Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume III Part 32

The L-tsang or Vinaya-pitaka is divided into Mahyna and Hnayna texts, neither very numerous. Many of the Mahyna texts profess to be revelations by Maitreya and are extracts of the Yogcryabhmisstra[720]

or similar to it. For practical purposes the most important is the Fan-w.a.n.g-ching[721] or net of Brahm. The Indian original of this work is not known, but since the eighth century it has been accepted in China as the standard manual for the monastic life[722].

The Hnayna Vinaya comprises five very substantial recensions of the whole code, besides extracts, compendiums, and manuals. The five recensions are: (_a_) Shih-sung-l in sixty-five fasciculi, translated in A.D. 404. This is said to be a Vinaya of the Sarvstivdins, but I-Ching[723] expressly says that it does not belong to the Mlasarvstivdin school, though not unlike it. (_b_) The Vinaya of this latter translated by I-Ching who brought it from India. (_c_) Shih-fen-l-tsang in sixty fasciculi, translated in 405 and said to represent the Dharmagupta school. (_d_) The Mi-sha-so Wu-fn L or Vinaya of the Mahssakas, said to be similar to the Pali Vinaya, though not identical with it[724]. (_e_) Mo-ko-sng-chi L or Mahasanghika Vinaya brought from India by Fa-Hsien and translated 416 A.D. It is noticeable that all five recensions are cla.s.sed as Hinayanist, although (_b_) is said to be the Vinaya used by the Tibetan Church. Although Chinese Buddhists frequently speak of the five-fold Vinaya[725], this expression does not refer to these five texts, as might be supposed, and I-Ching condemns it, saying that[726]

the real number of divisions is four.

The Abhidharma-Pitaka or Lun-tsang is, like the Stra Pitaka, divided into Mahayanist and Hinayanist texts and texts of both schools admitted into the Canon after 960 A.D. The Mahayanist texts have no connection with the Pali Canon and their Sanskrit t.i.tles do not contain the word Abhidharma[727]. They are philosophical treatises ascribed to Asvaghosha, Ngrjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu and others, including three works supposed to have been revealed by Maitreya to Asanga[728]. The princ.i.p.al of these is the Yogcrya-bhmisstra, a scripture of capital importance for the Yogcrya school. It describes the career of a Bodhisattva and hence parts of it are treated as belonging to the Vinaya. Among other important works in this section may be mentioned the Madhyamaka Sstra of Ngrjuna, the Mahynastrlankra of Asanga, and the Awakening of Faith ascribed to Asvaghosha[729].

The Hnayna texts also show no correspondence with the Pali Pitaka but are based on the Abhidharma works of the Sarvstivdin school[730]. These are seven in number, namely the Jnnaprasthna.s.stra of Ktyyanputra with six accessory treatises or Pdas[731]. The Mahvibhsha.s.stra, or commentary on the Jnnaprasthna, and the Abhidharmaksa[732] are also in this section.

The third division of the Abhidharma is of little importance but contains two curious items: a manual of Buddhist terminology composed as late as 1272 by Pagspa for the use of Khubilai's son and the Snkhyakrikbhshya, which is not a Buddhist work but a compendium of Snkhya philosophy[733].

The fourth division of the whole collection consists of miscellaneous works, partly translated from Sanskrit and partly composed in Chinese.

Many of the Indian works appear from their t.i.tle not to differ much from the later Mahyna Stras, but it is rather surprising to find in this section four translations[734] of the Dharmapada (or at least of some similar anthology) which are thus placed outside the Stra Pitaka. Among the works professing to be translated from Sanskrit are a History of the Patriarchs, the Buddhacarita of Asvaghosha, a work similar to the Questions of King Milinda, Lives of Asvaghosha, Ngrjuna, Vasubandhu and others and the Suhrillekha or Friendly Epistle ascribed to Ngrjuna.

The Chinese works included in this Tripitaka consist of nearly two hundred books, historical, critical, controversial and homiletic, composed by one hundred and two authors. Excluding late treatises on ceremonial and doctrine, the more interesting may be cla.s.sified as follows:

_(a) Historical._--Besides general histories of Buddhism, there are several collections of ecclesiastical biography. The first is the Kao-sng-chuan[735], or Memoirs of eminent Monks (not, however, excluding laymen), giving the lives of about five hundred worthies who lived between 67 and 519 A.D. The series is continued in other works dealing with the T'ang and Sung dynasties. For the Contemplative School there are further supplements carrying the record on to the Yan. There are also several histories of the Chinese patriarchs. Of these the latest and therefore most complete is the Fo-tsu-t'ung-chi[736] composed about 1270 by Chih P'an of the T'ien-T'ai school. The Ching-t-ch'uan-tng-lu[737] and other treatises give the succession of patriarchs according to the Contemplative School. Among historical works may be reckoned the travels of various pilgrims who visited India.

(_b_) _Critical_.--There are thirteen catalogues of the Tripitaka as it existed at different periods. Several of them contain biographical accounts of the translators and other notes. The work called Chn-chng-lun criticizes several false stras and names. There are also several encyclopdic works containing extracts from the Tripitaka, arranged according to subjects, such as the Fa-yan-chu-lin[738] in 100 volumes; concordances of numerical categories and a dictionary of Sanskrit terms, Fan-i-ming-i-chi[739], composed in 1151.

(_c_) The literature of several Chinese sects is well represented.

Thus there are more than sixty works belonging to the T'ien T'ai school beginning with the San-ta-pu or three great books attributed to the founder and ending with the ecclesiastical history of Chih-p'an, written about 1270. The Hua-yen school is represented by the writings of four patriarchs and five monks: the L or Vinaya school by eight works attributed to its founder, and the Contemplative School by a stra ascribed to Hui-nng, the sixth patriarch, by works on the history of the Patriarchs and by several collections of sayings or short compositions.

(_d_) _Controversial_.--Under this heading may be mentioned polemics against Taoism, including two collections of the controversies which took place between Buddhists and Taoists from A.D.

71 till A.D. 730: replies to the attacks made against Buddhism by Confucian scholars and refutations of the objections raised by sceptics or heretics such as the Ch-i-lun and the Yan-jn-lun, or Origin of man[740]. This latter is a well-known text-book written by the fifth Patriarch of the Hua-yen school and while criticizing Confucianism, Taoism, and the Hnyana, treats them as imperfect rather than as wholly erroneous[741]. Still more conciliatory is the Treatise on the three religions composed by Liu Mi of the Yan dynasty[742], which a.s.serts that all three deserve respect as teaching the practice of virtue. It attacks, however, anti-Buddhist Confucianists such as Han-Y and Chu-Hsi.

The Chinese section contains three compositions attributed to imperial personages of the Ming, viz., a collection of the prefaces and laudatory verses written by the Emperor T'ai-Tsung, the Shn-Sng-Chuan or memoirs of remarkable monks with a preface by the Emperor Ch'ng-tsu, and a curious book by his consort the Empress Jn-Hsiao, introducing a stra which Her Majesty states was miraculously revealed to her on New Year's day, 1398 (see Nanjio, No. 1657).

Though the Hindus were careful students and guardians of their sacred works, their temperament did not dispose them to define and limit the scriptures. But, as I have mentioned above[743], there is some evidence that there was a loose Mahayanist canon in India which was the origin of the arrangement found in the Chinese Tripitaka, in so far as it (1) accepted Hinayanist as well as Mahayanist works, and (2) included a great number of relatively late stras, arranged in cla.s.ses such as Prajnpramit and Mahsannipta.

2

The Tripitaka a.n.a.lyzed by Nanjio, which contains works a.s.signed to dates ranging from 67 to 1622 A.D., is merely the best known survivor among several similar thesauri[744]. From 518 A.D. onwards twelve collections of sacred literature were made by imperial order and many of these were published in more than one edition. The validity of this Canon depends entirely on imperial authority, but, though Emperors occasionally inserted the works of writers whom they esteemed[745], it does not appear that they aimed at anything but completeness nor did they favour any school. The Buddhist Church, like every other department of the Empire, received from them its share of protection and supervision and its claims were sufficient to induce the founder, or at least an early Sovereign, of every important dynasty to publish under his patronage a revised collection of the scriptures. The list of these collections is as follows[746]:

1. A.D. 518 in the time of Wu-Ti, founder of the Liang.

2. " 533-4 Hsiao-Wu of the Northern Wei.

3. " 594 } Wan-ti, founder of the Sui.

4. " 602 } Wan-ti, founder of the Sui.

5. " 605-16 Yang-Ti of the Sui.

6. " 695 the Empress Wu of the T'ang.

7. " 730 Hsan-Tsung of the T'ang.

8. " 971 T'ai-Tsu, founder of the Sung.

9. " 1285-7 Khubilai Khan, founder of the Yan.

10. " 1368-98 Hung-Wu, founder of the Ming.

11. " 1403-24 Yung-Lo of the Ming.

12. " 1735-7 Yung-Ching and Ch'ien-Lung of the Ch'ing[747].

Of these collections, the first seven were in MS. only: the last five were printed. The last three appear to be substantially the same. The tenth and eleventh collections are known as southern and northern[748], because they were printed at Nanking and Peking respectively. They differ only in the number of Chinese works admitted and similarly the twelfth collection is merely a revision of the tenth with the addition of fifty-four Chinese works.

As mentioned, the Tripitaka contains thirteen catalogues of the Buddhist scriptures as known at different dates[749]. Of these the most important are (_a_) the earliest published between 506 and 512 A.D., (_b_) three published under the T'ang dynasty and known as Nei-tien-lu, T'u-chi (both about 664 A.D.), and K'ai-yan-lu (about 720 A.D.), (_c_) Chih-Yan-lu or catalogue of Yan dynasty, about 1285, which, besides enumerating the Chinese t.i.tles, transliterates the Sanskrit t.i.tles and states whether the Indian works translated are also translated into Tibetan. (_d_) The catalogue of the first Ming collection.

The later collections contain new material and differ from the earlier by natural accretion, for a great number of translations were produced under the T'ang and Sung. Thus the seventh catalogue (695 A.D.) records that 859 new works were admitted to the Canon. But this expansion was accompanied by a critical and sifting process, so that whereas the first collection contained 2213 works, the Ming edition contains only 1622. This compression means not that works of importance were rejected as heretical or apocryphal, for, as we have seen, the Tripitaka is most catholic, but that whereas the earlier collections admitted mult.i.tudinous extracts or partial translations of Indian works, many of these were discarded when complete versions had been made.

Nanjio considers that of the 2213 works contained in the first collection only 276 are extant. Although the catalogues are preserved, all the earlier collections are lost: copies of the eighth and ninth were preserved in the Zo-jo-ji Library of Tokyo[750] and Chinese and j.a.panese editions of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth are current. So far as one can judge, when the eighth catalogue, or K'ai-yan-lu, was composed (between 713 and 741), the older and major part of the Canon had been definitively fixed and the later collections merely add the translations made by Amogha, and by writers of the Sung and Yan dynasties.

The editions of the Chinese Tripitaka must be distinguished from the collections, for by editions are meant the forms in which each collection was published, the text being or purporting to be the same in all the editions of each collection. It is said[751] that under the Sung and Yan twenty different editions were produced. These earlier issues were printed on long folding sheets and a nun called Fa-chn[752] is said to have first published an edition in the shape of ordinary Chinese books. In 1586 a monk named Mi-Tsang[753] imitated this procedure and his edition was widely used. About a century later a j.a.panese priest known as Tetsu-yen[754] reproduced it and his publication, which is not uncommon in j.a.pan, is usually called the O-baku edition. There are two modern j.a.panese editions: (_a_) that of Tokyo, begun in 1880, based on a Korean edition[755] with various readings taken from other Chinese editions. (_b_) That of Kyoto, 1905, which is a reprint of the Ming collection[756]. A Chinese edition has been published at Shanghai (1913) at the expense of Mrs. Hardoon, a Chinese lady well known as a munificent patron of the faith, and I believe another at Nanking, but I do not know if it is complete or not[757].

3

The translations contained in the Chinese Tripitaka belong to several periods[758]. In the earliest, which extends to the middle of the fourth century, the works produced were chiefly renderings of detached stras[759]. Few treatises cla.s.sified as Vinaya or Abhidharma were translated and those few are mostly extracts or compilations. The stras belong to both the Hna and Mahyna. The earliest extant translation or rather compilation, the Stra of Forty-two sections, belongs to the former school, and so do the majority of the translations made by An-Shih-Kao (148-170 A.D.), but from the second century onwards the Prajnpramit and Amitbha Stras make their appearance[760]. Many of the translations made in this period are described as incomplete or incorrect and the fact that most of them were superseded or supplemented by later versions shows that the Chinese recognized their provisional character. Future research will probably show that many of them are paraphrases or compendiums rather than translations in our sense.

The next period, roughly speaking 375-745 A.D., was extraordinarily prolific in extensive and authoritative translations. The translators now attack not detached chapters or discourses but the great monuments of Indian Buddhist literature. Though it is not easy to make any chronological bisection in this period, there is a clear difference in the work done at the beginning and at the end of it. From the end of the fourth century onwards a desire to have complete translations of the great canonical works is apparent. Between 385 and 445 A.D. were translated the four Agamas, a.n.a.logous to the Nikyas of the Pali Canon, three great collections of the Vinaya, and the princ.i.p.al scriptures of the Abhidharma according to the Sarvstivdin school.

For the Mahyna were translated the great stras known as Avatamsaka, Lankvatra, and many others, as well as works ascribed to Asvaghosha and Ngrjuna. After 645 A.D. a further development of the critical spirit is perceptible, especially in the labours of Hsan Chuang and I-Ching. They attempt to give the religious public not only complete works in place of extracts and compendiums, but also to select the most authoritative texts among the many current in India.

Thus, though many translations had appeared under the name of Prajnpramit, Hsan Chuang filled 600 fasciculi with a new rendering of the gigantic treatise. I-Ching supplemented the already bulky library of Vinaya works with versions of the Mlasarvstivdin recension and many auxiliary texts.

Amogha (Pu-K'ung) whose literary labours extended from 746 to 774 A.D.

is a convenient figure to mark the beginning of the next and last period, although some of its characteristics appear a little earlier.

They are that no more translations are made from the great Buddhist cla.s.sics--partly no doubt because they had all been translated already, well or ill--but that renderings of works described as Dhran? or Tantra pullulate and multiply. Though this literature deserves such epithets as decadent and superst.i.tious, yet it would appear that Indian Tantras of the worst cla.s.s were not palatable to the Chinese.

4

The Chinese Tripitaka is of great importance for the literary history of Buddhism, but the material which it offers for investigation is superabundant and the work yet done is small. We are confronted by such questions as, can we accept the dates a.s.signed to the translators, can we a.s.sume that, if the Chinese translations or transliterations correspond with Indian t.i.tles, the works are the same, and if the works are professedly the same, can we a.s.sume that the Chinese text is a correct presentment of the Indian original?

The dates a.s.signed to the translators offer little ground for scepticism. The exact.i.tude of the Chinese in such matters is well attested, and there is a general agreement between several authorities such as the Catalogues of the Tripitaka, the memoirs known as Kao-Sng Chuan with their continuations, and the chapter on Buddhist books in the Sui annals. There are no signs of a desire to claim improbable accuracy or improbable antiquity. Many works are said to be by unknown translators, doubtful authorship is frankly discussed, and the movement of literature and thought indicated is what we should expect. We have first fragmentary and incomplete translations belonging to both the Mah and Hnayna: then a series of more complete translations beginning about the fifth century in which the great Hnayna texts are conspicuous: then a further series of improved translations in which the Hnayna falls into the background and the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu come to the front. This evidently reflects the condition of Buddhist India about 500-650 A.D., just as the translations of the eighth century reflect its later and tantric phase.

But can Chinese texts be accepted as reasonably faithful reproductions of the Indian originals whose names they bear, and some of which have been lost? This question is really double; firstly, did the translators reproduce with fair accuracy the Indian text before them, and secondly, since Indian texts often exist in several recensions, can we a.s.sume that the work which the translators knew under a certain Sanskrit name is the work known to us by that name? In reply it must be said that most Chinese translators fall short of our standards of accuracy. In early times when grammars and dictionaries were unknown the scholarly rendering of foreign books was a difficult business, for professional interpreters would usually be incapable of understanding a philosophic treatise. The method often followed was that an Indian explained the text to a literary Chinese, who recast the explanation in his own language. The many translations of the more important texts and the frequent description of the earlier ones as imperfect indicate a feeling that the results achieved were not satisfactory. Several so-called translators, especially k.u.mrajva, gave abstracts of the Indian texts[761]. Others, like Dharmaraksha, who made a Chinese version of Asvaghosha's Buddhacarita, so amplified and transposed the original that the result can hardly be called a translation[762]. Others combined different texts in one.

Thus the work called Ta-o-mi-to-ching[763] consists of extracts taken from four previous translations of the Sukhvatvyha and rearranged by the author under the inspiration of Avalokita to whom, as he tells us, he was wont to pray during the execution of his task. Others again, like Dharmagupta, antic.i.p.ated a method afterwards used in Tibet, and gave a word for word rendering of the Sanskrit which is hardly intelligible to an educated Chinese. The later versions, _e.g._ those of Hsan Chuang, are more accurate, but still a Chinese rendering of a lost Indian doc.u.ment cannot be accepted as a faithful representation of the original without a critical examination[764].

Often, however, the translator, whatever his weaknesses may have been, had before him a text differing in bulk and arrangement from the Pali and Sanskrit texts which we possess. Thus, there are four Chinese translations of works bearing some relation to the Dhammapada of the Pali Canon. All of these describe the original text as the compilation of Dharmatrta, to whom is also ascribed the compilation of the Tibetan Udnavarga[765]. His name is not mentioned in connection with the Pali text, yet two of the Chinese translations are closely related to that text. The Fa-ch-ching[766] is a collection of verses translated in 224 A.D. and said to correspond with the Pali except that it has nine additional chapters and some additional stanzas. The Fa-ch-p'i-y-ching[767] represents another edition of the same verses, ill.u.s.trated by a collection of parables. It was translated between 290 and 306. The Ch'u-yao-ching[768], translated in 399, is a similar collection of verses and parables, but founded on another Indian work of much greater length. A revised translation containing only the verses was made between 980 and 1001[769]. They are said to be the same as the Tibetan Udna, and the characteristics of this book, going back apparently to a Sanskrit original, are that it is divided into thirty-three chapters, and that though it contains about 300 verses found in Pali, yet it is not merely the Pali text plus additions, but an anthology arranged on a different principle and only partly identical in substance[770].

There can be little doubt that the Pali Dhammapada is one among several collections of verses, with or without an explanatory commentary of stories. In all these collections there was much common matter, both prose and verse, but some were longer, some shorter, some were in Pali and some in Sanskrit. Whereas the Chinese Dhammapada is longer than the Indian texts, the Chinese version of Milinda's Questions[771] is much shorter and omits books iv-vii. It was made between 317 and 420 A.D. and the inference is that the original Indian text received later additions.

A more important problem is this: what is the relation to the Pali Canon of the Chinese texts bearing t.i.tles corresponding to Drgha, Madhyama, Samyukta and Ekottara? These collections of stras do not call themselves Nikya but A-han or Agama: the t.i.tles are translated as Ch'ang (long), Chung (medium), Tsa (miscellaneous) and Tseng-i, representing Ekottara rather than Anguttara[772]. There is hence _prima facie_ reason to suppose that these works represent not the Pali Canon, but a somewhat similar Sanskrit collection. That one or many Sanskrit works may have coexisted with a somewhat similar Pali work is clearly shown by the Vinaya texts, for here we have the Pali Canon and Chinese translations of five Sanskrit versions, belonging to different schools, but apparently covering the same ground and partly identical. For the Stra Pitaka no such body of evidence is forthcoming, but the Sanskrit fragments of the Samyuktgama found near Turfan contain parts of six stras which are arranged in the same order as in the Chinese translation and are apparently the original from which it was made. It is noticeable that three of the four great Agamas were translated by monks who came from Tukhara or Kabul.

Gun?abhadra, however, the translator of the Samyuktgama, came from Central India and the text which he translated was brought from Ceylon by Fa-Hsien. It apparently belonged to the Abhayagiri monastery and not to the Mahvihra. Nanjio[773], however, states that about half of it is repeated in the Chinese versions of the Madhyama and Ekottara Agamas. It is also certain that though the Chinese Agamas and Pali Nikyas contain much common matter, it is differently distributed[774].

There was in India a copious collection of stras, existing primarily as oral tradition and varying in diction and arrangement, but codified from time to time in a written form. One of such codifications is represented by the Pali Canon, at least one other by the Sanskrit text which was rendered into Chinese. With rare exceptions the Chinese translations were from the Sanskrit[775]. The Sanskrit codification of the stra literature, while differing from the Pali in language and arrangement, is identical in doctrine and almost identical in substance. It is clearly the product of the same or similar schools, but is it earlier or later than the Pali or contemporary with it? The Chinese translations merely fix the latest possible date. A portion of the Samyuktgama (Nanjio, No. 547) was translated by an unknown author between 220 and 280. This is probably an extract from the complete work which was translated about 440, but it would be difficult to prove that the Indian original was not augmented or rearranged between these dates. The earliest translation of a complete Agama is that of the Ekottargama, 384 A.D. But the evidence of inscriptions[776] shows that works known as Nikyas existed in the third century B.C. The Sanskrit of the Agamas, so far as it is known from the fragments found in Central Asia, does not suggest that they belong to this epoch, but is compatible with the theory that they date from the time of Kanishka of which if we know little, we can at least say that it produced much Buddhist Sanskrit literature. M. Sylvain Lvi has suggested that the later appearance of the complete Vinaya in Chinese is due to the late compilation of the Sanskrit original[777]. It seems to me that other explanations are possible. The early translators were clearly shy of extensive works and until there was a considerable body of Chinese monks, to what public would these theological libraries appeal? Still, if any indication were forthcoming from India or Central Asia that the Sanskrit Agamas were arranged or rearranged in the early centuries of our era, the late date of the Chinese translations would certainly support it. But I am inclined to think that the Nikyas were rewritten in Sanskrit about the beginning of our era, when it was felt that works claiming a certain position ought to be composed in what had become the general literary language of India[778]. Perhaps those who wrote them in Sanskrit were hardly conscious of making a translation in our sense, but simply wished to publish them in the best literary form.

It seems probable that the Hinayanist portion of the Chinese Tripitaka is in the main a translation of the Canon of the Sarvastivdins which must have consisted of:

(1) Four Agamas or Nikyas only, for the Dhammapada is placed outside the Sutta Pitaka.

(2) A voluminous Vinaya covering the same ground as the Pali recension but more copious in legend and anecdote.

(3) An Abhidharma entirely different from the Pali works bearing this name.