Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa of Sajjana: An Annotated Translation with a Reading Text

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Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa of Sajjana: An Annotated Translation with a Reading Text
Article
Article
Citation: Kano, Kazuo. "Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa of Sajjana: An Annotated Translation with a Reading Text." Kōyasan daigaku daigakuin kiyō (Bulletin of the Graduate School: Graduate Program of Liberal Arts, Kōyasan University) 14 (2015) 1–49.

Abstract

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The present paper provides an annotated translation of Sajjana’s Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa along with a reading text of this Sanskrit work (a critical edition of which is under preparation for publication). I started to work on this text in 2005 when I received a copy of a photographic image of a manuscript containing it from Professor Jikidō Takasaki. I published a study dealing with this manuscript in 2006 (Kano 2006b) and provided a critical edition of the Sanskrit text in my doctoral thesis, submitted to Hamburg University in 2006 (Kano 2006a). I also prepared a preliminary annotated translation of this text in 2006 and gave the draft to Karl Brunnhölzl together with my unpublished doctoral thesis.
      It came as a surprise for me to learn that Brunnhölzl copied and published the draft of my translation under his name in his book When the Clouds Part: The Uttaratantra and Its Meditative Tradition as a Bridge between Sūtra and Tantra (Boston/London: Snow Lion, 2014), pp. 461–472. Brunnhölzl (p. 1121, n. 1718) says in his book: “All topical headings are inserted by the translator (corresponding to my outline above). Though my translation sometimes differs from Kano’s, I am indebted to both his translation and his Sanskrit edition of the text with critical apparatus (Kano 2006, 513–35), which in turn owe much to Profs. Schmithausen and Isaacson as well as Dr. Diwakar Acharya.” The fact is, however, that he has in many cases simply copied my earlier work.
      Since the translation used by Brunnhölzl was an unpublished draft, my earlier mistakes found their way into his book, inasmuch as that draft was based in turn on an early draft of my Sanskrit edition, which itself contains serious misreadings, especially in verses 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15, along with a number of errors in the interlinear glosses. All his striving to make sense of my misreadings of the Sanskrit have been to no avail; his interpretations and analysis (Brunnhölzl, ibid. pp. 288–300 ) based on these errors need to be fundamentally revised. I have since made improvements to the Sanskrit edition and translation, and this is reflected in the differences between his published translation and the one I offer here.[1] (Kano, preface, 1–2)

Notes

1. I am grateful for a number of suggestions and improvements of my critical edition of Sajjana's Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa to Prof. Harunaga Isaacson, Prof. Diwakar Acharya, Prof. Lambert Schmithausen, Dr. Pascale Hugon, and all participants of a workshop “From Kashmir to Tibet: A set of proto-Śāradā palm leaves and two works on the Ratnagotravibhāga” held on 21. April 2015 at Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Institut für Kultur-und Geistesgeschichte Asiens. I would like to thank to Dr. David Reigle and Mr. Philip Pierce for much valuable information regarding difficult points of the text and English proof-reading of my translation.