The Original Ratnagotravibhāga and Its Yogāçāra Interpretation as Possible Indian Precedents of Gzhan stong ("Empti-ness of Other")

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|ArticleLayout=Academic Layout
|ArticleTitle=The Original Ratnagotravibhāga and Its Yogāçāra Interpretation as Possible Indian Precedents of Gzhan stong (&#34;Empti-ness of Other&#34;)
|AuthorPage=People/Mathes, K.
|PubDate=2015
|ArticleSummary=In his pioneering study of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (RGV) TAKASAKI Jikido showed that the standard Indian treatise on ''tathāgatagarbha'' consists of different layers and reduced it to what he considered to be the original ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' by excluding later strands of the text.<ref>TAKASAKI Jikido, ''A Study on the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra) Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory of Mahāyāna Buddhism'', Rome Oriental Series, vol. 33 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per ii Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1966), pp. 10–19.</ref> Schmithausen continued this "textual archaeology," which left us with an original text of fifteen verses only.<ref>Lambert Schmithausen, "Philologische Bemerkungen zum ''Ratnagotravibhāga''," Wiener Zeitschriftfur die Kunde Sudasiens 15 (1971), pp. 123-177, see pp. 123-130.</ref> While these ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' verses (which in the following I shall refer to as "the original" version) support the idea of an already fully developed "buddha-element" ''(buddhadhātu}''<ref>Used interchangeably with the term ''tathāgatagarbha'' in the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' and its ''vyākhyā''</ref> in sentient beings, the final (standard) version of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' and its ''vyākhyā'' exhibit a systematic Yogāçāra interpretation of the original ''tathāgatagarbha'' theory. The original and final ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' represent the prototypes of at least two different ''gzhan stong'' interpretations, which mainly differ in whether they restrict or not the basis of emptiness to an unchanging perfect nature. (Mathes, "The Original ''Ratnagotravibhāga''," 119)
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