[Buddha-l] A question for Jewish Buddhists

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> Lance,
>
> This chiasmic reasoning still has me confused, perhaps because the
> distribution of sutras in the Chinese Agamas is quite different from the
> Pali -- so that suttas in the Digha-nikaya end up in the Madhyama-agama or
> Samyukta-agama, etc., and vice versa.
>   
Well, I don't know this word chiasmic - it's not in my dictionary.

Most of the Dīrghāgama information is in:

Hartmann, Jens-Uwe (2004), 'Contents and Structure of the Dīrghāgama of 
the (Mūla-)Sarvāstivādins', Annual Report of The International Research 
Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, 15=7, 119–37.

> If we assume (and it would only be an assumption) that the Chinese
> translations follow some source texts at least in terms of which sutras end
> up in which Nikaya/Agama, then there are lots of disparities.
>   

I don't think there can be any doubt that at least the Chinese 
Dīrghāgama and Madhyamāgama were collections translated together as a 
whole, preserving their order.

> If you are looking more narrowly at the contents of particular suttas/sutras
> in terms of Pali parallelisms, there are still plenty of disparities.
>   

That's a different issue entirely.

> I think I would need to see a more detailed mapping out of the specific
> parallels and affinities you are presuming before this would get any
> clearer.
>   

See Hartmann's article.
> I assume, for instance, that you have from time to time taken a look at
> http://www.suttacentral.net/
>
> which has gone far beyond Chizen Akanuma's Comparative Catalog. If, for
> instance, you do a parallel search for DN II 127 (where the sūkaramaddava
> passage occurs), you will get a related parallel not only in the
> Dirgha-agama, but in four other Chinese texts not packaged within any of the
> four major agamas collections.
>   

I have used:
Anālayo and Bucknell, Roderick S. (2006), 'Correspondence Table for 
Parallels to the Discourses of Majjhima Nikāya: Toward a Revision of 
Akanuma’s Comparative Catalogue', Journal of the Centre for Buddhist 
Studies, Sri Lanka, 4, 215–38.
But that is part of the same project. I hadn't realized it had got so far.

> The Mahanidana sutta (DN II 55) has a parallel not only in the Digha-agama,
> but in the Madhyama-agama as well, as well as two other independent Agama
> translations. Similarly the Sakkapañha - DN II 263 - appears in both DA and
> MA as well as two independent texts. 

Neither of these occur in the Sanskrit Dīrghāgama. So the reason is:

School A who were responsible for the Chinese Dīrghāgama & also the 
school of the Pali Majjhimanikāya included these suttas in their Long 
recension. Since their Long recension is preserved in Chinese, they are  
found in that language.

School B who were responsible for the Chinese Madhyamāgama & also the 
school of the Sanskrit Dīrghāgama included these suttas in their Middle 
Length recension. Since their Middle Length recension is preserved in 
Chinese, they are found in that language.

For this reason they are found twice.

> The Suvaṇṇapāti - Janapadakalyāṇi - SN
> II 233 - appear only in the Ekottara Agama, not the Samyukta. And so on...
> The more carefully one compares, the more things look like a chaotic
> reshuffling of the collections. Nonetheless there are many agamas that are
> very close to the Pali versions. Hence I don't know what you mean by
> "organizational" similarities.
>   

We don't have any substantial Sanskrit collection of these as yet. So we 
cannot account for the variations.

> There are many important Pali suttas that have no Chinese counterpart at
> all.
>   

Yes, but we now know that that is probably not due to their being later, 
as was thought at one time. In all or some cases it is simply due to the 
fact that collections from different sources were translated into 
Chinese and so many suttas have 'fallen through the gaps'.

> I still prefer to be cautious about jumping to affinity conclusions based on
> the spotty evidence.
>
> Dan
>   

I agree that we cannot attribute affinities with the same degree of 
certainty in the case of Saṃyuktāgama and Ekottarāgama collections. Nor 
for many individual suttas.

Lance