[Buddha-l] Re: buddha-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 64

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Elihu,
 
>There is a similar theory regarding the source of the 
>Heart Sutra (which you might exclude as apocrypha but 
>the wide spread nature of the Heart Sutra makes the 
>theory interesting): see Jan Nattier "The Heart Sutra: 
>A Chinese Apocryphal Text?" Journal of the 
>International Association of Buddhist Studies, 1992, 
>pp.153 -223. 

Thank you for the reference. Yes of course the Heart Sutra.

When I read Demiéville's Concile de Lhasa and imagine those different groups of erudite monks and translators (at least three languages involved) preparing the questions and answers, probably searching for appropriate quotes in various sutras and discussing them, then I am probably not that far from what happened during the first translations of the sutras in Chinese etc. When I read that Bodhidharma was Persian (?), that the Sura?gama-samadhi-sutra (apocryphal) was perhaps written by an Indian monk (Pramiti) who read the text while another monk from Uddiyana (meghashikhara) translated it on the spot in Chinese (whether all this is true or not), I get the idea of great mobility à la St Paul and that many of those "Indian" missionaries must have written some of their commentaries and treatises abroad. E.g. where did Kamalasila write his bhaavanaakrama, where did Atisa write his works? And the situation can't have been that different for earlier missionaries in different place!
 s. Where did all those mahaayaanist folks from Uddiyana, Sogdians, Persians etc. get their training before they started translating if it wasn't in India? Mahaayaana Buddhism is probably much less Indian than is often suggested by tradition and perhaps Mahaayaana sutras, even when written or existing in Sanskrit, were not necessarily "Made in India". Perhaps "delocalisation" already happened at the time of the Mahaayaana sutras. Perhaps because of my Western Christian conditioning and background, when I think of missionaries, I tend to think of people with civilisation teaching people without civilisation. But in the case of Indian missionaries in China, it was much more a case of an exchange at least between equals. During the translation periods, there must have been genuin exchanges, which perhaps gave different insights to the Indian missionaries.

The following extract from the Astasahasrika (encountered in Schopen's Figments and Fragments struck me because of the mention "India" (I don't know whether it is properly translated and what exactly was India at the time of this PP sutra).

'Sakra: “How can it be that those men of India . . . do not know
that the Blessed One has taught that the cult of the Perfection of Wisdom is greatly
profitable. . . . But they do not know this! They are not aware of this! They have no
faith in it!”

Joy
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