[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada

[Dan Lusthaus]

Those who have followed the pudgalavada thread might be interested to know
of a partial translation of what we have been calling the "long" text (the
longer of the two parallel texts, the one translated by Kumarabuddhi,
obscurely). I just came on it a day ago. The translation is by Leon Hurvitz,
one of the more prolific and accurate of the translators of Buddhist
materials from Chinese and Japanese of the recent generation.

It's titled "The Road to Buddhist Salvation as described by Vasubhadra,"
Journal of the American Oriental Society (JOAS), 87, 4, Oct-Dec 1967,
434-486.

He only translates pages 4a-7a of the text (the full text runs from 1a-15b
of Taisho v. 25), i.e., about one fifth of the total. It is an interesting
effort for several reasons:

1. Although at one point he identifies a position in a passage as reflecting
a Sammitiya viewpoint (p. 443, n.79), he remains unaware that the whole text
is a pudgalavada exposition, and so he endeavors to translate it in
conformity with basic Buddhist doctrines, which, in fact, largely works.

2. Being a thorough scholar, he heavily annotates his translation, noting
the many places where the text is difficult to read, but also:

3. Compares it to the "short" version, recognizing that the two texts are
related.

4. Searches for parallels or contextual information in other Buddhist texts,
most notably the Abhidharmako"sa and Ya"somitra's -vyakya, Pali sources, and
various abhidharma treatments.

5. He tries to reconstruct the Sanskrit in various places.

6. It's fun to watch an accomplished translator wrestle with a difficult
text.

Unfortunately, the passage that I translated and distributed earlier to the
list, and on which Stephen commented, is not part of the section Hurvitz
dealt with, so he offers no help with that. On another passage that we have
discussed, one which bore on how to read xiang (as nimitta or samjna) in
these texts as well as in the Ch translations of Vasumitra by Paramartha and
Xuanzang, Hurvitz does provide some further data, although, if his data is
correct, what he offers adds an additional complication.

The one passage he did recognize as Sammitiya concerned dividing the
Dar"sana-maarga into 12 rather than (as is found in some other systems) 16
moments. It turns out that at this point the text also lists the items which
were in question (k.santi, naama, etc.). Hurvitz in the aforementioned
footnote translates this Vasumitra passage from Xuanzang:

XZ: "These very acquiescence [=k.santi -DL], names and signs, and supreme
mundane dharma..."

For Paramartha he skips that line and begins, unfortunately, at the
following line.

What is new is that he includes a transcription of the Tibetan translation
of Viniitadeva's commentary on that line, which he translates this way:

"Now the basic positions of the school of the Vatsiputriyas are as
follows... (the practictioner), having properly entered into acquiescence
(bzod pa, k.santi), names and signs, and the supreme (mundane) dharma..."

But the Tibetan he cites lacks, as far as I can tell, anything in the place
of "signs." It reads (I am adding the Sanskrit equivalents in parentheses):

bzod pa (k.saanti) dang (ca) ming (naama) dang (ca) chos kyi mchog
(dharmotthama = laukikaagrya-dharma) rnams (plural marker) ...

So we have the terms for k.santi, naama and laukikaagriya-dharma, but
nothing in the third place (precisely the xiang that was in dispute in our
discussion). I don't have a copy of the Tibetan text of Vinitadeva to check
whether this is merely an inadvertent omission by Hurvitz, or an accurate
transcription of the Tibetan text. Does anyone have that text on hand to
tell us?

Dan Lusthaus