Abstract
Studies of the form and textual history of various Buddhist texts show that they tend to undergo three types of developmental processes. First, some texts, especially verse compilations, are expanded by the insertion of pattern variants, sometimes at great length. Second, shorter texts such as sūtras are prone to be absorbed into larger compilations and thus lose their status as independent texts. Third, voluminous texts sometimes come to be represented in manuscripts in abbreviated forms, for example containing only the first text unit, which are evidently considered to sufficiently represent the entirety of the text. These patterns are discussed with reference to texts such as the Udānavarga, Anavatapta-gāthā, and Mahāvastu, and on the basis of evidence from Sanskrit and Gāndhārī manuscripts.
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Notes
Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary, s.v. The term grantha is also sometimes understood in a more literal sense as referring to the physical construction of Indian poṭhīs as tied together with string. But this interpretation, while not wrong, seems to be secondary; or so, at least, according to the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary, s.v. Gantha: “[only in late Pali, and in Sk.] composition, text, book (not with ref. to books as tied together, but to books as composed, put together).”
Shen (2019, p. 66); cf. also p. 19, “four others [sc., monks] … scrutinized the transcriptions to ensure that they were faithful to the originals.”
Yaṃ kiñci subhāsitaṃ, sabbaṃ taṃ tassa bhagavato vacanaṃ arahato sammāsambuddhassa (Aṅguttara-nikāya IV.164).
Compare Salomon (2011, pp. 162, 166).
In the Suttanipāta, the Apadāna, and (embedded in a commentary) in the Culla-niddesa; for details see the further discussion under “Compilation”, and Salomon (2000, pp. 5–6).
Senart’s edition (1882–1897) of the Mahāvastu is cited for the first volume. K. Marciniak’s new edition of the Mahāvastu (2019) is cited only for the third volume, as the first volume is not yet available.
The unique Gāndhārī manuscript is damaged at this point, but enough of the text ([s.s.] + + + + + + + + +] survives to identify this as the corresponding verse (see Salomon 2000, pp. 118–120).
I have checked the reading of the early manuscript Sa (folios 111a, line 4–111b, line 4 as illustrated in the facsimile edition of Yuyama [2001, p. 56]), which forms the basis of Marciniak’s new edition of the Mahāvastu. The text there is slightly expanded compared to Senart’s edition, but only because of the apparently dittographic repetition of one and a half verses, so that it does not significantly change the point under discussion here (but see also the following note for other variants in Sa).
“While kee** company, one develops affection, and suffering arises here as a result of affection. Rejecting the one who keeps company, wander along like the rhinoceros”/… rejecting excessive affection for what is dear …/… rejecting separation from what is dear …” The readings of the c pādas of the second and third verses are slightly different, and probably superior, in manuscript Sa (see the preceding note): priyeṣu snehaṃ instead of priyātisnehaṃ and priyaviprayogaṃ instead of priyāviyogaṃ.
Another example of a set of verses with matching refrains in the d pāda are the series in the Brāhmaṇa-varga of the various Dhammapada/Udānavarga texts, ending in tam ahu bromi bramaṇa (Khotan Gāndhārī Dharmapada I.17–49; Brough 1962, pp. 121–125), taṃ ahu brūmi brāhmaṇaṃ (Pali Dhammapada 26.385-386, 395-423), or brāhmaṇaṃ taṃ bravīmy aham or bravīmi brāhmaṇaṃ hi tam (Udānavarga 33.15–22, 24–55, 58–59; Bernhard 1965–1968, pp. 1.465–493). It is interesting that the numbers of verses in the longer versions of this varga, especially the Udānavarga’s 42 verses, are quite similar to that of the Rhinoceros Sūtra. However, these verses do not exhibit the kind of extensive pattern variation that is our main concern here.
With the single exception of verse 11 of the Pali version = v. 25 of the Gāndhārī.
The translation of this half-verse is problematic and controversial, but since there is no need to go into the question here, I have merely quoted K.R. Norman’s translation (1995, p. 2). For further discussion, see Lenz (2003, pp. 68–69), who says that these two pādas “have never been definitively interpreted” (p. 68).
See Bernhard (1968) for an authoritative discussion of the problem of the correct title for this anthology.
Bernhard defines the “Vulgata” as the text which the majority of manuscripts present (“wie sie uns die Masse der Handschriften anbietet;” 1965–1968, p. 1.15) and towards which the majority of manuscripts converge (“zu der die Masse der vorliegenden Handschriften konvergiert,” p. 1.17).
Bernhard (1965–1968, p. 2.281).
Also: ms. EH: 8 verses; DD: 6; AA, AB, EI, and KB: 2 each. These figures can be most deduced on the basis of the data presented in the chart for “XXVII. Paśyavarga (Str. 597–650)” in the unpaginated “Synoptische Handschriften-Tabellen” at the end of volume 2 of Bernhard (1965–1968, following p. 281).
On Dharmatrāta as the author (and/or commentator) of the Udānavarga, see Brough (1962, pp. 39–41).
The verse also appears in Gāndhārī on the edge of Niya document no. 204, a takhti-shaped wooden tablet discovered by Aurel Stein at site X at Niya in the southern Tarim basin. The primary text on this document concerns, as usual, an administrative matter followed by a list of names and then by what Burrow (1940, p. 37) describes as “a corrupt Buddhist verse in the middle.” Corrupt it may be, but this is not just any verse: it reads, according to Bernhard 1965–1968, p. 1.95), sidhya me stinamita [vi]nok[r̥]tva saṃpr[e]ṣitva mānasa/śr̥nota me pra[vi]kṣami ut*—budhabhaṣita (sic!), that is, the introductory verse of the Udānavarga. It is evidently an idle scribble by a scribe or student on an old discarded document, but this indicates first—as we already thought—that the Udānavarga was part of the standard curriculum in Buddhist Central Asia, and second—what we did not know before—that this was the case in the cities of the southern rim of the Tarim basin, as well as in the northern cities where all of the manuscripts of it were found.
There is another indication, albeit a puzzling one, elsewhere in the Dharmapada tradition of the flexibility of the contents of such texts. The colophon of the Patna Dharmapada reads (according to the edition of Cone 1989, p. 215) samāptā dharmmapadā amr̥tapadāni gāthā-śatāni pañca dve ca gāthe, according to which the manuscript should contain 502 verses. But in fact it has only 414 verses (according to Cone’s edition; or 415 according to G. Roth’s edition [1980, p. 135]). Concerning this peculiar situation, Roth comments “The manuscript on which our text is written on both sides of 21 leaves appears to be complete. I cannot explain the discrepancy.” But this becomes at least a little less strange when viewed in light of what we have seen about the variability of the contents of Dharmapada-like texts. The number 502 may have originally applied at some point to some other version of the text, and perhaps became proverbial. Although here we seem to be going in the opposite direction from what we saw in the case of the Udānavarga—that is, from a longer to a shorter version rather than the opposite—the broader principle is the same: such texts typically had a flexible and variable range of contents.
On anthologies in Buddhist literature generally, see Salomon (2011, pp. 184–203).
For details see Salomon (2008, pp. 24–28).
Here of course it is assumed that the longer *Bahubuddhaka-sūtra was an expansion of the shorter one rather than the other way round, i.e., that the shorter text is an extract from the longer one. Of course this cannot be proven, but the overall trends of development of Buddhist literature, as discussed in this article and as generally understood, make this the reasonable assumption.
Salomon (2011).
Salomon (2008, pp. 23–24).
Paṭhamage postage prañaparamidae (Falk and Karashima 2012, p. 25).
Similar phenomena in Thai Buddhist practice have been noted in McDaniel (2012), for example in the manuscript entitled Abhidhamma chet kamphi ruam in which the recitation of the seven books of the abhidhamma is “made easy by chanting only the first syllables” (p. 237). Compare also The Royal Chanting Book (Suat mon chabab luang), in which “The ‘Abhidhamma’ section is simply seven paragraphs, each containing the first few lines of each of the seven books” (p. 235). I thank Eviatar Shulman for bringing this reference to my attention.
This manuscript is one of a dozen Mahāyāna sūtras now known to exist in Gāndhārī (see Harrison et al. 2018), a number that has been steadily increasing in recent years as a result both of new discoveries and of identifications of previously known but unidentified fragments, particularly in the Martin Schøyen and Hirayama Ikuo collections.
Translation by Gómez and Silk (1989, p. 60).
151 out of 166 lines in the 1896 ed. of Dās and Vidyābhūshan, not counting the invocatory verses covering 38 lines in the printed edition. If the invocatory verses at the beginning of the printed edition were included in the Gāndhārī manuscript, the scroll would have covered about 92.5 % of the first parivartta.
See Lenz (2003, p. 6 and pl 1).
For the reconstructed sequence of the recitations in this scroll, see Salomon (2008, pp. 40-42); for the bottom of the scroll, see ibid., pl. 10.
Salomon (2008, p. 403).
Lenz (2003, p. 7).
Salomon (2008, p. 84).
It is of course theoretically possible that the manuscripts in question represent different versions of the texts rather than indicating a notion of “symbolic text” as proposed here. But all of these cases involve texts for which we have other early manuscript evidence—including in two cases other Gandhāran manuscripts of the same text—which gives a reasonably clear indication of the expected shape of the incomplete text.
For example, the process of expansion discussed in connection with the Udānavarga might also be profitably analyzed in reference to the Pali Apadāna.
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Salomon, R. Expansion, Compilation, Abbreviation: Some Thoughts on the Construction of Buddhist Texts. J Indian Philos 50, 501–521 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-020-09456-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-020-09456-9