A Fragment of the "Uttaratantra" in Sanskrit

Article

Citation:	Bailey, Harold W., and E. H. Johnston. "A Fragment of the Uttaratantra in Sanskrit." Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 8, no. 1 (1935): 77–89.

Abstract

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs: The Sanskrit text, unearthed by Dr. Bailey, contains a passage from which important deductions may be drawn on a vexed question of the history of Buddhist dogma. It falls into two parts, the first of which consists of the opening verses of several works. Two of these, the Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra and the Mūlamadhyamakārikās, are too well known to need comment, though the copyist distinguishes himself by transposing the authors' names. Of the remainder, the first is from an unnamed work, which I cannot identify but which dealt perhaps with the "false views", and the third is attributed to the Mahāyānasamāsa, a title apparently unknown to the Tibetan and Chinese translations; the application of the epithet nirmala to dharma suggests the possibility that it is a work of the Prajñāpāramitā school. The last verse in this part is described as opening the Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, that is, the Uttaratantra, the crabbed Tibetan version of which has recently been rendered into English with remarkable skill by Dr. Obermiller in Acta Orientalia, ix. The Chinese translation (Taisho Issaikyo ed., No. 1611) is usually styled the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, despite the fact that the title literally translated, as pointed out long ago by Nanjio, is Uttaraikayānaratnagotraśāstra, where ekayāna should presumably be taken as the translator's interpretation of the significance of the term tantra. According to P. C. Bagchi, Le Canon bouddhique en Chine, p. 249, a Chinese catalogue of A.D. 597 knows an alternative title, of which the first part is Ratnagotravibhāga, in agreement with the roll. The second part of the text is an excerpt of nine verses from the same work, chapter iii, 1-7 and 9, according to Dr. Obermiller, who has amalgamated the two verses, 5 and 6, into one; the copyist has also numbered the verses, but wrongly, treating the Śārdūlavikrīḍita verse, number 7, as two, by reason of the transcription dividing each pāda into two parts at the cæsura. (Bailey and Johnson, "A Fragment of the Uttaratantra in Sanskrit," 76–78)