On the Ratnagotravibhāga

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|TileDescription=The ''Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra'' is one of the main sources for buddha-nature theory in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (in China, the Awakening of Faith was of much greater importance). This article summarizes what is known about the textual tradition, author, and date of its composition and translations.
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|AuthorPage=People/Gardner, A.
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|PubDate=2018/09/12
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|ArticleContent=The ''Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra'' is one of the main sources for buddha-nature theory in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (in China, the ''Awakening of Faith'' was of much greater importance). This article summarizes what is known about the textual tradition, author, and date of its composition and translations.
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=== The Titles ===
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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 Ultimate Teaching (''uttaratantra'')<ref>See [[Articles/Continuum_vs._Teachings|the more detailed discussion of the translation of this term]] here.</ref> of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (''śāstra'') Analyzing (''vibhāga'') the Jewel (''ratna'') Disposition (''gotra'').” One surviving Sanskrit reference, [[Abhayākaragupta]]’s ''Munimatālaṃkāra'', gives the name as ''Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Ultimate 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. Whereas 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'',<ref>究竟一乘寶性論</ref> which {{InlinePersonTag
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}}, 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, then 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 the complete text is given (see below for references) without a new title. Both translations are credited to {{InlinePersonTag
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}} 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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|content=When it comes to translating the title of the text Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, often referred to simply as the Uttaratantra or rgyud bla ma in Tibetan, there is a clear discrepancy between those that render the term tantra (rgyud) as a 'teaching' or 'doctrine' and those that translate it as 'continuum'...
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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 Ultimate 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 has 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;<ref>This only refers to the main bibliographical title of the work. However, the phrase "''ratnagotravibhāga''", translated as ''dkon mchog gi rigs rnam par dbye ba '', does appear in the Tibetan translation, though only when the full title of the work is repeated at the end of each chapter. </ref> it is commonly known as the ''Uttaratantra''. {{RelatedButton
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}} 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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=== 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 on the Ratnagotravibhāga]]'', 6-9; Brunnhölzl, ''[[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 {{InlinePersonTag
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}} as the author of the entire text, while Tibetan tradition credits the verses to the bodhisattva Maitreya and the prose commentary to {{InlinePersonTag
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}}.<ref> It should be noted that in contemporary Tibetan monastic circles some scholars have suggested that the commentary section of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' might have been composed by [[Asaṅga]]'s brother [[Vasubandhu]]. This claim was also put forth by Japanese scholar Nakamura Zuiryū in 1961. See Kano, ''[[Buddha-Nature and Emptiness]]'', 20-31. However, Kano considers the assertion to be "weak on evidence."</ref>
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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), who identifies the author of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' as [[Jianyi]] 堅意. Two texts from the seventh century both name the author as Jianhui 堅惠.<ref>These are a commentary on the ''[[Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra]]'' (''Jieshenmi jingshu'' 解深密經疏) by the Korean monk Wǒnch'ǔk 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 {{InlinePersonTag
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}} or {{InlinePersonTag
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}}; ''yi'' 意 and ''hui'' 惠, which both mean "wisdom," were used at the time to render ''mati''.<ref>Kano, ''[[Buddha-Nature and Emptiness]]'', 22</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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<div class="border-tb-redfade my-4 pt-3 d-flex justify-content-center flex-wrap no-drop-cap">{{#arraymap: Maitreya;Asaṅga;Ratnamati;Sāramati;Sthiramati
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In his 1950 edition of the Sanskrit text of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'', {{InlinePersonTag
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}} asserted that the author was Sthiramati, the author of several Yogācāra-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. {{FloatingTile
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}}, 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. (Note the asterisk, meaning that all we have is a Chinese-language version.) 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," and which points to "sthira" rather than "sāra."<ref>Silk, ''[[Buddhist Cosmic Unity]]'', 152-153.</ref> As {{InlinePersonTag
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}} 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 {{InlinePersonTag
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}}. 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 the root verses and the commentarial verses without suggesting different authorship. {{InlinePersonTag
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}} 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 {{InlinePersonTag
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}} (prose commentary). This split dates to the very beginning of the text's history in Tibet; the colophon to {{InlinePersonTag
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}}'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 {{InlinePersonTag
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}} 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.<ref>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, then the scribe may have felt there would be value in linking Asaṅga's name to the ''Ratnagotravibhāga''.
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=== Surviving recensions of the text in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan ===
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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 folios,<ref>These are folios 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 {{InlineExtPlaceTag
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}} in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named {{InlinePersonTag
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}}.<ref>Sāṅkṛtyāyana, ''[[Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet]],'' 33. The great twentieth-century Tibetan scholar [[Gendun Chopel]] noted the existence of this manuscript in 1934. See [[People/Jinpa,_Thupten|Jinpa]] and [[People/Lopez, D.|Lopez]], ''[[Grains of Gold]]'', 42.</ref> This manuscript is currently stored in the {{InlineExtPlaceTag
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|description=The Potala Palace, named after the mountain home of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, looms high above the city of Lhasa on Marpori (red mountain) to the northwest of the Jokhang.
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}}. A second manuscript of Nepalese provenance and dating to around the twelfth century was located at {{InlineExtPlaceTag
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|description=Zhalu Monastery in Tsang is one of the oldest monasteries in Tibet. The Serkhang Tramo temple was built originally in 1027 by Chetsun Sherab Jungne of the Che clan, and located close to the Gyengong Lhakhang, built in 997 by Loton Dorje Wangchuk. Buton Rinchen Drub established the Ripuk hermitage in caves above the monastery and retired there. Zhalu is loosely associated with the Sakya school, maintaining its own tradition based on the Sakya and Kadam teachings of Buton.
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}}, again by Sāṅkṛtyāyana.<ref>Sāṅkṛtyāyana, "[[Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet]]," 34; Sferra, "[[Sanskrit Manuscripts and Photographs of Sanskrit Manuscripts]]," 47. </ref> {{InlinePersonTag
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}} does not indicate where this manuscript is currently located. The third, also from Zhalu, was brought to the China Ethnic Library in Beijing sometime between the 1960s and 1990s and is now housed at the {{InlineExtPlaceTag
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}}. On the basis of the first two, {{InlinePersonTag
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}} prepared an edited version which was published posthumously in 1950 and continues to serve as the standard (with slight corrections) Sanskrit version.
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The ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' was translated into Chinese by {{InlinePersonTag
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}} (Lenamoti 勒那摩提). It is preserved in the Chinese canon under the title of ''[[Jiujing yicheng baoxinglun]]'' [[究竟一乘寶性論]], Taishō no. 1611, vol 31. The Chinese edition is significantly different from the Sanskrit and Tibetan, suggesting that very different versions were circulating in India. The first section (lines 813a8-820c20) consists of eighteen opening verses that are not found in Sanskrit or Tibetan translation; Takasaki suggested that these were composed by the translator.<ref>Takasaki, ''[[A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga]]'', 9-14.</ref> The treatise itself is lines 820c21-848a27 complete with root verses, commentarial verses, and prose commentary.
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Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa (Zhongtianzhu 中天竺) between 498 and 508 and to have translated the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' between 511 and 520 in Luoyang.<ref>Kano, ''[[Buddha-Nature and Emptiness]]'', 21.</ref> He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and he may have been assisted by {{InlinePersonTag
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}}.<ref>Silk, ''[[Buddhist Cosmic Unity]]'', 7-8.</ref>
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According to Tibetan histories, the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' was translated into Tibetan six times. Only that of {{InlinePersonTag
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}} (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>
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Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa were the second team to translate the ''Ratnagotravibhāga''; before them {{InlinePersonTag
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}} and {{InlinePersonTag
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|page=People/Nag 'tsho lo tsA ba tshul khrims rgyal ba
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|text=Naktso Lotsāwa Tsultrim Gyelwa
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}} had done so. Translations after Ngok were made by {{InlinePersonTag
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}}, {{InlinePersonTag
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}}, {{InlinePersonTag
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|text=Jonang Lotsawa Lodro Pel
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}} (the basic verses only), and {{InlinePersonTag
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}}. Alongside that of Sajjana and Ngok, at least the translations by Atiśa and Naktso and by Patsab survived into the sixteenth century, as {{InlinePersonTag
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|page=People/'gos lo tsA ba gzhon nu dpal
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|text=Gö Lotsāwa Zhönu Pal
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}} 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>
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===Translations into European Languages===
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The ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' was first translated into a European language in 1931 by the Russian Buddhologist {{InlinePersonTag
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}}, 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]]''. Following {{InlinePersonTag
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}}'s edition, Japanese scholar {{InlinePersonTag
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}} published a second English translation, ''[[Books/A_Study_on_the_Ratnagotravibhaga|A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra) Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory of Mahāyāna Buddhism]].'' He worked primarily from the Sanskrit, but he also consulted the Chinese and Tibetan translations. {{InlinePersonTag
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}} and {{InlinePersonTag
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}}, students of {{InlinePersonTag
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|page=People/Thrangu Rinpoche
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|text=Thrangu Rinpoche
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}} (b. 1933), translated the basic verses from the Tibetan in the 1970s, publishing it first in 1979 as ''[[The Changeless Nature]]'',<ref>Maitreya, ''[[The Changeless Nature]]'', 1979.</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 {{InlinePersonTag
 +
|page=People/Brunnhölzl,_K.
 +
|text=Karl Brunnhölzl
 +
}} translated the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' from the Tibetan in ''[[When the Clouds Part]]''.<ref>Brunnhölzl, ''[[When the Clouds Part]]''.</ref>  [[Christian Charrier]] and [[Patrick Carré]] translated the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' into French in 2019, together with [[Jamgon Kongtrul]]'s commentary, in ''[[Traité de la Continuité suprême du Grand Véhicule]]''.
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|content=Scholars of Buddhism writing in European languages have celebrated, derided, and frequently misinterpreted the doctrine of tathāgatagarbha for well over a hundred years. While some have seen it as a crucial theoretical step to explain how deluded, impure sentient beings can become buddhas, others have dismissed the entire idea as non-Buddhist. Following Chinese and Tibetan scholiasts, Western scholars have labeled tathāgatagarbha as either Yogācāra or Madhyamaka, although most now understand that the doctrine arose independently of either of these main Mahāyāna schools...
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|ArticleParentPage=Three_Trainings/Study
 
|ArticleParentPage=Three_Trainings/Study
|ArticleTitle=On the Ratnagotravibhāga
 
 
|AuthorName=Alexander Gardner
 
|AuthorName=Alexander Gardner
|AuthorPage=Gardner, A.
 
 
|AuthorAffiliation=Treasury of Lives
 
|AuthorAffiliation=Treasury of Lives
|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.
 
|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.
 
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.
 
 
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.
 
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 , dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries. It was discovered and photographed in the 18
 
library of Ngor Monastery in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named Sāṅkṛtyāyana. This 19
 
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. 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
 
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
 
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
 
 
}}
 
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Latest revision as of 11:58, 31 January 2023

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 Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is one of the main sources for buddha-nature theory in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (in China, the Awakening of Faith was of much greater importance). This article summarizes what is known about the textual tradition, author, and date of its composition and translations.

The Titles

The title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra[1] is attested in the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Ultimate Teaching (uttaratantra)[2] of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (śāstra) Analyzing (vibhāga) the Jewel (ratna) Disposition (gotra).” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra, gives the name as Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Ultimate Mahāyāna [Doctrine].[3] 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. Whereas 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.

Uttaratantra
The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra.
term page
gotra
Disposition, lineage, or class; an individual's gotra determines the type of enlightenment one is destined to attain.
term page

Takasaki & Kano

The Chinese title of the combined verses and prose is Jiu jing yi cheng bao xing lun,[4] which
Kano
, however, suspects that the yicheng 一乘 is a mistake for dacheng 大乘, or Mahāyāna.[5] If this is the case, then 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 the complete text 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.

Continuum vs. Teachings

When it comes to translating the title of the text Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, often referred to simply as the Uttaratantra or rgyud bla ma in Tibetan, there is a clear discrepancy between those that render the term tantra (rgyud) as a 'teaching' or 'doctrine' and those that translate it as 'continuum'...
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 Ultimate 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 has 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;[8] 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.

Authorship[9]

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
.[10] 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), who identifies the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga as Jianyi 堅意. Two texts from the seventh century both name the author as Jianhui 堅惠.[11] 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.[12] 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."
Maitreya
Asaṅga
4th century
Ratnamati
5th Century ~ 6th Century
Sāramati
Sthiramati
475 ~ 555
In his 1950 edition of the Sanskrit text of the Ratnagotravibhāga,
Johnston
asserted that the author was Sthiramati, the author of several Yogācāra-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").[13] 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. (Note the asterisk, meaning that all we have is a Chinese-language version.) 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," and which points to "sthira" rather than "sāra."[14] As
Kano
has noted, Chinese tradition after Zhiyi settled on this individual, Sāramati, as the author of the Ratnagotravibhāga.[15]
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 the root verses and the 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.[16]
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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19] 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, then the scribe may have felt there would be value in linking Asaṅga's name to the Ratnagotravibhāga.

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 folios,[20] dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries. It was discovered and photographed in the library of
Ngor Monastery
Ngor Ewaṃ Choden near Shigatse in Tsang was founded in 1429 by Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo. Ngor is part of the Sakya tradition, following the same doctrinal and ritual tradition, but it maintains administrative independence from Sakya Monastery.
in the early 1930s by a Bengali scholar named
Sāṅkṛtyāyana
.[21] This manuscript is currently stored in the
Potala Palace
The Potala Palace, named after the mountain home of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, looms high above the city of Lhasa on Marpori (red mountain) to the northwest of the Jokhang.
in
Lhasa
. A second manuscript of Nepalese provenance and dating to around the twelfth century was located at
Zhalu Monastery
Zhalu Monastery in Tsang is one of the oldest monasteries in Tibet. The Serkhang Tramo temple was built originally in 1027 by Chetsun Sherab Jungne of the Che clan, and located close to the Gyengong Lhakhang, built in 997 by Loton Dorje Wangchuk. Buton Rinchen Drub established the Ripuk hermitage in caves above the monastery and retired there. Zhalu is loosely associated with the Sakya school, maintaining its own tradition based on the Sakya and Kadam teachings of Buton.
, again by Sāṅkṛtyāyana.[22]
Kano
does not indicate where this manuscript is currently located. The third, also from Zhalu, was brought to the China Ethnic Library in Beijing sometime between the 1960s and 1990s and is now housed at the
Tibet Museum in Lhasa
. On the basis of the first two,
Johnston
prepared an edited version which was published posthumously in 1950 and continues to serve as the standard (with slight corrections) Sanskrit version.
The Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Chinese by
Ratnamati
(Lenamoti 勒那摩提). It is preserved in the Chinese canon under the title of Jiujing yicheng baoxinglun 究竟一乘寶性論, Taishō no. 1611, vol 31. The Chinese edition is significantly different from the Sanskrit and Tibetan, suggesting that very different versions were circulating in India. The first section (lines 813a8-820c20) consists of eighteen opening verses that are not found in Sanskrit or Tibetan translation; Takasaki suggested that these were composed by the translator.[23] The treatise itself is lines 820c21-848a27 complete with root verses, commentarial verses, and prose commentary.
Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa (Zhongtianzhu 中天竺) between 498 and 508 and to have translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and 520 in Luoyang.[24] He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and he may have been assisted by
Bodhiruci
.[25]
According to Tibetan histories, the Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Tibetan six times. Only that of
Sajjana
and
Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab
(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.[26]
Sajjana and Ngok Lotsāwa were the second team to translate the Ratnagotravibhāga; before them
Atiśa Dīpaṃkara
and
Naktso Lotsāwa Tsultrim Gyelwa
had done so. Translations after Ngok were made by
Patsab Lotsāwa Nyima Drakpa
,
Marpa Dopa Chokyi Wangchuk
,
Jonang Lotsawa Lodro Pel
(the basic verses only), and
Yarlung Lotsāwa
. Alongside that of Sajjana and Ngok, at least the translations by Atiśa and Naktso and by Patsab survived into the sixteenth century, as
Gö Lotsāwa Zhönu Pal
consulted them for his famous commentary.[27]

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. Following
Sāṅkṛtyāyana
's discovery of the Sanskrit manuscripts and
Johnston
'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. He worked primarily from the Sanskrit, but he also consulted the Chinese and Tibetan translations.
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 The Changeless Nature,[28] which they revised in 1989 as The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature[29] and again in 1999 as Maitreya on Buddha Nature.[30] In 2014
Karl Brunnhölzl
translated the Ratnagotravibhāga from the Tibetan in When the Clouds Part.[31] Christian Charrier and Patrick Carré translated the Ratnagotravibhāga into French in 2019, together with Jamgon Kongtrul's commentary, in Traité de la Continuité suprême du Grand Véhicule.

Further reading: Outline of Western Scholarship on Buddha-Nature

Scholars of Buddhism writing in European languages have celebrated, derided, and frequently misinterpreted the doctrine of tathāgatagarbha for well over a hundred years. While some have seen it as a crucial theoretical step to explain how deluded, impure sentient beings can become buddhas, others have dismissed the entire idea as non-Buddhist. Following Chinese and Tibetan scholiasts, Western scholars have labeled tathāgatagarbha as either Yogācāra or Madhyamaka, although most now understand that the doctrine arose independently of either of these main Mahāyāna schools...
  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. See the more detailed discussion of the translation of this term here.
  3. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27, note #41.
  4. 究竟一乘寶性論
  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 only refers to the main bibliographical title of the work. However, the phrase "ratnagotravibhāga", translated as dkon mchog gi rigs rnam par dbye ba , does appear in the Tibetan translation, though only when the full title of the work is repeated at the end of each chapter.
  9. This section is based on the scholarship of Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, appendix A; Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-31; Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga, 6-9; Brunnhölzl, 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.
  10. It should be noted that in contemporary Tibetan monastic circles some scholars have suggested that the commentary section of the Ratnagotravibhāga might have been composed by Asaṅga's brother Vasubandhu. This claim was also put forth by Japanese scholar Nakamura Zuiryū in 1961. See Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 20-31. However, Kano considers the assertion to be "weak on evidence."
  11. These are a commentary on the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra (Jieshenmi jingshu 解深密經疏) by the Korean monk Wǒnch'ǔk 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.
  12. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 22
  13. 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.
  14. Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 152-153.
  15. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 24.
  16. 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.
  17. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.
  18. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 30.
  19. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 28.
  20. These are folios 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, and 26.
  21. Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet, 33. The great twentieth-century Tibetan scholar Gendun Chopel noted the existence of this manuscript in 1934. See Jinpa and Lopez, Grains of Gold, 42.
  22. Sāṅkṛtyāyana, "Second Search of Sanskrit Palm-leaf Mss. in Tibet," 34; Sferra, "Sanskrit Manuscripts and Photographs of Sanskrit Manuscripts," 47.
  23. Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga, 9-14.
  24. Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 21.
  25. Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 7-8.
  26. See Kano, Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 19 note #4; he points out that these have yet to be studied.
  27. 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.
  28. Maitreya, The Changeless Nature, 1979.
  29. Maitreya, The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature.
  30. Maitreya, Maitreya on Buddha Nature.
  31. Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part.