lang): 29-46. 1984 15. '''Beyond the Jade Gate': Buddhism in China, Vietnam and Korea." In: Heinz Bechert and Richard Gombrich, eds., The World of Buddhism (New York: Facts on File. Reprint: NY: Thames and Hudson, 1995): 193-211. 15a. German: "Buddhismus in China, Korea und Vietnam." Der Buddhismus: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich: c.ll. Beck, 1989): 215-251. Trans. Siglinde Dietz.1985 16. "Maha-CIna: la n~interpretation bouddhique de l'histoire de la Chine." Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Comptes Rendus des seances de l'annee 1985 Juillet-Octobre, 477-492.

1987 17. "Buddhism in China." In: Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan): 2.414a-421a. 17a. Reprinted in Joseph M. Kitagawa and Mark D. Cummings, eds., Buddhism in Asian History (New York: Macmillan, 1989): 139-150. 17b. "II buddhismo in Cina." In: Giovanni Filoramo, ed., Storia delle religioni 4. Religioni dell'India e dell'Estremo Oriente (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996): 369-410. This in its tum was reprinted in Giovanni Filoramo, ed., Buddhismo (Bari: Laterza, 2001): 185-236. This appears to be an augmented Italian translation the encyclopedia entry. 18. '~mitabha." In: Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan): 1.235a-237b. 2nd ed., Lindsay Jones, ed., (Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2005) 1.291a-293a.

18

Jonathan A. Silk 19. "Buddhism, Schools of: An Overview." In: M}rcea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan): 2.440a444a. 20. "Buddhist Missions." In: Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan): 9.570a-573b.

1988 21. "China, boeddhisme en christendom: spontane en geleide expansie." Streven 55: 913-925. 1989 22. "Buddhism and Education in T'ang Times." In: Wm. Theodore De Bary et aI., eds., Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (Berkeley: University of California Press): 19-56. 23. "The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Culture in an Historical Perspective." In: Tadeusz Skorupski, ed., The Buddhist Heritage. Papers Delivered at the Symposium of the Same Name Convened at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, November 1985 (Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies): 117-128. 1990 24. "Han Buddhism and the Western Regions." In: W. L. !dema and E. Zurcher, eds., Thought and Law in Qin and Han China: Studies Dedicated to Anthony Hulsewe on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday. Sinica Leidensia 24 (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 158-182. 24a. Chinese: "Handai fojiao yu xiyu" ~{-t{~~:Wj2t~. Trans. Wu Xuling ~~~~. Guoji Hanxue ~~~~~ 2 (1998): 291310. 25. "Bouddhisme et christianisme." In: E. Zurcher, Bouddhisme, Christianisme et societe chinoise (Paris: Julliard): 11-42. 25a. Dutch: See 21 above. 25b. English: "The Spread of Buddhism and Christianity in Imperial China: Spontaneous Diffusion Versus Guided Propagation." In: China and the West (Proceedings of the International Colloquim Held in the Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie, Brussels, November 23-25, 1987). Brussels: Paleis der Academien, 1993: 9-18.


19

26. "Religieuses et couvents dans 1'imcien bouddhisme chinois." In: idem, 43-94. 1991 27. "A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts." In: Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen, eds., From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Prof Jan Yiin-hua (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic): 277-304. 27a. Chinese: "Guan yu chuqi hanyi fojing de xin sikao" ~m~*)] :!tIj~i~{~Mm~!FJf}(SI,~. Trans. Gu Manlin Rm:)jl0#. Hanyushi yanjiujikan ~~g1:liJf3E$fU 4 (2001): 286-312. 28. "Buddhismus in China: Die Grenzen der Innovation." In: S.N. Eisenstadt, ed., Kulturen der Achsenzeit I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp): 199-232. 1995 29. "Obscure Texts on Favourite Topics: Dao'an's anonymous scriptures." In: Helwig Schmitt-Glintzner, ed., Das andere China: Festschrift flir Wolfgang Bauer zum 65. Geburtstag (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz): 161-181. 30. "Aliens and Respected Guests: The Role of Foreign Monks in Early Chinese Buddhism." Transactions of the International Conference of Eastern Studies 40: 67-92. 31. "Buddhist Art in Medieval China: The Ecclesiastical View." In: Karel R. van Kooij and H. van der Veere, eds. Function and Meaning in Buddhist Art: Proceedings of a Seminar Held at Leiden University 21-24 October 1991 (Groningen: Egbert Forst): 1-20. 1996 32. "Vernacular Elements in Early Buddhist Texts: An attempt to define the optimal source materials." In: Vernacularism in Medieval Chinese Texts. Sino-Platonic Papers 71: 1-31. 32a. Chinese: "Zaoqi fojing zhong de kouyu chengfen - queding zuijia yuancailiao de changshi" !f.:!tIj{~~CP8~D~~5t-Jii JE~{~~'@:;M*ot8~tf~, published as an appendix in the Renming Daxue dissertation of Zhu Guanming *ffitBA, Mohesengqilii qingtaidongci yanjiu ~~OJ{'I!r~a1.f'fJf~liJgiiJliJf3E (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe cp~~~Ut:BM&H, 2008). 33. Portions of "Ideologies and the First Universal Religions" (pp. 56-63), "Introduction" (pp. 483-484) and, with Fukui-Bunga Fu-

20

Jonathan A. Silk mimasa, "Early Medieval China" (pp. 508-517), in Joachim Herrmann and Erik ZUrcher, eds., History of Huma~ity: Scientific and Cultural Development. Volume III: From the Seventh Century BC to the Seventh Century AD (Paris: Unesco).

1997 34. "China." In: Karel R. van Kooij and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, eds., A Companion to Buddhist Art. An Introductory Course in Buddhist Art in Asia at Leiden University (Leiden: Werkgroep: . Niet-Westerne Kunst en MaterieIe Cultuur): 50-57. 1999 35. "Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Foreign Input." In: Collection of Essays 1993: Buddhism across Boundaries: Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions. Incorrectly listed as "by E. ZUrcher, Lore Sander and others." (Sanchung, Taiwan: FoGuang Cultural Enterprise Co.): 1-59. The volume is more correctly: Buddhism across Boundaries Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions, Collection of Essays 1993. Edited by John McRae and Jan Nattier (Taipei: Fo Guang Shan Foundation).2001 36. "Xu Guangqi and Buddhism." In: Catherine Jami, Peter M. Engelfriet and Gregory Blue, eds., Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) (Leiden: Brill): 155-169. 2002 37. "Tidings from the South: Chinese Court Buddhism and International Relations in the Fifth Century AD." In: Antonino Forte and Frederico Masini, eds., A Life Journey to the East: Sinological Studies in Memory of Giuliano Bertuccioli (1923-2001) (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies): 21-43. 2006 38. "Buddhist Chanhui and Christian Confession in SeventeenthCentury China." In: Nicolas Standaert and Ad Dudink, eds., Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series 55 (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag): 103-127.


21

Important Reviews1977 Richard Robinson, Early Madhyamika in India and China (1967). Indo-Iranian lournal19: 122-124. 1978

Melanges de sinologie offerts a Monsieur Paul Demieville. II (1974). T'oung Pao 64: 114-115, 117-120, 122-124.1996 Timothy Brook, Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (1993). Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39/4: 468-471. 1997 Kuo Li-ying, Confession et Contrition dans Ie bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe si(xle (1994). T'oung Pao 83/1-3: 207-212. 1998 Antonino Forte, The Hostage An Shigao and his Offspring: An Iranian Family in China (1995). T'oung Pao 84/1-3: 173-177.

. Volumes offered in Zurcher's honorChina's Modernisation: Westernisation and Acculturation. Kurt Werner Radtke and Tony Saich, eds. (Mtinchener Ostasiatische Studien 67) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993). Conflict and Accommodation in Early Modern East Asia: Essays in Honour of Erik ZUrcher. Leonard Blusse and Harriet T. Zurndorfer, eds. (Sinica Leidensia 29) (Leiden: Brill, 1993). Words from the West. Western Texts in Chinese Literary Context. Essays to Honor Erik ZUrcher on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Lloyd Haft, ed. (CNWS publications 16) (Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Studies, 1993). From ClassicalfLI to "Three Inches High": Studies on Chinese in Honor of Erik ZUrcher. IC.P. Liang and R.P.E. Sybesma, eds. (Leuven-Apeldoom: Garant, 1993). Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Eduard B. Vermeer, ed. (Sinica Leidensia 22) (Leiden: E.I Brill,

22

Jonathan A. Silk

1990). [Proceedings of a seminar held in 1986 to celebrate the 25 th anniversary of Zurcher's appointment to the chair in Chinese history.] Function and Meaning in Buddhist Art: Proceedings of a Seminar Held at Leiden University 21~24 October 1991. Karel R. van Kooij and H. van def Veere, eds. (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995). [Dedicated "To the happiness and well-being of Erik Zurcher."]

Evidence for Mahayana Buddhism and . SukhavatI cult in India in the middle periodEarly fifth to late sixth century Nepalese inscriptions* Diwakar Acharya

During the last three decades, the perception of Indian Buddhism in the middle period has drastically changed. A few scholars have significantly contributed to bring about this change, and Gregory SCHOPEN is the foremost of them. He has surveyed and analysed large bodies of textual and epigraphical data. He has singled out inscriptions significant for the history of Indian Buddhism in India in the period from the beginning of the Common Era to the fifth/ sixth century, reflected upon them carefully, and matched the inscriptional evidence with textual evidence. In this way, he has convincingly demonstrated that "it is virtually impossible to characterise Indian Buddhism in the middle period ... as in any meaningful sense Mahayana" (p. 12).1 As he remarks, "the Mahayana in India, An abridged version of this paper was presented as a special lec-. ture under the title "Mahayana Buddhism and SukhavatI Cult in Ancient Nepal" at the 14th biennial conference of the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies held at Ryokoku University, Kyoto, in June 2009. I am grateful to Paul HARRISON, Shoryu KATSURA, Werner KNOBL, Jan NATTIER, Vincent TOURNIER, and Yuko YOKOCHI for their comments and valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. I would like to thank Arlo GRIFFITHS for improving my English and making valuable remarks . on the final draft.1 If not specified otherwise, all references to Schopen are from his 2005 collection Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India.

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 31' Number 1-2 2008 (2010) pp. 23-75

24

Diwakar Acharya

however, appears to have continued very much on the margins" (p. 11), and "however mainstream the early Mahayana was in China, it was in India constituted of a number of differentially marginalized minority groups" (p. 17). This clearly suggests that we need to pay proper attention to the Buddhist communities livIng in the marginal areas, including Nepal, while dealing with the history of Indian Buddhism of this period. However, Licchavi inscriptions from Nepal, many of them Buddhist, have not been carefully studied, though they have been published several times. SCHOPEN himself refers to two undated Nepalese inscriptions from the seventh century but misses other important ones. 2 So, in this article, I will present some inscriptions from the early fifth to the late sixth century that have not been rightly read and interpreted until now, and make a few observations here and there, attempting to analyse the data in the light of textual evidence. The earliest inscription from India which clearly refers to Amitabha Buddha is the Govindnagar inscription from the time of Huvi~ka, dated 26 of the Kani~ka era (equivalent to 104 or 153 CE), inscribed on the pedestal of an image of Buddha Amitabha. 3 This

2 After the publication of Dhanavajra VAJRACHARYA'S Nepali book on Licchavi inscriptions, all books on the topic are unoriginal; they rely on him for the reading and interpretation of inscriptions. REGMI (1983) who published these inscriptions with an English translation and notes has heavily relied on him. RICCARDI (1980) has tried in an article to study all available Licchavi inscriptions which have to do with the history of Buddhism but, materials being muddled, his study reveals very little and confuses more. Recently LEWIS (2004) has published a study on traces of the Sukhavatl cult in Newar society but, his starting point being SCHOPEN'S conclusions, the historical aspect of Sukhavatl has remained beyond his scope. In the same way, while writing the entry on Nepal in Encyclopedia of Buddhism, he has relied on earlier publications. 3 Though published several times, this inscription was not edited and interpreted properly before SCHOPEN. He reread and translated it in his 1987 paper (now included in his 2005 collection, pp. 247-277). In 1999, FUSSMAN published his own reading of the inscription with a translation which is different in a few places. FUSSMAN'S understanding of the date of the inscription is better than SCHOPEN'S; unlike the latter, he has not

Mahayana Buddhism and SukhavatI cult in India

25

is the first indirect evidence to the early phase of the Mahayana,

ignored 'va' before '2,' in the first line, and has rightly interpreted it as an abbreviation for var:;iimiisa, the rainy season. Otherwise, I find SCHOPEN'S reading more accurate. However, I am bothered with one thing in the second line of the inscription: the reading p[i]t[-x](~)[-x] and its interpretation as an instrumental singular of pitr. As SCHOPEN has stated, the upper parts of the ak:;aras are broken, leaving only the consonants certain, but the vowel sign on top of the first ak:;ara is still partially visible. So, SCHOPEN has conjectured the first ak:;ara as pi and suggested to read the word as pitn1ii. He himself, however, has noted a negative point against his suggestion: "pitrlJii in epigraphical sources has generally been interpreted as genitive plural" (p. 252). FUSSMAN has tried to get rid of this negative point by suggesting another reading, pite~a, keeping the meaning unchanged. On logical, contextual and palaeographical grounds, I see problems in accepting either one of these conjectures. I find it less likely that the donor is first introduced as the father of his son, and then as the grandson and son of his ancestors. We do not have any parallel for such a description. Instead, what is logically likely is that he is introduced as someone's great-grandson, grandson and son successively. We have parallels for such a description even from one of the Ku~al).a inscriptions from Mathura (Liiders 1961: 194-195, 162). However, this parallel is not from an inscription in Buddhjst Sanskrit but standard Sanskrit, and so, it does not help us to conjecture the word we need. Nevertheless, I propose that the donor is not the father of Sax-caka/Sancaka but a great-grandson. If we look at the undamaged pi in line 3, we can see that the sign of i starts on the top of the frontal bar of pa, extends to the right, curves in, and rises up turning counterclockwise and making a shape resembling to a swan's neck. Now if we look at the proposed pi in line 2, what we see is a stroke starting at the frontal bar of pa and extending to the left without rising up. This sign is very close to the sign of 0, so the ak:;ara at issue must be po. I present here both of these ak:;aras:

Altogether the word in the inscription seems to be potre~a which only means grandson, but the proper term in the language of the inscription should be papotrelJa. I see two possibilities: either we have a case of haplography, I mean, the first pa is dropped, or potra- itself is used here to

26

Diwakar Acharya

which is not referred to by name in Indian inscripti9ns until the late fifth and early sixth centuries. 4 According to SCHOPEN, "the earliest known [inscriptional] reference to Amitabha prior to the Govindnagar inscription occurred in a fragmentary slab inscription from Saiki ... dated to the end of the seventh century" (p. 247). This is not true. About a century before the Sanci inscription, a Nepalese inscription refers not only to Amitabha in Sukhavati but also to his attendant Bodhisattvas LokeSa and Mahasthamaprapta. Following the proper chronological order, I will deal with this inscription in detail as the last item in this article.I

A lady wants to get rid of her female nature In front of the Dha:rp.do caitya/Bhagavanthan in Chabahil (Kathmandu), there lies an important inscription which contains some clues hinting at the nature of Buddhism practiced in Nepal at the very beginning of the fifth century. This is the first half of an original inscription inscribed on the lotus baseS pedestal of a lost image of Mahamuni. 6 Unfortunately, the other half of the lotus is missing.mean great-grandson, when its original meaning is conveyed by another equivalent term niittika. 4 Schopen 2005: 11. However, in a mixed Indian and Chinese context such an inscriptional reference is found one century earlier (ibid. 13). S This inscribed base, which was placed earlier facing downward, serving as a support to a stone pillar used for offering lamps, in front of the west face of the caitya, is now turned into the right position since 2003, the time of renovation of the caitya. Now that the base was turned into the right position, it is possible to see part of a lotus rising above the base which was under the ground before. See photo on p. 27. 6 Mahi'imuni is generally regarded as an epithet of the historical Buddha, but the situation might be different in our inscription, and it might have been used as an independent substantive, like Sakyamuni, referring to the historical Buddha. When some donation is made to a newly consecrated temple and recorded in an inscription, the proper designation of the de-


27

It contained the other half of the inscription with the second half of each line including the year of the religious gift as well as the name of the then ruling king? On palaeographical grounds, VAJRACHARYA

ity in that temple is used, not an adjective. So, there is a high chance that the image of the Buddha referred to in our inscription was worshipped as Mabamuni. It is noteworthy that the second Bahubuddhasiitra from the Mahavastu records Mahamuni as one of the Buddhas (SENART 1897: 230). Also in the versified core of the Dasabhiimika section of the Mahavastu, the name Sakyamuni is used in a similar way, where Sakyamuni is used only once but Mabamuni 15 times. See also fn. 31. 7 VAJRACHARYA relates this inscription to the lime-washed white caitya in front of which it is currently placed. However, the inscription itself does not speak of any caitya/stiipa but of an image of Mahamuni and a community of the nobles (aryasmigha). It appears clear to me that the lime-washed caitya surrounded by several votive caityas and more than one Buddha image was in the south end of a larger vihara complex. The vihara in an inverted V-shape opening to the caitya, which must have suffered damage and got repaired several times in later periods, is now occupied by the Pashupati Mitra High School. A narrow motorable road separates the caitya and present-day school. The school has built new buildings in place of the old ones on one side and rebuilt the old buildings with additional floors on the other sides. Hopefully the original foundation is not yet completely destroyed. The complex also suffered loss to the east side by the construction of the Ring Road; at that

28

Diwakar Acharya

makes this inscription the first inscription in his book of Licchavi inscriptions arranged in chronological order. And more, following late chronicles, he suggests that it can be dated to the time of Manadeva's great grandfather Vf$adeva, who is described as 'siding with Buddhism' (sugatailsanapak~apiltl) in an eighth century inscription of King Jayadeva and late chronicles. There are in fact some clues in the inscription itself which can help us to guess at its time. First, donative formulas in Licchavi inscriptions after King Manadeva's time never begin' with the expression asyilryl divasapurvilyill?l.B So, this can be taken as one clue to assign it in or before the period of Manadeva. Second, this inscription refers to a Jovian year with the atypical expression milghavar~e kille, but such a reference is not found again in any other Licchavi inscription. This system was abandoned in North India earlier than in the rest of India, though it was still in use in the south until the beginning of the sixth century.9 References to Jovian years appear in Gupta inscriptions only between 475-528 CE lO where we find them in a standardised expression - a month name prefixed with mahil- and compounded with sal?lvatsara. Two more references appear also in Kadamba inscriptions of about the middle of the fifth century, but there the expression is not standardised. 11 The expression in our inscription is still different but is closer to those found in Kadamba inscriptions. Therefore, it is save enough to place it before Manadeva, but there is no proper

time, as local people recall, some votive caityas on the track of the road were pushed inside the caitya complex and minor objects were destroyed. 8 Even during Manadeva's time, it appears only twice, in inscriptions dated to Saka419 (VAJRACHARYA 1973: no. 15, p. 65) and 425 (VAJRACHARYA 1973: no. 16, p. 67). 9 DIKSHIT 1888: 316, fn. 16. 10 See, FLEET 1888, DIKSHIT 1888.11 The expression pau~e SaT!1vatsare occurs in one of the Halsi grants of Mrgesvaravarman dated in his third regnal year (line 8), and vai.akhe saYJ1vatsare in the other dated in his eighth regnal year (line 10). FLEET (1888: 334, fn. 9) relates the use of the prefix maha- to the heliacal-rising system and absence of it to the mean sign system.

Mahayana Buddhism and Sukhavati cult in India

29

ground to say that this inscription really belonged to the time of . Manadeva's great grandfather V:r~adeva (circa 410 CE) as VAJRACHARYA suggestedY The first available inscription of Manadeva is dated Saka 381 (459/460 CE) and it does not contain a reference to a Jovian year. Before this date, the Jovian year of Magha fell in Saka 371 (449/450 CE), 359 (437/438 CE), 347 (425/426 CE), and 335 (413/414 CE)P So, the image of Mahamuni with this inscription must have been installed in one of these years.14 The inscription, except the last line, is composed in twelve Anustubh stanzas. The metre has helped me to determine the number ~f missing ak~aras in each line.(1) durddharair indriyai~ k!tsnii viihyate yair iyam prajii

dasavat tani sandhiiryya k!payii paripfya ta[J?lF 5 [1](1) danafla16

12 In the mediaeval period, the caitya in front of which our inscription is found was called Dharp.do caitya. This has prompted some scholars to relate the caitya with Manadeva's father King Dharmadeva. I think this is a very weak argument in the light of the fact that any stupa/caitya can be named after dharmaldharmariija, and we have a few examples of such names, like the Dhammekha sU7pa in Sarnath and the Dharmarajika stL7pa in Taxila. No doubt, Dharp.do can be imagined as a Newar rendering of Dharmadeva, but it is much more likely that as a name of caitya it refers to the Dharma-god, the Buddha. 13 My calculation of these years with the Jovian year of Magha is based on KETKAR'S table (1923: 195, table 20). 14 An allusion to the Buddha's identity as a Bodhisattva in our inscription can be considered as yet another clue for assigning it to a relatively early date. As Buddhologists and historians have noted, early Buddhist cult images are overwhelmingly referred to as Bodhisattva in their accompanying inscriptions, even when they iconographically represent Buddhas. See SCHOPEN 2005: 116. 15 VAJRACHARYA reads ta and interprets that as a plural, obviously assuming that the visarga has been dropped by irregularly observing sandhi between two verses. 16 The acts of the Buddha are described here incorporating the essential components of the Bodhisattva path: restraint of the senses, cultivation

30

Diwakar Acharya+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +17 [2] (2) samprapyanuttaraTfljiianaTflpraja duf:tkhat pramocita pramocya sarvvaduf:tkhebhyo yo 'sau santaTfl padali gataf:t [3] [ma]1B+

+++++++++++

++++++++++++++++~

(3) salikhidya sucirali kalam bhavanam bhavavicchidaf:t kinnarfjatakakfn}1}ali 19 nanacitravirajitam [5]

of compassion and the six perfections, attainment of the ultimate knowledge, release of all people from sorrow, and departure. The Mahavastu describes it and says that these acts of the Buddha are purposeful: kalpako(isahasra1}i aprameyam acintiya I carito bhoti arthaya sarvajiio dvipadottamo II danaTfl SflaTfl ca k:fanti ca dhyanani ca nisevita I prajiia ca carita parvamkalpakotisataTfl bahaTfll1 (SENART 1890: 296). 17 The language of this inscription is colloquial and structurally loose. In the third stanza, when two successive actions are stated in two versehalves, the first action stated with a finite verb form in the first half is narrated in concatenation in the other half with an absolutive form together with its object. The writing style suggests that the same was true in the lost second half of the second stanza and the first half of the third. The latter, which has survived, states the second action 'released people from the sorrow' narrating the previous action in absolutive 'having obtained the ultimate knowledge.' Therefore, the last pada of the second stanza can be reconstructed as , on the basis of the narrating phrase in the next stanza. ~ 1B The 9th stanza below tells us that the Buddha image the lady donated was named Mahiimuni, and we can judge from the context that stanzas 1-4 are dedicated to praise the inaugurated Buddha, the Mahamuni. Whether these opening verses were written in the form of veneration of the Buddha or blessing to the folks, the name of the god is expected here, most likely in the nominative case like in the first verse of Manadeva's ChiingunarayaI,la inscription (VAJRACHARYA 1973: inscription no.2). Another possibility is the dative case. In any case it is most likely that the name of Mahiimuni appeared here. 19 Normally it should be kfr1}1}an. In Nepalese manuscripts and sometimes even in Licchavi inscriptions a homorganic nasal before a sibilant is written as gutturalli, but gutturalli before nasal is a rarity. VAJRACHARYA misses to record this irregularity.

Mahayana Buddhism and SukhavatI cult in India+20 ++ ++ + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [6]

31

(4) catvarif[liat sapaficeha yatra dhanyasya manikaJ:t var~e var~e 'tha jayante k~etran tat tadrian dadau [7]++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++~

(5) bhayaJ:t smighasya bhaktartthaf[l pajartthaii ca mahamuneJ:t k~etran dattan taya hy atra a~tavif[liatimanikaJ:t [9]+ + + + + + + + + + +21 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [10]

(6) vicitraf[l deyadharmmam me karayitveha yac chubham strfbhavaf[l hi viragyahaf[l puru~atvam avapya ca 22 [11] iokakamamayat pa23 + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++U~

+ + + (7) maghavarse kale a~arJhaiudiva 10 224 asyan divasaparvvayam bhattarakamaharajairf+ + + + + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++++~

20 VAJRACHARYA reads irfhere which I cannot see on the stone or photo. 21 The context asks for an expression meaning 'of paddy are produced every year' in the lost part, something close to dhanyasya var~e var~e 'tha jayante as in stanza 7. 22 The usage of viragya here is noteworthy. This peculiar form is attested in the Daiabhamika, and other forms of the denominative verbal stem viragay are found also in other Mahayana satras. See EDGERTON, s.v. viragayati. 23 The ligature of tpa is rather clearly visible but VAJRACHARYA does not read pa. I have completed the word by supplying . In the A~tasahasrika, all those Bodhisattvas who reach the land of Abhirati are said to 'have gone across the mire' (uttfrr,zapafikaJ:t). For this passage, see below, pp. 62-63. 24 VAJRACHARYA misses the symbol of 2 and takes the day as the 10th. 25 If we wanted to guess at the lost part of this line, adapting to the formula found in the inscription of Saka 425 mentioned before and using the possible names of the King V!~adeva and the donor Carumatl, it would be something closer to this: ovr~adevasya sagraf[l var~aiataf[l samajfia-

32

Diwakar Acharya Like a slave,26 having restrained the hardly re~trainable senses by which all these people are carried away - [and] having closely embraced them, [i.e. the people,] with compassion, charity, good conduct, ... ; after obtaining the supreme knowledge, freed the people from sorrow; [and] after freeing them from all sorrows, he attained the place of peace. That Ma ... 27 [ll.l-2=vv.l-4] Taking a lot of trouble 28 for quite a long time, [she built] the abode of the destroyer of the worldly existence, [i.e. Mahamuni,] which

payatalJ carumatya sthapito bhagavan mahamunilJ. 26 The comparison 'like a slave' can logically be associated either with Mahamuni or the senses, respectively the subject and object. I feel that our inscription is alluding, here too, to a specific Buddhist concept like in v.l1 below. Therefore, I am associating the comparison with the subject following the description of one of the arthacaryas in the BodhisattvabIn/mi. There, a Bodhisattva, though he is abiding in the best and foremost state of success, is said to be fulfilling the purpose of the beings, like a slave, with his mind lowered (in kindness), and his vanity, pride and ego destroyed: punar bodhisattvalJ pravarayam agryayam api saJTlpadi vartamano dasavaf pref!yavad vasyaputravac canaladarakavan nfcacitto nihatamadamanahm?1karalJ (WOGIHARA 1936: 225 reads nihita O == 'laid aside') sattvanam artham acarati (DUTT 1966: 154). Following Arlo GRIFFITHS' suggestion, I present the following alternative translation of the first verse: Having restrained them - the senses by which all these people are carried away, and having squeezed these [people], as [one oppresses] a slave, [but] with compassion (rather than stringency) .... The root paripf literally means 'to squeeze properly from all sides' or more negatively 'to oppress in all ways.' As I need something quite positive for the interpretation I favoured, I have taken it in its figurative sense, 'to embrace closely.' 27 The statement might have concluded with something like 'that Mahamuni excels all' or 'that Mahamuni may show us/you the way.' 28 The literal meaning, 'being deeply depressed' or 'having forced properly,' does not work well here. So I take it figuratively with positive implications.


33

is brilliant with many depictions illustrating [scenes] from the Kinnarfjiltaka ... [l.3=vv.5-6] Here [in the same locality] she donated such a piece of land where every year 45 Manikas of paddy are produced29 .. [1.4=vv.7-8] Again, for the purpose of [providing] food for the Community and also for the purpose of [financing the daily] worship of Mahamuni, another piece of land is donated by her where 28 Manikas ... [1.5=vv.9-1O] Whatsoever merit I have by making here this wonderful religious gift (deyadharma), I may lose attachment to womanhood and attain manhood, and this consisting of sorrow and longing, ... 30 [1.6=vv.11-12] ... , the time of 'the year of Magha,' the bright half of A~ac,lha, the 12th day. On this day the lord great king Illustrious ... [1.7]

The inscription mentions that the Kinnarljiitaka was depicted on the walls of the temple of Mahamuni. The likely candidate for this reference is the Kinnarljiitaka of the Mahiivastu. There is another version of this narrative in the Bhai~ajyavastu of the Miilasarviistiviidavinaya, which seems to be followed later in the Divyiivadiina. But in that version, unlike in the Mahiivastu, the narrative is not named "Kinnarljataka" and the character of the KinnarI is not highlighted. 3129 Since the next piece of land is allocated for sustenance of the Community and daily worship of Mahamuni, it can be said that this piece of land with a larger amount of income was allocated for maintenance and repair of the abode, and probably to finance the annual ceremony (var,'favardhana) which is known from many Licchavi inscriptions. 30 Following the parallels from the Mahavastu and the A,'ftasahasrika, we can say that the next thing our lady donor is expected to wish is her rebirth in one of the bodhisattvabhumis, if not yet in the peaceful abode of Mahamuni. See below, p. 34. 31 I am aware of the fact that the Mahavastu is a composite text and the Kinnarfjataka might not have been part of it from the beginning. However, my supposition is that this jataka was already integrated in the Mahavastu by the time of our inscription.

34

Diwakar Acharya

It is interesting that this inscription praises the Buddha as Mahamuni, alluding to the path of the Bodhisattva; and it is almost certain that the inscription makes a reference to the six paramitas: two of them appear in the beginning of a compound, and the metre easily allows us to include the rest in the proper order in the same compound. Again, the six paramitas are present in early Mahayana texts and also in the Mahavastu. 32 The lady donor of the image of Mahamuni with this inscription first wishes to lose her attachment to womanhood and become a man by the merit of this donation. A woman on the Bodhisattva path is expected to change her gender and become a man at some point prior to the attainment of Buddhahood. Early Buddhist texts indeed hold a strict view on the spiritual limitations of women. Also the Mahavastu implies this in the Dasablutmika section, though quite vaguely, when it states that those Dharma followers who are in any of the ten stages are all men, not born again as a woman. 33 This idea is found in many of the Mahayana siitras including the A~tasahasrika, where Sister Gangadeva is predicted to become a man and reach the land of Ak~obhya to undertake the Bodhi-

32 If, as I suggested in fn. 6 above, a cult which worshipped the Sakyamuni Buddha as Mahiimuni had existed, that possibly had a link with the school of MahasaIighikas whose offshoot, the Lokottaravadins, preserve the Mahtivastu in their Vinaya. Our inscription relates Mahamuni and the Kinnarfjtitaka of the Mahtivastu. The name Mahamuni appears 27 times in the Mahtivastu, more than in any other text (the Saddharmapw:u;larfka comes second with 11 occurences). It is worth mentioning here that the presence of the MahasaIighikas in Nepal in the subsequent period has been considered to follow from a fragmentary inscription ascribed to the middle of the seventh century. This is a two line inscription damaged on the right side, first published by Levi (no. 17, plate 18). It reads the following preceded by an auspicious sign: (1) deyadharmo yaY[! srfdharmartijikamtitya-su[pa] II (2) stil!!ghikabhik~usaYf1ghasa II (LEVI does not read pa.). Unfortunately, the prefix mahti- is missing, which limits the importance of the inscription. 33 SENART 1882: 103: atha khalu sarvtisu dasabhami~u puru~ti bhavanti sarvtiYf1gapratYGJ?lgopetiif:t avikalendriyti[f:t]. (The edition omits visarga, probably because of yas ca in the following.)


35

sattva vow there, and become finally the Buddha SuvarI,1apu~pa.34 Even the wording in our inscription reminds us of the phrase in theA~tasiihasrikCi. 35

IIIt is known that Buddhists were present in Nepal before Manadeva, i.e. the early fifth century CE, but how strong they were in the society is not known well. No Buddhist inscription has yet been discovered from the time of Manadeva. 36 However, I would like to draw 34 This idea is found also in the nineteenth chapter of the A~tasahasrika1935: 745): seyam ananda gangadeva bhaginf strfbhavaT]'t vivartya puru~abhavaT]'t pratilabhya itas cyutva ak~obhyasya tathagatasyarhataJ:zsamyaksaT]'tbuddhasya buddhak~etre abhiratyaT]'tlokadhatav upapatsyate. 35 The wording of the inscription, strfbhavaT]'t hi viragyahaT]'t puru~atvam avapya ca, is very close to the A~tasahasrika wording: strfbhavaT]'t vivartya (vivarjya in the PaficaviT]'tsatisahasrika) puru~abhavaT]'t pratilabhya.(WOGIHARA

Here are two more statements close to the expression in the inscription: Samadhiraja 32.l57cd-158ab: vivartayitva strfbhavaT]'t sa bhaved dharmabha1}akaJ:z, na sa puno 'pi strfbhavam itaJ:z pascad grahf~yati. Ratnaketuparivarta (II.27: KURUMIYA p. 50): strfbhavam antardhaya puru~a bhavaJ:z saT]'tvftto. Ratnaketuparivarta speaks also of transformation of marks and organs of women into those of men in the same chapter. 36 Because the major caityas of the Kathmandu valley have been renovated continuously, and since mediaeval times such renovations are done by Tibetan monks or under their guidance, these caityas have taken new components from time to time, reflecting ongoing changes in contemporary traditions. That is why we have to rely on personally donated images or caityas of comparatively small size in order to have an idea of Buddhism in the Licchavi period. No excavation in the vicinity of the major caityas of Kathmandu valley have yet been carried out. It is not easy to excavate a main shrine or stfipa as they are still places of active worship, but it is not impossible to do so in a courtyard. The Buddhist tradition was never discontinued in Nepal. So, such excavations, I must say, would be of great help for the understanding of Buddhism in the middle period and its transformation in later times.

36

Diwakar Acharya

attention to a:n interesting and exceptional case of the Buddhist donative formula yad atra pUlJ-yaTfl... being blended in a Saiva inscription from Budhanilakantha (Kathmandu) inscribed on the base of a sivaliJiga al):d dated in [Saka] saTflvat 398 (476/477 CE)Y The related portion of the inscription runs this way: .nrpati/:t pra1J.ato jaglida tvatsthlipanlijanitam asti yar) atra pU1J.yam tat sarvvaZokasahitasya vivrddhamflZam duf:tkhak~ayliya bhagavan mama sarvathlistu.

The king , bowed to [the god], said: 'What here is the merit produced from this action of founding you, [i.e. the sivaZiriga,] 0 lord, its roots properly grown, may that be for the complete destruction of sorrow of me together with all [my] people.

This indicates that Buddhist ideas were already popular in Nepal by this period and were even adopted by other religious groups. Furthermore, we know from Anuparama's Dvaipayanastotra inscription, installed before 540 CE, that the Buddhists had made good advance by that time, and the orthodox Brahmanical section of society had got alarmed at that development. 38 The two inscriptions presented below are further evidence for their growing influence. There are not many inscriptions until the late fifth and early sixth centuries in India which could even indirectly be related to Mahayana. So, these inscriptions deserve attention and should be added to the list of inscriptions related to Mahayana. First I present aquite damaged inscription from the pedestal of a lost image of Avalokitesvara39 which is dated in [Saka] saY[tvat 479 (558 CE):(1) saJ?1.vat479 dvitfyli~li4ha ... .. .yajfva ... ... (2) ...... bhagavadliryyli-

37 VAJRACHARYA 1973: 41-42, no. 7. The year of this inscription, first relld 396, has been corrected to 398 in PANT 1986: 275-276. 38 For an elaboration on this, see ACHARYA 2007. 39 At present, this pedestal supports an image of Vi~I)U in a small temple located in Brahma Tol, Kathmandu, but the inscription on it clearly suggests that it once supported a Buddhist image.

Mahayana Buddhism and SukhavatI ;:;ult in India

37

... .. .miineniirddha ... ... (3) ...... sarvvajiiajiiiiniiviiptaye bhavatu 40

The [Saka] year 479, the second A~ag~{ULA. He will simply be called K~iinti hereafter. A ferocious king chopped one after the other the limbs of K~iinti as a revenge for the attention devoted to his sermons by the ladies of his court. On this gory tale there exists an abundant bibliography.32 The other tales with which I will deal 32 Lamotte 1944-1980.: I: 264-265, II: 889-890, III: 1670; Panglung'1981: 92-93.

Early Chinese Buddhist translations

131

here are less known. The miracle appears in one version of two stories of self-sacrifice. 1.) The tale of the boy Sujati who offered his body, scrap after scrap, to feed his parents and 2.) the tale of the king Kaficanasara whose body was pierced by one thousand holes filled with oil and put to fire as a worship offered to a brahmin in exchange of the second part of a dharmic gatha. An interesting point is that in both the K~anti !radition and the Sujati tradition, the persecutor is connected with Ajfiata Kaul). enth fascicle of the Sapoduo pini piposha (*Sarviistiviidavinayavibhii~ii T23, 547c; translator unknown). For reference to the theory of three divisions, see the second fascicle of Daoshi's iit!!: Pini taoyao mmit~ (Z1.70.2, 134b).

158

. Funayama Toruvl~a. 49

It is a translation of Skt.

Paramartha explains the word in

the following way:In Paramartha's note it says: A pina is a musical instrument. It approximately resembles the piba me:. ):).~r~ ..50

Historically speaking, the creation of the Chinese piba (or pipa) was partially influenced by the Western Regions. This sort of information is rarely found in other Buddhist texts.

Comparing the theories of various schoolsWe have already seen how Paramartha's commentaries include elucidations of the various meanings inherent in individual phrases. In a similar way, Paramartha sometimes explained a given point from the perspective of different schools. His comment on the robe colors of Indian monks is one example. A monk's robes in India, called ka:jaya or ka:jaya 'deteriorated clothes,' had to be neither . new nor of a pure color. Paramartha described how monks' robes. were altered to meet this requirement. The following is the Sui master Jizang's 51 statement:Tripitaka Master Paramartha said: "The ka~iiya of ~

Documents

JIABS 31.1-2