Dunhuang

This article provides a critical edition and analysis of a Dunhuang Tibetan version of the Mañjuśrīvihārasūtra (Tib. ’jam dpal gnas pa’i mdo) as a case study for documenting the historical development of Tibetan translations of Mahāyāna sūtras. The critical edition of the Dunhuang Tibetan  version is based on one complete Dunhuang manuscript as well as four Dunhuang fragments, three  previously unidentified, to restore a Tibetan version of the sūtra that existed before the imperially decreed (bkas bcad) language reforms of 814 c.e. The critical edition is annotated against seventeen  Kanjur editions of the sūtra, including Western Tibetan manuscript Kanjurs (Tib. bka’ ’gyur) from  Basgo and Hemis that have not been previously investigated. The Kanjur annotations document the  revisions that Tibetan editors made in implementing the codified rules and principles for translating Buddhist texts issued by Khri lde srong btsan (r. 800-815c.e.). In addition, the annotations provide evidence for three lines of textual transmission, the Them-spangs-magroup, Tshal-pa group, and a Western Tibet group. The documentation of the variant readings has also been supplemented with computer-based phylogenetic systematics to discern a refined estimation of the genealogical relations among extant textual witnesses.

Based on a comparison study between prayers of two typical architectural ceremonies—ridge purlin raising and new house entering—in Dunhuang manuscripts, the paper points out that manuscripts applied in the former ceremonies are not prayers as those in central China, but lyrics of local folk art. In 10th century Dunhuang, the thriving of Buddhism promoted orthodox religious ceremony, which correspondingly suppressed carpenters’ witchcraft in “raising ridge purlin ceremonies” as a kind of cult.

Pure-land Faith in China greatly grew in the Sui and Tang Dynasty. The research on the composition of Buddhist temples in the early Tang Dynasty influenced by Pure-land Faith, is important to the whole development of Chinese Buddhist architecture. The research object of this article is Mogao Cave 331 of Dunhuang. It uses related studies on the histories of Buddhism, culture and art for reference. And viewed from the standpoint of historical facts of architecture and corresponding explanation, it further argues graphic layout of Buddhist temples in the early Tang Dynasty based on integral analysis of Cave 331. Moreover, relative Buddhist sutras, ceremonies of religious service and repentance and historical documents are also considered during the research.

"The Cult of Śākyamuni and Its Centrality at Dunhuang

Neil Schmid

Panel: “Buddhism on the Silk Road III - the Extent of Gandhāran Buddhism”
IABS 2014, 17th Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies
Vienna, August, 18 - 23, 2014


Discussions of religious life in medieval China generally stress the demise of Śākyamuni’s role in cultic worship. Research on Buddhist ritual, texts, doctrine, and visual culture during the medieval era maintains worship of Śākyamuni peaked in the Northern Wei (386-535) and declined in favor of the “cult of Maitreya,” 彌勒信仰, “cult of Mañjuśrī” 文殊信仰, “cult of Amitābha” 阿彌陀信仰, “cult of Avalokiteśvara” 觀音信仰, and other cosmic buddhas. However, a close analysis of Dunhuang ritual and narrative manuscripts demonstrate an equivalent “cult of Śākyamuni" dominated daily religious life during the Tang and Song periods. Worship of Śākyamuni at Dunhuang was specifically configured around his life as a mundane historical figure in pre-Maurya India. Furthermore, this life is elaborated through a complex yet highly coherent network of textual genres such as narratives (yinyuan 因緣) and ritual texts (lichan wen 禮懺文, jiangjing wen 講經文, etc.) together with a wealth of visual resources in the Dunhuang grottoes themselves. Such a consistent set of materials did not originate ab nihilo but rather stems from a confined set of canonical texts, namely the Xiuxing benqi jing 修行本起經, T184; the Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經, T185; Yichu pusa benqi jing 異出菩薩本起經, T188; and the Guoqu xianzai yingguo jing 過去現在因果經, T189. This paper defines the corpus of textual, visual, and ritual resources at Dunhuang that characterize this cult, and demonstrates how these later developments at Dunhuang clarify earlier traces of Śākyamuni's cult in Central Asian materials as a continuous and highly delineated Buddhist tradition that extends from Gandhāra to the medieval China.

"

Pelliot Tibétain 1257 is an early bilingual manuscript preserved from the ancient city-state of Dunhuang composed in Tibetan and Chinese. The rolled paper manuscript consists of three pages of Buddhist scripture titles and seven pages of Buddhist terms in Tibetan and Chinese. Pelliot Tibétain 1257 provides early evidence for the complexity of translation techniques between Tibetan and Chinese during the Tibetan occupancy of Dunhuang (ca. 786-848 c.e.) and before the standardization of Tibetan translation practices reflected in the Mahāvyutpatti, a Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicon whose final redaction was sanctioned by imperial decree in 814 c.e. Previous scholarship related to Pelliot Tibétain 1257 has suggested that the manuscript was from a Chinese monastery and that it was utilized to help Chinese scholars translate Tibetan. This paper re-evaluates this presumption based upon a close analysis of the scribal writing and complete transcription of the scripture list and vocabulary. The paper argues that Pelliot Tibétain 1257 was a document circulated by Tibetans, presumably among Chinese monasteries in Dunhuang, to learn the Chinese equivalents to Tibetan translation terminology that was already in use among Tibetans. The Tibetan terminology list is comprised of translation terms in Old Tibetan, consisting of terms that reflect an interest in term equivalents for Chan Chinese terminology and Chinese equivalents for Indic based sources such as the Saṃdhinirmocana sūtra and other Mahāyāna sūtras, terms that would be important for the Samye debate held around 792-794 ce. The list of texts is from a local Chinese based source, either a catalogue or an actual depository of texts, found in Dunhuang. Although the actual date of the manuscript is difficult to determine, the Tibetan text of the manuscript’s documents contain orthographic and paleographic features that place its initial composition between 779 and 814 c.e. Pt. 1257 is therefore one of the earliest  known Tibetan lexicons of Buddhist terminology and an authoritative source for documenting Tibetan translations of Mahāyāna sūtras preserved in Old Tibetan.

This paper is a study of pre-twelfth-century Chinese- and Tibetan-language manuscripts of the Heart Sūtra (Chi. Boruo boluomiduo xin jing, Tib. Shes rab kyi pha rol du phyin pa’i snying po) discovered in the “Library Cave” of Dunhuang in northwest China. Through a close analysis of the nearly three hundred manuscripts of this scripture from Dunhuang, I have been able to trace how the text was translated from one language to another and back again while at the same time being expanded and reworked. The scribal colophons and the physical features of the manuscripts themselves provide insights into the workings of monastic scriptoriums on the ancient Silk Road as well as providing clues as to the various reasons for creating the hundreds of copies of the Heart Sūtra found at Dunhuang.