On the Ratnagotravibhāga

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|PubDate=2018/09/12
 
|PubDate=2018/09/12
 
|ArticleSummary=The Indian treatise that this website identifies as the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is also known by a handful of other titles in multiple languages. It is fairly common for ancient works of literature to be known by many names, especially if, like the Ratnāgotravibhāga (to give it its abbreviated name) it has been translated into many languages. This essay will explain the multiple names, discuss what is known of its authorship, and briefly survey the existing recensions and translations.
 
|ArticleSummary=The Indian treatise that this website identifies as the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is also known by a handful of other titles in multiple languages. It is fairly common for ancient works of literature to be known by many names, especially if, like the Ratnāgotravibhāga (to give it its abbreviated name) it has been translated into many languages. This essay will explain the multiple names, discuss what is known of its authorship, and briefly survey the existing recensions and translations.
|ArticleContent=The title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra<ref>1. In Sanskrit compounds the “a” of Mahāyāna and the “u” of Uttaratantra combine as “o.” The title could just as easily be rendered “Mahāyāna Uttaratantra Śāstra.” </ref> is attested in the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Superior Continuum (uttaratantra) of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (śāstra) Analyzing (vibhāga) the Source (gotra) of the Three Jewels (ratna).” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra, gives the name as Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Superior Mahāyāna [Doctrine].[2] Western scholars only became aware of Sanskrit versions in the 1930s (see below); prior to this, they knew the text only in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and this was complicated by the fact that both the Chinese and the Tibetan traditions divide the text into two. Where in India the Ratnagotravibhāga was a single work comprised of root verses, explanatory verses, and prose commentary, the Chinese and Tibetan translators and commentators considered the root and explanatory verses to be one text and the complete text, including the prose commentary, to be a second. Thus not only do we have multiple names in multiple languages for the treatise, but multiple names in Chinese and Tibetan for its different parts.  
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|ArticleContent=
The Chinese title of the combined verses and prose is Jiu jing yi cheng bao xing lun 究竟一乘寶性論, which Takasaki has reconstructed as Uttara-ekayāna-ratnagotra-śāstra[3] and which translates to something like “Treatise on the Superior Jewel Family of the Single-Vehicle.”[4]  Kano, however, suspects that the yicheng 一乘 is a mistake for dacheng 大乘, or Mahāyāna.[5] If this is the case than the title would back translate to a more familiar form (note that the Chinese does not contain the word "tantra.") In the standard edition of the Chinese canon, the extracted verses come first, after which is the complete test is given (see below for references), without a new title. Both translations are credited to Ratnamati in the early sixth century.[6] It is not known why he—or someone else—separated the text into two, although one might speculate that it was done to make memorization easier.  
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===The titles===
The Tibetan tradition names the extracted verses Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos, which back-translates into Sanskrit as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra, and might be rendered in English as something like “Treatise on the Superior Mahāyāna Tantra.” The complete text, however, is titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa, which reconstructs as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra-vyākhyā, and translates to “A Commentary on the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Mahāyāna.” It is important to note that the title Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā—or any version with "vyākhyā"—is not attested in any surviving Sanskrit manuscript; Kano surmised that the root verses were extracted by a disciple of the Tibetan translator and given the title of the work, at which point the entire text was deemed to be a commentary and therefore given the title of “vyākhyā.”[7] Note that the Tibetan tradition dispensed with the phrase “Ratnagotravibhāga” in the title; it is commonly known as the Uttaratantra. Western scholars on the Ratnagotravibhāga have largely followed Tibetan tradition and divided the text in two, abbreviating the root verses as RGV and the entire text as RGVV.  
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The title ''Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra''<ref>According to the Sanskrit grammatical rules associated with ''sandhi'', the word boundaries of the “a” of Mahāyāna and the “u” of Uttaratantra combine as “o.” The title could just as easily be rendered “''Mahāyāna Uttaratantra Śāstra''.”</ref> is attested in the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Superior Continuum (''uttaratantra'') of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (''śāstra'') Analyzing (''vibhāga'') the Source (''gotra'') of the Three Jewels (''ratna'').” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra, gives the name as Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Superior Mahāyāna [Doctrine].<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27, note #41.</ref> Western scholars only became aware of Sanskrit versions in the 1930s (see below); prior to this, they knew the text only in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and this was complicated by the fact that both the Chinese and the Tibetan traditions divide the text into two. Where in India the Ratnagotravibhāga was a single work comprised of root verses, explanatory verses, and prose commentary, the Chinese and Tibetan translators and commentators considered the root and explanatory verses to be one text and the complete text, including the prose commentary, to be a second. Thus not only do we have multiple names in multiple languages for the treatise, but multiple names in Chinese and Tibetan for its different parts.  
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The Chinese title of the combined verses and prose is Jiu jing yi cheng bao xing lun 究竟一乘寶性論, which Takasaki has reconstructed as Uttara-ekayāna-ratnagotra-śāstra<ref>Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga, 7.</ref> and which translates to something like “Treatise on the Superior Jewel Family of the Single-Vehicle.”<ref>Brunnhöltzl (When the Clouds Part, 93) gives the Chinese title as  Ratnagotraśāstra, which comes from the common abbreviation of 寶性論.</ref> Kano, however, suspects that the yicheng 一乘 is a mistake for dacheng 大乘, or Mahāyāna.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27 note #40.</ref> If this is the case than the title would back translate to a more familiar form (note that the Chinese does not contain the word "tantra.") In the standard edition of the Chinese canon, the extracted verses come first, after which is the complete test is given (see below for references), without a new title. Both translations are credited to Ratnamati in the early sixth century.<ref>This date is not universally accepted. See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-21.</ref> It is not known why he—or someone else—separated the text into two, although one might speculate that it was done to make memorization easier.  
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The Tibetan tradition names the extracted verses Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos, which back-translates into Sanskrit as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra, and might be rendered in English as something like “Treatise on the Superior Mahāyāna Tantra.” The complete text, however, is titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa, which reconstructs as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra-vyākhyā, and translates to “A Commentary on the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Mahāyāna.” It is important to note that the title Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā—or any version with "vyākhyā"—is not attested in any surviving Sanskrit manuscript; Kano surmised that the root verses were extracted by a disciple of the Tibetan translator and given the title of the work, at which point the entire text was deemed to be a commentary and therefore given the title of “vyākhyā.”<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 18</ref> Note that the Tibetan tradition dispensed with the phrase “Ratnagotravibhāga” in the title; it is commonly known as the Uttaratantra. Western scholars on the Ratnagotravibhāga have largely followed Tibetan tradition and divided the text in two, abbreviating the root verses as RGV and the entire text as RGVV.  
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B. Authorship<ref>This section is based on the scholarship of Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, Appendix A; Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-31; Takasaki, A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga, 6-9; Brunnhöltzl, When the Clouds Part, 94. For a chart of modern scholars’ positions on the authorship of the Ratnagotravibhāga see Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 29.</ref>
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The identity of the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga is not known. We have names, but the Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions differ so radically that scholars have been unable to reach a consensus. The Sanskrit manuscripts found in Tibetan libraries in the 1930s do not identify an author, nor do the Chinese translations, which date to the early sixth century, only later catalogs provide a name. In brief, the Chinese tradition points to a man named Sāramati, a member of the kṣatriya clan from Central or Northern India. The later Indian and Central Asian traditions point to Maitreya as the author of the entire text, while Tibetan tradition credits the verses to the Bodhisattva Maitreya and the prose commentary to Ārya Asaṅga.
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The earliest Chinese attribution comes from the important treatise Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀 written in 594 by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi 智顗 (538-597), where the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga is identified as Jianyi 堅意. Two texts from the seventh century both name the author Jianhui 堅惠.<ref>These are a commentary on the Sandhinirmocanasūtra (jieshenmi jingshu 解深密經疏) by the Korean monk Wǒnch’ǔuk 圓測 (613-696) and the Huayan patriarch Fazang’s 法藏 (643-712) treatise Dacheng fajie wuchabie lunshu 大乘法界無差別論疏. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 22.</ref> Jianyi and Jianhui can both be rendered as Sāramati or Sthiramati; yi 意 and hui 惠, which both mean “wisdom," were used at the time to render mati.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 22 (following Takasaki).</ref> The issue is over the ''jian'' 堅, meaning “firm,” and whether it transcribes ''sāra'' or ''sthira'' (both ''sthira'' and ''sāra'' can have the meaning of "strong" or "firm").
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In his 1950 edition of the Sanskrit text of the Ratnagotravibhāga, Johnson asserted that the author was Sthiramati, the author of several Yogācara-inflected commentaries on Abhidharma literature known in both China and Tibet (by the name Slob dpon blo gros brtan pa, which translates to "firm wisdom").<ref>Silk (Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 150) points out that in China, Sthiramati’s name was usually translated as Anhui 安慧 and transliterated (in contemporary pronunciation) as either xichiluomodi 悉恥羅末底 or xidiluomodi 悉地羅末底. Pronunciation of Chinese characters has changed radically over the centuries, and while scholars have made valiant attempts at reconstructing previous pronunciations, it is an imperfect art.</ref> Multiple Japanese and European scholars have also taken this position. Jonathan Silk, however, convincingly argues against this view, although he is more careful than others, placing an asterisk before the name (*Sāramati) to indicate that it is nowhere attested in surviving Sanskrit literature. He points out that Jianyi/*Sāramati is credited with another composition, the *Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśeṣa (Dasheng fajie wuchabie lun 大乘法界無差別論), which Silk finds to be so closely related to the Ratnagotravibhāga to assure him that they were written by the same person. Additional evidence comes from a passage in Fazang's commentary to his teacher *Devendraprajña's translation of the above text, in which he gives the author's name as Jianhui and also as Suoluomodi 娑囉末底 , which Fazang glosses as “firm wisdom.”<ref>Silk Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 152-153.</ref> As Kano has noted, Chinese tradition after Zhiyi settled on this individual, Sāramati, as the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 24.</ref>
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Central Asian tradition, on the other hand, credited the treatise to the Bodhisattva Maitreya. The earliest surviving example of this is a fragment of a Khotanese Hybrid Sanskrit discovered in the library cave at Dunhuang in the early twentieth century that quotes the “Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra” and credits it to “the bodhisattva Ārya Maitreya.” The fragment quotes both root verses and commentarial verses without suggesting different authorship. Kano dates this fragment to the 840s based on the Chinese text written on the front side of the paper.<ref>Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 25. Kano also suggests (page 27) that this text was unlikely to have had any impact on the Tibetan tradition of the treatise, as Tibetans universally name the text Mahāyānottaratantra. He also points to the curious fact that Devendraprajñā, the translator of the *Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśeṣa, was himself Khotanese and yet ascribed both that text and the Ratnagotravibhāga to Sāramati rather than Maitreya.</ref>
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While the Central Asian and late Indian tradition of the Ratnagotravibhāga credits Maitreya as the sole author of the text, the Tibetan tradition splits the authorship of the work between Maitreya (the basic and explanatory verses) and Asaṅga (prose commentary). This split dates to the very beginning of the text's history in Tibet; the colophon to Ngok's translation credits Maitreya with the verses and Asaṅga with the prose.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.</ref> This continued to be the Tibetan tradition and is followed by most scholars who work from the Tibetan side. A few scholars have proposed that perhaps Sāramati was given the epithet "Maitreya," which would thereby unite the Chinese and Tibetan traditions, but Kano points out that there is no evidence to support this conjecture.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 30.</ref> Why Ngok gave credit to Asaṅga for the prose commentary section of the text is not yet understood. As Kano points out, the Kashmiri tradition in which Ngok trained does not appear to have ascribed authorship to Asaṅga.<re>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.</ref> One might speculate that a Tibetan scribe separated the verses from the prose to make a more easily memorized text; if this occurred around the time that Asaṅga's star was rising in Tibet with the translation of his Yogācāra treatises, than the scribe may have felt there would be value in linking Asaṅga's name to the Ratnagotravibhāga.
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A. The titles
 
The title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is attested in the surviving 1
 
Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Superior Continuum ( uttaratantra ) of the
 
Mahāyāna, A Treatise ( śāstra ) Analyzing ( vibhāga ) the Source ( gotra ) of the Three Jewels
 
( ratna ).” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃ kāra , gives the
 
name as Mahāyānottara : [Treatise] on the Superior Mahāyāna [Doctrine]. Western scholars 2
 
only became aware of Sanskrit versions in the 1930s (see below); prior to this, they knew the text
 
only in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and this was complicated by the fact that both the Chinese
 
and the Tibetan traditions divide the text into two. Where in India the Ratnagotravibhāga was a
 
single work comprised of root verses, explanatory verses, and prose commentary, the Chinese
 
and Tibetan translators and commentators considered the root and explanatory verses to be one
 
text and the complete text, including the prose commentary, to be a second. Thus not only do we
 
have multiple names in multiple languages for the treatise, but multiple names in Chinese and
 
Tibetan for its different parts.
 
The Chinese title of the combined verses and prose is Jiu jing yi cheng bao xing lun 究竟
 
一乘寶性論, which Takasaki has reconstructed as Uttara-ekayāna-ratnagotra-śāstra and which 3
 
1 In Sanskrit compounds the “a” of Mahāyāna and the “u” of Uttaratantra combine as “o.” The title could just as
 
easily be rendered “ Mahāyāna Uttaratantra Śāstra. ”
 
2 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 27, note #41.
 
3 Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga , 7.
 
translates to something like “Treatise on the Superior Jewel Family of the Single-Vehicle.” 4
 
Kano, however, suspects that the yicheng 一乘 is a mistake for dacheng 大乘, or Mahāyāna. If 5
 
this is the case than the title would back translate to a more familiar form (note that the Chinese
 
does not contain the word "tantra.") In the standard edition of the Chinese canon, the extracted
 
verses come first, after which is the complete test is given (see below for references), without a
 
new title. Both translations are credited to Ratnamati in the early sixth century. It is not known 6
 
why he—or someone else—separated the text into two, although one might speculate that it was
 
done to make memorization easier.
 
The Tibetan tradition names the extracted verses Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan
 
bcos , which back-translates into Sanskrit as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra , and might be
 
rendered in English as something like “Treatise on the Superior Mahāyāna Tantra.” The
 
complete text, however, is titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa ,
 
which reconstructs as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra-vyākhyā , and translates to “A Commentary
 
on the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Mahāyāna.” It is important to note that the title
 
Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā —or any version with "vyākhyā"—is not attested in any surviving
 
Sanskrit manuscript; Kano surmised that the root verses were extracted by a disciple of the
 
Tibetan translator and given the title of the work, at which point the entire text was deemed to be
 
a commentary and therefore given the title of “vyākhyā.” Note that the Tibetan tradition 7
 
dispensed with the phrase “ Ratnagotravibhāga ” in the title; it is commonly known as the
 
Uttaratantra. Western scholars on the Ratnagotravibhāga have largely followed Tibetan tradition
 
and divided the text in two, abbreviating the root verses as RGV and the entire text as RGVV.
 
B. Authorship 8
 
4 Brunnhöltzl ( When the Clouds Part , 93) gives the Chinese title as Ratnagotraśāstra , which comes from the
 
common abbreviation of 寶性論 .
 
5 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 27 note #40.
 
6 This date is not universally accepted. See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 20-21.
 
7 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 18
 
8 This section is based on the scholarship of Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity , Appendix A; Kano, Buddha-Nature and
 
Emptiness , 20-31; Takasaki, A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga , 6-9; Brunnhöltzl, When the Clouds Part , 94. For a
 
chart of modern scholars’ positions on the authorship of the Ratnagotravibhāga see Kano, Buddha-Nature and
 
Emptiness , 29.
 
The identity of the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga is not known. We have names, but
 
the Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions differ so radically that scholars have been unable to
 
reach a consensus. The Sanskrit manuscripts found in Tibetan libraries in the 1930s do not
 
identify an author, nor do the Chinese translations, which date to the early sixth century, only
 
later catalogs provide a name. In brief, the Chinese tradition points to a man named Sāramati, a
 
member of the kṣatriya clan from Central or Northern India. The later Indian and Central Asian
 
traditions point to Maitreya as the author of the entire text, while Tibetan tradition credits the
 
verses to the Bodhisattva Maitreya and the prose commentary to  rya Asaṅga.
 
The earliest Chinese attribution comes from the important treatise Mohe zhigua n 摩訶止
 
觀 written in 594 by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi 智顗 (538-597), where the author of the
 
Ratnagotravibhāga is identified as Jianyi 堅意. Two texts from the seventh century both name
 
the author Jianhui 堅惠. Jianyi and Jianhui can both be rendered as Sāramati or Sthiramati; yi 意 9
 
and hui 惠, which both mean “wisdom," were used at the time to render mati .10 The issue is over
 
the jian 堅, meaning “firm,” and whether it transcribes sāra or sthira (both sthira and sāra can
 
have the meaning of "strong" or "firm").
 
In his 1950 edition of the Sanskrit text of the Ratnagotravibhāga , Johnson asserted that
 
the author was Sthiramati, the author of several Yogācara-inflected commentaries on
 
Abhidharma literature known in both China and Tibet (by the name Slob dpon blo gros brtan pa,
 
which translates to "firm wisdom"). Multiple Japanese and European scholars have also taken 11
 
this position. Jonathan Silk, however, convincingly argues against this view, although he is more
 
careful than others, placing an asterisk before the name (*Sāramati) to indicate that it is nowhere
 
attested in surviving Sanskrit literature. He points out that Jianyi/*Sāramati is credited with
 
another composition, the * Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśesạ ( Dasheng fajie wuchabie lun 大乘法
 
界無差別論), which Silk finds to be so closely related to the Ratnagotravibhāga to assure him
 
9 These are a commentary on the Sandhinirmocanasūtra ( jieshenmi jingshu 解深密經疏) by the Korean monk
 
Wǒnch’ǔuk 圓測 (613-696) and the Huayan patriarch Fazang’s 法藏 (643-712) treatise Dacheng fajie wuchabie
 
lunshu 大乘法界無差別論疏. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 22.
 
10 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 22 (following Takasaki).
 
11 Silk ( Buddhist Cosmic Unity , 150) points out that in China, Sthiramati’s name was usually translated as Anhui 安
 
慧 and transliterated (in contemporary pronunciation) as either xichiluomodi 悉恥羅末底 or xidiluomodi 悉地羅末
 
底. Pronunciation of Chinese characters has changed radically over the centuries, and while scholars have made
 
valiant attempts at reconstructing previous pronunciations, it is an imperfect art.
 
that they were written by the same person. Additional evidence comes from a passage in
 
Fazang's commentary to his teacher *Devendraprajña's translation of the above text, in which he
 
gives the author's name as Jianhui and also as Suoluomodi 娑囉末底 , which Fazang glosses as
 
“firm wisdom.”12As Kano has noted, Chinese tradition after Zhiyi settled on this individual,
 
Sāramati, as the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga .13
 
Central Asian tradition, on the other hand, credited the treatise to the Bodhisattva
 
Maitreya. The earliest surviving example of this is a fragment of a Khotanese Hybrid Sanskrit
 
discovered in the library cave at Dunhuang in the early twentieth century that quotes the
 
“ Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra ” and credits it to “the bodhisattva  rya Maitreya.” The fragment
 
quotes both root verses and commentarial verses without suggesting different authorship. Kano
 
dates this fragment to the 840s based on the Chinese text written on the front side of the paper. 14
 
While the Central Asian and late Indian tradition of the Ratnagotravibhāga credits
 
Maitreya as the sole author of the text, the Tibetan tradition splits the authorship of the work
 
between Maitreya (the basic and explanatory verses) and Asaṅga (prose commentary). This split
 
dates to the very beginning of the text's history in Tibet; the colophon to Ngok's translation
 
credits Maitreya with the verses and Asaṅga with the prose.15 This continued to be the Tibetan
 
tradition and is followed by most scholars who work from the Tibetan side. A few scholars have
 
proposed that perhaps Sāramati was given the epithet "Maitreya," which would thereby unite the
 
Chinese and Tibetan traditions, but Kano points out that there is no evidence to support this
 
conjecture.16 Why Ngok gave credit to Asaṅga for the prose commentary section of the text is
 
not yet understood. As Kano points out, the Kashmiri tradition in which Ngok trained does not
 
appear to have ascribed authorship to Asaṅga.17 One might speculate that a Tibetan scribe
 
separated the verses from the prose to make a more easily memorized text; if this occurred
 
around the time that Asaṅga's star was rising in Tibet with the translation of his Yogācāra
 
12 Silk Buddhist Cosmic Unity , 152-153.
 
13 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 24.
 
14 Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 25. Kano also suggests (page 27) that this text was unlikely to have had any
 
impact on the Tibetan tradition of the treatise, as Tibetans universally name the text Mahāyānottaratantra. He also
 
points to the curious fact that Devendraprajñā, the translator of the * Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśesạ , was himself
 
Khotanese and yet ascribed both that text and the Ratnagotravibhāga to Sāramati rather than Maitreya.
 
15 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 28.
 
16 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 30.
 
17 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 28.
 
treatises, than the scribe may have felt there would be value in linking Asaṅga's name to the
 
Ratnagotravibhāga .
 
 
C. Surviving recensions of the text in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.
 
C. Surviving recensions of the text in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.
There are three surviving manuscripts of the Ratnagotravibhāga in Sanskrit, all
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incomplete. All of these were located only in the middle of the twentieth century. The first, in
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eleven folia , dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries. It was discovered and photographed in the 18
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There are three surviving manuscripts of the Ratnagotravibhāga in Sanskrit, all incomplete. All of these were located only in the middle of the twentieth century. The first, in eleven folia<ref>These are folia 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, and 26.</ref>, dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries. It was discovered and photographed in the library of Ngor Monastery in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named Sāṅkṛtyāyana.<re>Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Sanskrit Palm-leave Mss. in Tibet," 33. The great Twentieth-century Tibetan scholar Gendun Chopel noted the existence of this manuscript back in 1934. See Jinpa and Lopez, Grains of Gold, 42.</ref> This manuscript is currently stored in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. A second manuscript of Nepalese provenance and dating to around the twelfth century was located at Zhalu Monastery, again by Sāṅkṛtyāyana.<ref>Sāṅkṛtyāyana, "Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet," 34; Sferra "Sanskrit Manuscripts," 47. </ref> Kano does not indicate where this manuscript is currently located. The third, also from Zhalu, was brought to the China Ethnic Library in Beijing some time between the 1960s and 1990s and is now housed at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa. On the basis of the first two, Johnson prepared an edited version which was published posthumously in 1950 and continues to serve as the standard (with slight corrections) Sanskrit version.  
library of Ngor Monastery in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named Sāṅkṛtyāyana. This 19
+
As noted above, both the Chinese and Tibetan tradition extracted the verses from the Ratnagotravibhāga to create a second text. The Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Chinese by Ratnamati (Lenamoti 勒那摩提 ). The Chinese canon has two texts under the title of Jiujing yicheng baoxinglun 究竟一乘寶性論: the first, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 813a8-820c20, has only the basic verses as well as eighteen opening verses not found in Sanskrit versions nor Tibetan translation. There is no explanation as to why, or who, separated the verses from the prose. The second, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 820c21-848a27, is the full text, complete with the prose section. Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa (zhongtianzhu 中天竺) between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in Luoyang.<ref>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 21.</ref> He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been assisted by Bodhiruci.<ref>Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 7-8.</ref>
manuscript is currently stored in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. A second manuscript of Nepalese
+
According to Tibetan histories, the Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Tibetan six times. Only that of Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab (rngog lo tsA ba blo ldan shes rab, 1059-1109) survives. The extracted verses are Derge 4024/Peking 5525, titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos. The full text is Derge 4025/Peking 5526, under the title Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos kyi rnam par bshad pa. There exist multiple manuscripts and prints of this full translation, many of which the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project has microfilmed.<ref>See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 19 note #4; he points out that these have yet to be studied.</ref>
provenance and dating to around the twelfth century was located at Zhalu Monastery, again by
+
Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa were the second team to translate the Ratnagotravibhāga; before them Atiśa Dīpaṃkara<ref>His dates are 982-c. 1055</ref> and Naktsho Tsultrim Gyelwa<ref>Nag tsho tshul khrims rgyal ba, 1011-1064</ref> had done so. Translations after Ngok were made by Patsab Nyima Drak,<ref>Pa tshab nyi ma grags, born 1055</ref> Marpa Dopa Chokyi Wangchuk,<ref>Mar pa do pa chos kyi dbang phyug, 1042-1136</ref> Jonang Lotsawa Lodro Pel (the basic verses only),<ref>jo nang lo tsA ba blo gros dpal, 1299/1300-1353/1364</ref> and Yarlung Lotsāwa.<ref>Yar klung lo tsA ba, dates unknown</ref> Alongside that of Sajjana and Ngok, at least the translations by Atiśa and Naksho and by Patsab survived into the sixteenth century, as Go Lotsāwa Zhonnu Pel<ref>’Go lo tsA ba gzhon nu dpal, 1392-1481</ref> consulted them for his famous commentary.<ref>See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness Chapter 6 for a survey of these six translations, including surviving passages of the five that have been lost. </ref>
Sāṅkṛtyāyana. Kano does not indicate where this manuscript is currently located. The third, 20
+
 
also from Zhalu, was brought to the China Ethnic Library in Beijing some time between the
+
 
1960s and 1990s and is now housed at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa. On the basis of the first two,
 
Johnson prepared an edited version which was published posthumously in 1950 and continues to
 
serve as the standard (with slight corrections) Sanskrit version.
 
As noted above, both the Chinese and Tibetan tradition extracted the verses from the
 
Ratnagotravibhāga to create a second text. The Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Chinese
 
by Ratnamati (Lenamoti 勒那摩提 ). The Chinese canon has two texts under the title of Jiujing
 
yicheng baoxinglun 究竟一乘寶性論: the first, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 813a8-820c20, has
 
only the basic verses as well as eighteen opening verses not found in Sanskrit versions nor
 
Tibetan translation . There is no explanation as to why, or who, separated the verses from the
 
prose. The second, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 820c21-848a27, is the full text, complete with the
 
prose section. Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa (zhongtianzhu 中天竺)
 
between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in
 
18 These are folia 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, and 26.
 
19 Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Sanskrit Palm-leave Mss. in Tibet ," 33. The great Twentieth-century Tibetan scholar Gendun
 
Chopel noted the existence of this manuscript back in 1934. See Jinpa and Lopez, Grains of Gold , 42.
 
20 Sāṅkṛtyāyana, "Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet," 34; Sferra "Sanskrit Manuscripts," 47.
 
Luoyang. He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been 21
 
assisted by Bodhiruci. 22
 
According to Tibetan histories, the Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Tibetan six
 
times. Only that of Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab (rngog lo tsA ba blo ldan shes rab,
 
1059-1109) survives. The extracted verses are Derge 4024/Peking 5525, titled Theg pa chen po
 
rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos . The full text is Derge 4025/Peking 5526, under the title Theg pa chen
 
po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos kyi rnam par bshad pa. There exist multiple manuscripts and prints
 
of this full translation, many of which the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project has
 
microfilmed. 23
 
Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa were the second team to translate the Ratnagotravibhāga;
 
before them Atiśa Dīpaṃkara and Naktsho Tsultrim Gyelwa had done so. Translations after 24 25
 
Ngok were made by Patsab Nyima Drak, Marpa Dopa Chokyi Wangchuk, Jonang Lotsawa 26 27
 
Lodro Pel (the basic verses only), and Yarlung Lotsāwa. Alongside that of Sajjana and Ngok, 28 29
 
at least the translations by Atiśa and Naksho and by Patsab survived into the sixteenth century, as
 
Go Lotsāwa Zhonnu Pel consulted them for his famous commentary. 30 31
 
 
D. Translations into European Languages
 
D. Translations into European Languages
The Ratnagotravibhāga was first translated into a European language in 1931 by the Russian
+
 
Buddhologist Eugène Obermiller, who worked from the Tibetan. It was published under the title
+
 
The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism . 32
+
The Ratnagotravibhāga was first translated into a European language in 1931 by the Russian Buddhologist Eugène Obermiller, who worked from the Tibetan. It was published under the title The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism.<ref>Obermiller, Eugène, "The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism."</ref> Following Sāṅkṛtyāyana’s discovery of the Sanskrit manuscripts and Johnson’s edition, Japanese scholar Takasaki Jikidō published a second English translation, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra) Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory of Mahāyāna Buddhism working primarily from the Sanskrit, but also consulting the Chinese and Tibetan translations.<ref>Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga.</ref> Ken and Katia Holmes, students of Thrangu Rinpoche (b. 1933), translated the basic verses from the Tibetan in the 1970s, publishing it first in 1979 as Changeless Nature,<ref>Maitreya, Changeless Nature.</ref> which they revised in 1989 as The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature<ref>Maitreya, The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature.</ref> and again in 1999 as Maitreya on Buddha Nature.<ref>Maitreya, Maitreya on Buddha Nature. </ref> In 2014 Karl Brunnhölzl translated the Ratnagotravibhāga from the Tibetan in When the Clouds Part.<ref>Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part.</ref>
21 Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 21.
 
22 Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity , 7-8.
 
23 See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness , 19 note #4; he points out that these have yet to be studied.
 
24 His dates are 982-c. 1055
 
25 Nag tsho tshul khrims rgyal ba, 1011-1064
 
26 Pa tshab nyi ma grags, born 1055
 
27 Mar pa do pa chos kyi dbang phyug, 1042-1136
 
28 jo nang lo tsA ba blo gros dpal, 1299/1300-1353/1364
 
29 Yar klung lo tsA ba, dates unknown
 
30 ’Go lo tsA ba gzhon nu dpal, 1392-1481
 
31 See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness Chapter 6 for a survey of these six translations, including surviving
 
passages of the five that have been lost.
 
32 Obermiller, Eugène, "The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist
 
Monism."
 
Following Sāṅkṛtyāyana’s discovery of the Sanskrit manuscripts and Johnson’s edition, Japanese
 
scholar Takasaki Jikidō published a second English translation, A Study on the
 
Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra) Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory of
 
Mahāyāna Buddhism working primarily from the Sanskrit, but also consulting the Chinese and
 
Tibetan translations. Ken and Katia Holmes, students of Thrangu Rinpoche (b. 1933), 33
 
translated the basic verses from the Tibetan in the 1970s, publishing it first in 1979 as
 
Changeless Nature , which they revised in 1989 as The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha 34
 
Nature and again in 1999 as Maitreya on Buddha Nature . In 2014 Karl Brunnhölzl translated 35 36
 
the Ratnagotravibhāga from the Tibetan in When the Clouds Part . 37
 
33 Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga .
 
34 Maitreya, Changeless Nature .
 
35 Maitreya , The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature .
 
36 Maitreya, Maitreya on Buddha Nature .
 
37 Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part .
 
 
|PostStatus=Needs Final Review
 
|PostStatus=Needs Final Review
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 16:01, 21 September 2018

On the Ratnagotravibhāga
Alexander Gardner
2018/09/12
Original content written for the Buddha-Nature Project.
Article
Article
Citation:

Abstract

The Indian treatise that this website identifies as the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is also known by a handful of other titles in multiple languages. It is fairly common for ancient works of literature to be known by many names, especially if, like the Ratnagotravibhāga (to give it its abbreviated name), it has been translated into many languages. This essay will explain the multiple names, discuss what is known of its authorship, and briefly survey the existing recensions and translations.

The titles

The title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra[1] is attested in the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Superior Continuum (uttaratantra) of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (śāstra) Analyzing (vibhāga) the Source (gotra) of the Three Jewels (ratna).” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra, gives the name as Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Superior Mahāyāna [Doctrine].[2] Western scholars only became aware of Sanskrit versions in the 1930s (see below); prior to this, they knew the text only in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and this was complicated by the fact that both the Chinese and the Tibetan traditions divide the text into two. Where in India the Ratnagotravibhāga was a single work comprised of root verses, explanatory verses, and prose commentary, the Chinese and Tibetan translators and commentators considered the root and explanatory verses to be one text and the complete text, including the prose commentary, to be a second. Thus not only do we have multiple names in multiple languages for the treatise, but multiple names in Chinese and Tibetan for its different parts. The Chinese title of the combined verses and prose is Jiu jing yi cheng bao xing lun 究竟一乘寶性論, which Takasaki has reconstructed as Uttara-ekayāna-ratnagotra-śāstra[3] and which translates to something like “Treatise on the Superior Jewel Family of the Single-Vehicle.”[4] Kano, however, suspects that the yicheng 一乘 is a mistake for dacheng 大乘, or Mahāyāna.[5] If this is the case than the title would back translate to a more familiar form (note that the Chinese does not contain the word "tantra.") In the standard edition of the Chinese canon, the extracted verses come first, after which is the complete test is given (see below for references), without a new title. Both translations are credited to Ratnamati in the early sixth century.[6] It is not known why he—or someone else—separated the text into two, although one might speculate that it was done to make memorization easier. The Tibetan tradition names the extracted verses Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos, which back-translates into Sanskrit as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra, and might be rendered in English as something like “Treatise on the Superior Mahāyāna Tantra.” The complete text, however, is titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa, which reconstructs as Mahāyāna-uttaratantra-śāstra-vyākhyā, and translates to “A Commentary on the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Mahāyāna.” It is important to note that the title Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā—or any version with "vyākhyā"—is not attested in any surviving Sanskrit manuscript; Kano surmised that the root verses were extracted by a disciple of the Tibetan translator and given the title of the work, at which point the entire text was deemed to be a commentary and therefore given the title of “vyākhyā.”[7] Note that the Tibetan tradition dispensed with the phrase “Ratnagotravibhāga” in the title; it is commonly known as the Uttaratantra. Western scholars on the Ratnagotravibhāga have largely followed Tibetan tradition and divided the text in two, abbreviating the root verses as RGV and the entire text as RGVV.

B. Authorship[8]


The identity of the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga is not known. We have names, but the Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions differ so radically that scholars have been unable to reach a consensus. The Sanskrit manuscripts found in Tibetan libraries in the 1930s do not identify an author, nor do the Chinese translations, which date to the early sixth century, only later catalogs provide a name. In brief, the Chinese tradition points to a man named Sāramati, a member of the kṣatriya clan from Central or Northern India. The later Indian and Central Asian traditions point to Maitreya as the author of the entire text, while Tibetan tradition credits the verses to the Bodhisattva Maitreya and the prose commentary to Ārya Asaṅga. The earliest Chinese attribution comes from the important treatise Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀 written in 594 by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi 智顗 (538-597), where the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga is identified as Jianyi 堅意. Two texts from the seventh century both name the author Jianhui 堅惠.[9] Jianyi and Jianhui can both be rendered as Sāramati or Sthiramati; yi 意 and hui 惠, which both mean “wisdom," were used at the time to render mati.[10] The issue is over the jian 堅, meaning “firm,” and whether it transcribes sāra or sthira (both sthira and sāra can have the meaning of "strong" or "firm"). In his 1950 edition of the Sanskrit text of the Ratnagotravibhāga, Johnson asserted that the author was Sthiramati, the author of several Yogācara-inflected commentaries on Abhidharma literature known in both China and Tibet (by the name Slob dpon blo gros brtan pa, which translates to "firm wisdom").[11] Multiple Japanese and European scholars have also taken this position. Jonathan Silk, however, convincingly argues against this view, although he is more careful than others, placing an asterisk before the name (*Sāramati) to indicate that it is nowhere attested in surviving Sanskrit literature. He points out that Jianyi/*Sāramati is credited with another composition, the *Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśeṣa (Dasheng fajie wuchabie lun 大乘法界無差別論), which Silk finds to be so closely related to the Ratnagotravibhāga to assure him that they were written by the same person. Additional evidence comes from a passage in Fazang's commentary to his teacher *Devendraprajña's translation of the above text, in which he gives the author's name as Jianhui and also as Suoluomodi 娑囉末底 , which Fazang glosses as “firm wisdom.”[12] As Kano has noted, Chinese tradition after Zhiyi settled on this individual, Sāramati, as the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga.[13] Central Asian tradition, on the other hand, credited the treatise to the Bodhisattva Maitreya. The earliest surviving example of this is a fragment of a Khotanese Hybrid Sanskrit discovered in the library cave at Dunhuang in the early twentieth century that quotes the “Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra” and credits it to “the bodhisattva Ārya Maitreya.” The fragment quotes both root verses and commentarial verses without suggesting different authorship. Kano dates this fragment to the 840s based on the Chinese text written on the front side of the paper.[14] While the Central Asian and late Indian tradition of the Ratnagotravibhāga credits Maitreya as the sole author of the text, the Tibetan tradition splits the authorship of the work between Maitreya (the basic and explanatory verses) and Asaṅga (prose commentary). This split dates to the very beginning of the text's history in Tibet; the colophon to Ngok's translation credits Maitreya with the verses and Asaṅga with the prose.[15] This continued to be the Tibetan tradition and is followed by most scholars who work from the Tibetan side. A few scholars have proposed that perhaps Sāramati was given the epithet "Maitreya," which would thereby unite the Chinese and Tibetan traditions, but Kano points out that there is no evidence to support this conjecture.[16] Why Ngok gave credit to Asaṅga for the prose commentary section of the text is not yet understood. As Kano points out, the Kashmiri tradition in which Ngok trained does not appear to have ascribed authorship to Asaṅga.<re>Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.</ref> One might speculate that a Tibetan scribe separated the verses from the prose to make a more easily memorized text; if this occurred around the time that Asaṅga's star was rising in Tibet with the translation of his Yogācāra treatises, than the scribe may have felt there would be value in linking Asaṅga's name to the Ratnagotravibhāga.


C. Surviving recensions of the text in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.


There are three surviving manuscripts of the Ratnagotravibhāga in Sanskrit, all incomplete. All of these were located only in the middle of the twentieth century. The first, in eleven folia[17], dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries. It was discovered and photographed in the library of Ngor Monastery in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named Sāṅkṛtyāyana.<re>Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Sanskrit Palm-leave Mss. in Tibet," 33. The great Twentieth-century Tibetan scholar Gendun Chopel noted the existence of this manuscript back in 1934. See Jinpa and Lopez, Grains of Gold, 42.</ref> This manuscript is currently stored in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. A second manuscript of Nepalese provenance and dating to around the twelfth century was located at Zhalu Monastery, again by Sāṅkṛtyāyana.[18] Kano does not indicate where this manuscript is currently located. The third, also from Zhalu, was brought to the China Ethnic Library in Beijing some time between the 1960s and 1990s and is now housed at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa. On the basis of the first two, Johnson prepared an edited version which was published posthumously in 1950 and continues to serve as the standard (with slight corrections) Sanskrit version. As noted above, both the Chinese and Tibetan tradition extracted the verses from the Ratnagotravibhāga to create a second text. The Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Chinese by Ratnamati (Lenamoti 勒那摩提 ). The Chinese canon has two texts under the title of Jiujing yicheng baoxinglun 究竟一乘寶性論: the first, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 813a8-820c20, has only the basic verses as well as eighteen opening verses not found in Sanskrit versions nor Tibetan translation. There is no explanation as to why, or who, separated the verses from the prose. The second, Taishō no. 1611, vol. 31, 820c21-848a27, is the full text, complete with the prose section. Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa (zhongtianzhu 中天竺) between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in Luoyang.[19] He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been assisted by Bodhiruci.[20] According to Tibetan histories, the Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Tibetan six times. Only that of Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab (rngog lo tsA ba blo ldan shes rab, 1059-1109) survives. The extracted verses are Derge 4024/Peking 5525, titled Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos. The full text is Derge 4025/Peking 5526, under the title Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos kyi rnam par bshad pa. There exist multiple manuscripts and prints of this full translation, many of which the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project has microfilmed.[21] Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa were the second team to translate the Ratnagotravibhāga; before them Atiśa Dīpaṃkara[22] and Naktsho Tsultrim Gyelwa[23] had done so. Translations after Ngok were made by Patsab Nyima Drak,[24] Marpa Dopa Chokyi Wangchuk,[25] Jonang Lotsawa Lodro Pel (the basic verses only),[26] and Yarlung Lotsāwa.[27] Alongside that of Sajjana and Ngok, at least the translations by Atiśa and Naksho and by Patsab survived into the sixteenth century, as Go Lotsāwa Zhonnu Pel[28] consulted them for his famous commentary.[29]


D. Translations into European Languages


The Ratnagotravibhāga was first translated into a European language in 1931 by the Russian Buddhologist Eugène Obermiller, who worked from the Tibetan. It was published under the title The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism.[30] Following Sāṅkṛtyāyana’s discovery of the Sanskrit manuscripts and Johnson’s edition, Japanese scholar Takasaki Jikidō published a second English translation, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra) Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory of Mahāyāna Buddhism working primarily from the Sanskrit, but also consulting the Chinese and Tibetan translations.[31] Ken and Katia Holmes, students of Thrangu Rinpoche (b. 1933), translated the basic verses from the Tibetan in the 1970s, publishing it first in 1979 as Changeless Nature,[32] which they revised in 1989 as The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature[33] and again in 1999 as Maitreya on Buddha Nature.[34] In 2014 Karl Brunnhölzl translated the Ratnagotravibhāga from the Tibetan in When the Clouds Part.[35]

  1. According to the Sanskrit grammatical rules associated with sandhi, the word boundaries of the “a” of Mahāyāna and the “u” of Uttaratantra combine as “o.” The title could just as easily be rendered “Mahāyāna Uttaratantra Śāstra.”
  2. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27, note #41.
  3. Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga, 7.
  4. Brunnhöltzl (When the Clouds Part, 93) gives the Chinese title as Ratnagotraśāstra, which comes from the common abbreviation of 寶性論.
  5. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27 note #40.
  6. This date is not universally accepted. See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-21.
  7. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 18
  8. This section is based on the scholarship of Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, Appendix A; Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-31; Takasaki, A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga, 6-9; Brunnhöltzl, When the Clouds Part, 94. For a chart of modern scholars’ positions on the authorship of the Ratnagotravibhāga see Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 29.
  9. These are a commentary on the Sandhinirmocanasūtra (jieshenmi jingshu 解深密經疏) by the Korean monk Wǒnch’ǔuk 圓測 (613-696) and the Huayan patriarch Fazang’s 法藏 (643-712) treatise Dacheng fajie wuchabie lunshu 大乘法界無差別論疏. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 22.
  10. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 22 (following Takasaki).
  11. Silk (Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 150) points out that in China, Sthiramati’s name was usually translated as Anhui 安慧 and transliterated (in contemporary pronunciation) as either xichiluomodi 悉恥羅末底 or xidiluomodi 悉地羅末底. Pronunciation of Chinese characters has changed radically over the centuries, and while scholars have made valiant attempts at reconstructing previous pronunciations, it is an imperfect art.
  12. Silk Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 152-153.
  13. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 24.
  14. Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 25. Kano also suggests (page 27) that this text was unlikely to have had any impact on the Tibetan tradition of the treatise, as Tibetans universally name the text Mahāyānottaratantra. He also points to the curious fact that Devendraprajñā, the translator of the *Mahāyānadharmadhātunirviśeṣa, was himself Khotanese and yet ascribed both that text and the Ratnagotravibhāga to Sāramati rather than Maitreya.
  15. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.
  16. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 30.
  17. These are folia 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, and 26.
  18. Sāṅkṛtyāyana, "Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet," 34; Sferra "Sanskrit Manuscripts," 47.
  19. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 21.
  20. Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 7-8.
  21. See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 19 note #4; he points out that these have yet to be studied.
  22. His dates are 982-c. 1055
  23. Nag tsho tshul khrims rgyal ba, 1011-1064
  24. Pa tshab nyi ma grags, born 1055
  25. Mar pa do pa chos kyi dbang phyug, 1042-1136
  26. jo nang lo tsA ba blo gros dpal, 1299/1300-1353/1364
  27. Yar klung lo tsA ba, dates unknown
  28. ’Go lo tsA ba gzhon nu dpal, 1392-1481
  29. See Kano Buddha-Nature and Emptiness Chapter 6 for a survey of these six translations, including surviving passages of the five that have been lost.
  30. Obermiller, Eugène, "The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism."
  31. Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga.
  32. Maitreya, Changeless Nature.
  33. Maitreya, The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature.
  34. Maitreya, Maitreya on Buddha Nature.
  35. Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part.