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Abstract
In previous work, I have shown that the (Mainstream, “smaller”) Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra ascribed to Faxian is in fact almost certainly not his work, and that internal evidence closely associates it with two other texts: the Guoqu xianzai yinguo jing ascribed to Guṇabhadra and the *Mahāmāyā-sūtra ascribed to Tanjing. This paper analyzes the content of these texts, in order to ascertain (as much as possible) their likely relation to one another; the context in which they were composed; and their relations to that context. In addressing questions of context, the analysis applies innovative computer-assisted methods, which allow us to pinpoint detailed clues of highly specific intertextual relationships among a broad range of texts. This enables us to discover in the present triad of texts internal evidence pointing to close relations to a very specific body of literature in the fifth century.
Acknowledgement
This paper benefitted considerably from the criticisms and advice of two anonymous reviewers for JCR, and I here record my gratitude to them.
Abbreviations
| IBK | = | Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究 |
| T | = | Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經, as accessed via CBETA (2016). Taishō references follow the order: Text number (volume number, roman numerals) page|register|line number. Thus, e.g., T225 (VIII) 483b17 is text number 225, volume 8, page 483, second register, line 17. |
Notes on the Contributor
Michael Radich 何書群 taught at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, from 2005 to 2017. As of 2018, he is Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Heidelberg. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard (diss.: “The Somatics of Liberation: Ideas about Embodiment in Buddhism from Its Origins to the Fifth Century C.E.”). He has authored two monographs: How Ajātaśatru Was Reformed: The Domestication of “Ajase” and Stories in Buddhist History (Tokyo 2011) and The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine (Hamburg 2015). He spent 2015 at the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg, with the support of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
Correspondence to: Michael Radich. Email: [email protected].
Notes
1 Iwamatsu Asao 岩松浅夫, “Nehan gyō shōhon no hon’yakusha 涅槃経小本の翻訳者,” IBK 25, no. 1 (1976): 244–247; Iwamatsu, “Daihatsunehan gyō ni okeru ichi ni no mondaiten: Nehan gyō shōhon no honden o megutte 大般涅槃経における一二の問題点:涅槃経小本の翻伝をめぐって,” IBK 24, no. 2 (1976): 154–155. The ascription to Faxian is also questioned in Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨, Mochizuki Bukkyō daijiten 望月佛教大辭典 (Tokyo: Sekai seiten kankō kyōkai, 1933 [1960]): 4:3358–3359, s.v. Daihatsunehan gyō 大般涅槃經.
2 Michael Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’? An Exercise in the Computer-Assisted Assessment of Attributions in the Chinese Buddhist Canon,” paper presented at the conference “From Xiangyuan to Ceylon: The Life and Legacy of the Chinese Buddhist Monk Faxian (337–422),” Xiangyuan 襄垣, China, March 25–27, 2017 (under review).
3 The (Mainstream) Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (which exists in a number of versions) is one of the longest and most significant single texts in the Mainstream (early-canonical) sūtrapiṭaka, where it is usually found in the Dīrghāgama or parallel collections; it is also sometimes found in later, expanded versions of the Vinaya. The text relates a series of events in a period of approximately three months leading up to the parinirvāṇa of Śākyamuni Buddha, and approximately one week thereafter, including: travel through a series of regions and cities; various sermons delivered along the way; an encounter between the Buddha and Māra, during which the Buddha agrees with Māra that the time has almost come for him to enter parinirvāṇa, but postpones that moment for three months (thus effectively prophesying his own death); a fruitless appeal from Ānanda for the Buddha to remain in the world; the events of the final night of the Buddha’s life, including final teachings and instructions to the Saṅgha, a final conversion, and visitations from supernatural beings; instructions on how to dispose of the Buddha’s corpse, and a scriptural warrant for the practice of pilgrimage to the four most important sites in the Buddha’s life (the places of his birth, awakening, first sermon, and parinirvāṇa); the dramatic moment of the Buddha’s actual death; various attempts on the part of the Mallas to dispose of the body, followed by final cremation and the production of the Buddha’s relics; and a dispute between kings over rights of disposition over the Buddha’s relics, which is resolved by dividing the relics into portions.
It is important, for the purposes of the present analysis, to distinguish between Mainstream-canonical (“hīnayāna”) versions of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, and the various versions of the Mahāyāna text of nearly identical title, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra. The Mahāyāna version of the text plays upon the mise-en-scène and plot elements of the Mainstream text, but with numerous quite radical departures and new content, and a fundamentally different overriding doctrinal import. Readers who would like an overview of the characteristics of the Mahāyāna text can consult Shimoda Masahiro, “Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Volume One: Literature and Languages, ed. Jonathan Silk, Oskar von Hinüber, and Vincent Eltschinger (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 158–170; and Michael Radich, “Tathāgatagarbha Scriptures,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia, esp. 264–266; for more detail, see Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine, Hamburg Buddhist Studies 5 (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2015), and other scholarly literature cited therein. Since T7 is an instance of the Mainstream version of the text, I here set aside entirely the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and related problems.
4 E.g., Ernst Waldschmidt, Die Überlieferung vom Lebensende des Buddha: eine vergleichende Analyse des Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra und seiner Textentsprechungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1944–48); Waldschmidt, Das Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra: Text in Sanskrit und Tibetisch, verglichen mit dem Pāli nebst einer Übersetzung der chinesischen Entsprechung im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins auf Grund von Turfan-Handschriften (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1950–1951); André Bareau, ‘‘The Superhuman Personality of the Buddha and Its Symbolism in the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra of the Dharmaguptaka,” in Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade, ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa and Charles H. Long (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 9–22; Bareau, “La composition et les étapes de la formation progressive du Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra ancien,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 66 (1979): 45–103; other important studies include Gregory Schopen, “Monks and the Relic Cult in the Mahāparinibbānasutta: An Old Misunderstanding in Regard to Monastic Buddhism,” in From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Prof. Jan Yün-hua, ed. Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1991), 187–201; and Jonathan A. Silk, Body Language: Indic śarīra and Chinese shèlì in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra and Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series XIX (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2006). The most accessible translation in English is Dīghanikāya 16 in Maurice Walshe, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 231–277. To my knowledge, T7 itself has not yet been translated into a Western language.
5 Prior studies (also cited at relevant points below) on aspects of T189: Tokiwa Daijō 常盤大定, “Kako genzai inga kyō 過去現在因果經,” in Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 佛書解說大辭典, ed. Ono Genmyō 小野玄妙 and Maruyama Takao 丸山孝雄 (Tokyo: Daitō shuppan, 1933–1936 [縮刷版 1999]), 2:18–19; Valentina Stache-Rosen, “The Temptation of the Buddha: A Preliminary Comparison of Some Chinese Versions of an Episode in the Life of the Buddha,” Bulletin of Tibetology 12, no. 1 (1975): 5–19; Junko Matsumura, “The Formation and Development of the Dīpaṃkara Prophecy Story: The Ārya-Dīpaṃkara-vyākaraṇa-nāma-mahāyānasūtra and Its Relation to Other Versions,” IBK 60, no. 2 (2012): 80–89[L]; Okumura Hiroki 奥村浩基, “Kako genzai inga kyō ni tsuite『過去現在因果経』について,” IBK 61, no. 2 (2013): 180–186[L]. On aspects of T383: Utsuo Shōshin 撫尾正信, “Makamaya kyō Kan’yaku ni kansuru gigi 摩訶摩耶経漢訳に関する疑義,” Saga Ryūkoku gakkai kiyō 佐賀龍谷学会紀要 2 (1954): 1–28[L]; Jan Nattier, Once upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline, Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions 1 (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1991), 150 ff.; Hubert Durt, “L’apparition du Buddha à sa mère après son nirvāṇa dans le Sūtra de Mahāmāyā (T. 383) et dans le Sūtra de la Mère du Buddha (T. 2919),” in De Dunhuang au Japon: Études chinoises et bouddhiques offertes à Michel Soymié, ed. J. P. Drège, EPHE, Sciences Historiques et Philologiques, et Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, II. Hautes Études Orientales 31 (Paris-Genève: Droz, 1996), 1–24; Alan Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 65–68; Durt, “The Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting of the Buddha with Māyā: Examination of the Mahāmāyā Sūtra and Its Quotations in the Shijiapu―Part I,” Kokusai Bukkyōgaku daigakuin daigaku kenkyū kiyō 国際仏教学大学院大学研究紀要 11 (2007): 266-245[L], “∼ Part II.” Kokusai Bukkyōgaku daigakuin daigaku kenkyū kiyō 国際仏教学大学院大学研究紀要 12 (2008): 192-158[L].
6 For the TACL code, see https://github.com/ajenhl/tacl. For documentation, see http://pythonhosted.org/tacl/. For further details, and examples of applications, see Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’?”; also Radich, “On the Sources, Style and Authorship of Chapters of the Synoptic Suvarṇaprabhāsottama-sūtra T664 Ascribed to Paramārtha (Part 1),” Annual Report of The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology 17 (2014): 207–244; Radich and Anālayo, “Were the Ekottarika-āgama 增壹阿含經 T 125 and the Madhyama-āgama 中阿含經 T 26 Translated by the Same Person? An Assessment on the Basis of Translation Style,” in Research on the Madhyama-āgama, ed. Dhammadinnā, Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts Research Series 5 (Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation, 2017), 209–237; Radich, “Problems of Attribution, Style, and Dating Relating to the ‘Great Cloud Sūtras’ in the Chinese Buddhist Canon (T 387, T 388/S.6916),” in Buddhist Transformations and Interactions: Papers in Honor of Antonino Forte, ed. Victor Mair (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2017), 235–289; Radich, “On the Ekottarikāgama 增壹阿含經 T 125 as a Work of Zhu Fonian 竺佛念,” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 30 (2017): 1–31.
7 Funayama Tōru 船山徹, “‘Kan’yaku’ to ‘Chūgoku senjutsu’ no aida – Kanbun Butten ni tokuyū na keitai o megutte 「漢訳」と「中国撰述」の間 － 漢文仏典に特有な形態をめぐって,” Bukkyō shigaku kenkyū 仏教史学研究 45, no. 1 (2002): 11–28; Funayama, “Masquerading as Translation: Examples of Chinese Lectures by Indian Scholar-Monks in the Six Dynasties Period,” Asia Major 19, no. 1–2 (2006): 39–55; Funayama, “Rikuchō Butten no hon’yaku to henshū ni miru Chūgokuka no mondai 六朝佛典の翻譯と編輯に見る中國化の問題,” Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 80 (2007): 1–18. For present purposes, it is also important to note, first, that I only intend to use this category as it applies to texts with canonical status, which are presented as translations from an Indic original in one or more versions of the canon, and the traditional bibliographical catalogues that were so influential in projects of canon construction. I am also only concerned with Chinese composition, partial or complete, as it applies to texts presented as sūtras, that is, as buddhavacana, though in principle, it can also be applied to texts presented as śāstra, commentary, or other genres: For example, the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith 大乘起信論 T1666; the Fenbie gongde lun 分別功德論 T1507; or the Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan 付法藏因緣傳 T2058. T7, T189, and T383 all meet these criteria: they are presented as sūtras, have canonical status, and were each understood by the tradition as a translation from a single Indic original.
8 Funayama has studied, as an example of this phenomenon, the (Sarvāstivāda) *Daśādhyāyavinaya 十誦律 T1435; Funayama Tōru, “The Acceptance of Buddhist Precepts by the Chinese in the Fifth Century,” Journal of Asian History 38, no. 2 (2004): 97–120; the Jingang xian lun 金剛仙論 T1512, Funayama, “Masquerading,” 48–50; and other texts.
9 I have studied, as an example of this type, the “Three Bodies” chapter of the Suvarṇabhāsottama-sūtra; Radich, “Sources, Style and Authorship.”
10 The Zuochan sanmei jing 坐禪三昧經 T614; Demiéville identifies among its sources Aśvaghoṣa, Kumāralāta, and the *Vasudhara 持世經 T482; Paul Demiéville, “La Yogācārabhūmi de Saṅgharakṣa,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 44, no. 2 (1954): 355–357; cf. Demiéville 354 n. 2 on the Chan fa yao jie 禪法要解 T616.
11 This is perhaps true of the *Anuttarāśraya-sūtra 無上依經 T669; cf. Shimoda Masahiro 下田正弘, Nehan gyō no kenkyū: Daijō kyōten no kenkyū hōhō shiron 涅槃経の研究―大乗経典の研究方法試論 (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1997), 85–86.
12 It should be clearly stated that the category of texts “between translation and composition” does not do away entirely with the category of “Chinese composition” (nor, perhaps, even the category of “apocryphon,” though there are reasons to be cautious about the pejorative overtones of the latter term). It is still meaningful to recognize that some texts were indeed produced in China and in Chinese, entirely on the basis of sources then available in Chinese. A significant feature of such texts is that they often reflect Chinese agendas, or features of the Chinese religious world, in a way that texts “between translation and composition” do not. It is also still useful to refer to such texts as “Chinese compositions” properly speaking. Indeed, the category of texts “between translation and composition” derives much of its force from the assumption that there exists such a point of contrast. Examples are legion of texts that we should most probably, in the present state of our knowledge, still count as “Chinese compositions” in these terms. These include, for instance, the “Sūtra of Humane Kings” 仁王般若波羅蜜經 T245, on which see Charles D. Orzech, Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); the aforementioned Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, on which literature is too copious to cite, but see most recently Ōtake Susumu 大竹晋, Daijō ki shin ron seiritsu mondai no kenkyū: Daijō ki shin ron wa Kanbun Bukkyō bunken kara no pacchiwāku 大乗起信論成立問題の研究 『大乗起信論』は漢文仏教文献からのパッチワーク (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 2017); or the Sūtra of Trapuṣa and Bhallika 提謂波利經, on which see, e.g., Whalen W. Lai, “The Earliest Folk Buddhist Religion in China: T’i-wei Po-li Ching and Its Historical Significance,” in Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society: Buddhist and Taoist Studies II, ed. David W. Chappell (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1987), 11–35. Thus, the point is not to entirely replace the category of “Chinese composition” with the term “between translation and composition”—as seemed to me to be implied by remarks from an anonymous reviewer of the present paper—but rather, to refine our analyses by taking first steps in the direction of a finer typology and thereby enable a more precise use of the category of “Chinese composition” proper, for cases to which it is genuinely suited.
13 Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō.” Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” I: 248 also mentions briefly the possibility that the text was composed in China (without citing Utsuo).
14 An interlinear note glossing this term, 振旦者漢國也, is missing in all editions except K, and so likely to be an artefact of transmission and use of the text.
15 In fact, the only unique, significant verbatim match I can find between T383 and T396 is 奴為比丘婢為比丘尼, T383 (XII) 1013c11-12 = T396 (XII) 1119a8-9 (which is also among the materials Utsuo presents).
16 T383 (XII) 1010c21-1012a16; corresponding portions of T7 may be found in patches over fifteen Taishō pages between approx. T7 (I) 192b23 and 207b24.
17 Principal elements omitted are: the Buddha’s travels in the three months between his encounter with Māra and the night of the parinirvāṇa (handled in one sentence, T383 [XII] 1011a21-23); many sermons, conversions, and miracles, including those given during those travels; Cunda’s offering of the Buddha’s last meal; the story of the Buddha outdoing Arāḍa Kālāma in meditating imperviously through noise and thunderstorms; the incident in which Upamāna/Upavāṇa, the Buddha’s former attendant, blocks the view of the gods; instructions on pilgrimage to four sites associated with the bodhisatva/Buddha’s career; the question of when Ānanda will be liberated; the entirety of the *Mahāsudarśana-sūtra, explaining that Kuśinagara is not a paltry town of “wattle and daub,” but an erstwhile mighty universal capital; details of Subhadra’s exchange on doctrine with the Buddha; most verses upon the Buddha’s demise, and lengthy descriptions of the distress of the crowd; dramas surrounding the cremation and the distribution of the relics.
18 Wu Juan, “From Perdition to Awakening: A Study of Legends of the Salvation of the Patricide Ajātaśatru in Indian Buddhism” (Ph.D. diss., Cardiff University, 2012), 38–39; cf. also 157.
19 On this spelling of bodhisatva, see Gouriswar Bhattacharya, “How to Justify the Spelling of the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Term Bodhisatva?” in From Turfan to Ajanta: Festschrift for Dieter Schlingloff on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Eli Franco and Monika Zin (Bhairahawa: Lumbini International Research Institute, 2010), 35–49.
20 On T384, see Elsa Legittimo, “Synoptic Presentation of the Pusa chu tai jing (PCJ) 菩薩處胎經, the Bodhisattva Womb Sūtra Part 1 (chapters 1–14),” Sengokuyama Journal of Buddhist Studies 2 (2005): 1–111 [260–150]; Legittimo, “Analysis of the Pusa chutai jing 菩薩處胎經 (T12, no. 384)” (Ph.D. diss., International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, Tokyo, 2006 [not seen]); Legittimo, “A Comparative Study between the Womb and the Lotus Sūtra: Miraculous Stūpa Apparitions, Two Simultaneous Buddhas and Related Extraordinary Narrations,” IBK 56, no. 3 (2008): 1114–1120.
21 The word is also rare enough to require a gloss in Yiqie jing yin yi 一切經音義, T2128 (LIV) 473a6.
22 As Wu Juan recognizes, the presence of this word may thus imply problems for the traditional ascription of T508 to Faju 法炬.
23 Michael Radich, “Ideas about ‘Consciousness’ in Fifth and Sixth Century Chinese Buddhist Debates on the Survival of Death by the Spirit, and the Chinese Background to *Amalavijñāna,” in A Distant Mirror: Articulating Indic Ideas in Sixth and Seventh Century Chinese Buddhism, ed. Chen-kuo Lin and Michael Radich (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2014), 471–512; Radich, “A ‘Prehistory’ to Chinese Debates on the Survival of Death by the Spirit, with a Focus on the Term shishen 識神/shenshi 神識,” Journal of Chinese Religions 44, no. 2 (2016): 105–126.
24 T103, T186, T222, T285, T288, T291, T292, T310(3), T399, T403, T433, T459, T477, T589, T810, T813.
25 T125, T212, T309, T384 (again; cf. n. 20), T656, T1549, T2045. T309, in particular, which also contains this term, is one of the most striking, interesting, and better-studied instances of the dubious composition literature of this period; Jan Nattier, “Re-evaluating Zhu Fonian’s Shizhu duanjie jing (T309): Translation or Forgery?” Annual Report of The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University 13 (2010): 213–256. In the shared concentration of the term shenshi, we glimpse a pattern of close connection between the terminology and content of the Dharmarakṣa and Zhu Fonian corpora. This pattern is in fact extremely far-reaching; I plan to address this problem in work in preparation.
26 The Madhyamāgama T26; Guṇabhadra’s Saṃyuktāgama T99; the anonymous Saṃyuktāgama T100; the Buddhacarita ascribed to *Dharmakṣema T192; the Faju piyu jing 法句譬喻經 T211; the “Sūtra on the Contemplation of the Bodhisatva Samantabhadra’s Practice of the Dharma” 觀普賢菩薩行法經 T277; the Akṣayamati-nirdeśa ascribed to *Buddhayaśas 佛陀耶舍 T405; Guṇabhadra’s Laṅkāvatāra T670; *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa T1509; and Kumārajīva’s *Tattvasiddhi T1646.
27 To give only one example, when the Buddha instructs Ānanda that his remains should be cremated in a fourfold sequence of coffins (gold inside silver inside bronze inside iron), the phrase 以金棺內銀棺中，又以銀棺內銅棺中，又以銅棺內鐵棺中, T383 (XII) 1011b9-10, is an exact and unique match with T7 (I) 206a26-28; but the general context here matches rather the portion of T7 around 199c.
28 The same transcription appears in T156, but that text was composed in China (see n. 39), and so its presence there is part of the pattern of evidence of its debts to other Chinese translations.
29 Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō,” 17–20 (point 9 in the summary above); Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” I: 266-265. Cole, Mothers and Sons, 65–68, treats portions of the story of the text as an instance of the motif of filial piety towards mothers (though he mistakenly identifies 佛昇忉利天為母說法經 T815 as the origin of the passages he discusses, via Baochang 寶唱 [fl. early 5c] and Daoshi 道世 [?–683]; 251 n. 15). Cf. also Michael Radich, How Ajātaśatru Was Reformed: The Domestication of “Ajase” and Stories in Buddhist History, Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series XXVII (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2011), 55–56.
30 John Strong, “Filial Piety and Buddhism: The Indian Antecedents to a ‘Chinese’ Problem,” in Traditions in Contact and Change: Selected Proceedings of the XIVth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion, ed. Peter Slater and Donald Wiebe, with Martin Boutin and Harold Coward (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), 171–186; Gregory Schopen, “Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: A Question of ‘Sinicization’ Viewed from the Other Side,” T’oung Pao 70 (1984): 110–126; reprinted in Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 56–71.
31 As the following footnotes show, many of these transcriptions were also rare enough to catch the eye of the author of the Fan Fan yu 翻梵語 T2130, who glossed them.
32 Other notable instances in T200, T202, T203, T658, T1331.
33 逮波耶那 *Dvīpajanma? (cf. Fan Fan yu 譯曰逮波者洲耶那者生); 欝陀羅翅 *Udraka [Rāmaputra]; 毘失波蜜多羅 *Viśvāmitra? (譯曰毘首婆者一切密多羅者周旋); 阿羅邏 Aḷāra/Arāḍa; 波羅舍邏?? ∼śara (譯曰波羅者波舍羅者箭); 應祁羅舍 *Aṅgiras?; 阿私陀 Asita; 波薩 *Paśa? T383 (XII) 1007b9-13; T2130 (LIV) 1013c19-24.
34 羅婆㮈[v.l. 奈]神 *Rāvaṇa? (Fan Fan yu [v.l. 刈]也), 羅婆泥神 *Rāvaṇi(n)? (Fan Fan yu 鎌刈), 比[v.l. 比比]沙泥神, 迦樓泥神, 波樓泥神; T383 (XII) 1007b18-19; T2130 (LIV) 1029b9-10.
35 Kings: 支夜多羅, 毘尼羅翅; nāgas: 修陀利舍那, 毘摩質多羅; queens: 舍脂迷那, 阿伽藍波, 欝波尸, 胝舍羅雞尸, 阿葛邏, 阿留波底, 藐底, 藐底梨沙; T383 (XII) 1007b20-27.
36 Outside T383 itself, 摩訶摩耶 appears only: (1) in the Saṃyuktāgama T99(640), in a somewhat anomalous sūtra (it begins abruptly with “At that time, the Bhagavan said to the Venerable Ānanda” 爾時，世尊告尊者阿難), which relates a version of the “Kauśāmbī incident”; (2) in the same context, the “Kauśāmbī narrative,” in the Aśokāvadāna 阿育王傳 T2042 (on the T99 and T2040 versions of the Kauśāmbī narrative, see Nattier, Once upon a Future Time, 150 ff.); (3) several times in identifications of past-lifetime figures in jātaka/avadāna tales contained in the “Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish” 賢愚經 T202; (4) in the “Sūtra on the Buddhas’ Names” 佛名經 T440 and T441, composed in China; (5) once each in several later texts, namely, Xuanzang’s *Vibhāṣā T1545, Xuanzang’s *Bodhisatvapiṭaka T310(12), the anonymous七佛父母姓字經 T4, *Dharmadeva’s(?) 法天 七佛經 T4, and the later and apocryphal commentary on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, 釋摩訶衍論 T1668. Setting aside the limited afterlife the transcription appeared to enjoy in later texts, this pattern of distribution, like much of our other evidence, localizes the transcription and texts containing it very tightly in the mid-fifth century.
37 Marcus Bingenheimer, Studies in Āgama Literature: With Special Reference to the Shorter Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 2011), 1.
38 Chen Jinhua, “From Central Asia to Southern China: The Formation of Identity and Network in the Meditative Traditions of the Fifth—Sixth Century Southern China (420—589),” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2 (2014): 4 n. 6; cf. T2059 (L) 337a18-20, T2145 (LV) 106c10-13.
39 Naitō Ryūo 内藤竜雄, “Dai hōben Butsu hō’on kyō ni tsuite 大方便仏報恩経について,” IBK 3, no. 2 (1955): 313–315; Funayama Tōru 船山徹, “Da fangbian Fo bao’en jing bianzuan suoyinyong de Hanyi jingdian ⟪大方便佛報恩經⟫編纂所引用的漢譯經典,” trans. Wang Zhaoguo 王招國, Fojiao wenxian yanjiu 佛教文獻研究 2 (2016): 175–202.
40 In addition to the sources listed below, this transcription also appears in T1045a, T1329, and T1343.
41 Eric Matthew Greene, “Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism” (Ph.D. diss., U.C. Berkeley, 2012), 328–335 and n. 6.
42 Jonathan Silk, “The Jifayue sheku tuoluoni jing: Translation, Non-Translation, Both or Neither?” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 31, no. 1–2 (2008 [2010]): 369–420; Bryan D. Lowe, “The Scripture on Saving and Protecting Body and Life: An Introduction and Translation,” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 27 (2014): 16–17; Kanbayashi Ryūjō 神林隆浄, “Darani zasshū 陀羅尼雜集,” in Bussho, ed. Ono and Maruyama, 7:122.
43 As mentioned above, these two kings are placed in the wrong quarters of the compass in T383; Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō,” 10–11.
44 Yamabe Nobuyoshi, “The Sūtra on the Ocean-like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Buddha: The Interfusion of the Chinese and Indian Cultures in Central Asia as Reflected in a Fifth Century Apocryphal Sūtra” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1999).
45 Michel Strickmann, “The Consecration Sūtra: A Buddhist Book of Spells,” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Robert E. Buswell, Jr. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 87–88; Erik Zürcher, “Eschatology and Messianism in Early Chinese Buddhism,” in Leyden Studies in Sinology: Papers Presented at the Conference Held in Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Sinological Institute of Leyden University, December 8-12, 1980, ed. Wilt L. Idema (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 48–49. See once more n. 15 above.
46 For example, the following passage, shared with T1668: … 六百歲已九十六種諸外道等邪見競興 … 滅佛法有一比丘名曰馬鳴善說法要降伏一切諸外道輩 … ; or a long formula expressing the twelvefold chain of dependent origination and its reversal: 無明緣行行緣識識緣名色名色緣六入六入緣觸觸緣受受緣愛愛緣取取緣有有緣生生緣老死憂悲苦惱若無明滅則行滅行滅則識滅識滅則名色滅名色滅則六入滅六入滅則觸滅觸滅則受滅受滅則愛滅愛滅則取滅取滅則有滅有滅則生滅生滅則老死滅老死滅則憂悲苦惱滅, shared only with Yijing’s T1450; or a list of the elements in the “eightfold celestial congregation,” 無量百千天龍夜叉乾闥婆阿修羅迦樓羅緊那羅摩睺 羅伽人非人等, shared only with Fatian 法天 in the Northern Song.
47 T383 can in any case be no later than the generation of Baochang and Sengyou 僧祐 (445–518), since it is quoted (with condensation and paraphrasing) in the Jing lü yi xiang 經律異相 T2121 (LIII) 33a7-26, and in the Shijia pu 釋迦譜 T2040, as studied by Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” and Cole (see again n. 29). As Utsuo points out, Chu sanzang ji ji 出三藏記集 contains a record of a supposed “digest” version of the text, 抄摩訶摩耶經三卷, composed by Xiao Ziliang 蕭子良 (460–494), T2145 (LV) 37c16, and this would also give us a terminus ante quem; Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō,” 25. I find less persuasive Utsuo’s arguments for the terminus post quem, which are based upon somewhat loose ideas about the probable sources of the text.
48 Okumura, “Kako genzai inga kyō ni tsuite,” 180.
49 See once more Tokiwa, “Kako genzai inga kyō.”
50 This is a well-known feature of the working methods of Chinese translation teams. See esp. Paul Harrison, “Experimental Core Samples of Chinese Translations of Two Buddhist Sūtras Analysed in the Light of Recent Sanskrit Manuscript Discoveries,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 31, no. 1–2 (2008 [2010]): 205–250.
51 Matsuda Yūko 松田裕子, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha’s Biography,” IBK 37, no. 1 (1988): 24–33; Jan Nattier, A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢 and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods, Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica X (Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2008), 104–109; Antonello Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇṭhaka: White Horse Monasteries in Early Medieval China,” in Buddhist Asia: Papers from the First Conference of Buddhist Studies Held in Naples in May 2001 (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2003), 205 and n. 110, 206–207.
52 E.g., the description of the assault of the armies of Māra, T189 (III) 640b27-c10, corresponds especially closely to T192 (IV) 25c12-26a3, including many full pada that are verbatim identical, and a closely corresponding sequence of many phrases.
53 E.g., the description of the bodhisatva prince’s realization that his wives and concubines are actually disgusting, as he flees the palace: T189 (III) 632c16-23 = T185 (III) 475b6-15, T186 (III) 504c15-25; or the description of the selection of these same five hundred women, and their qualities, skills, and duties, T189 (III) 627c11-14 = T185 (III) 474a28-b2, T186 (III) 496b9-12. In the episode in which Uruvilvā Kāśyapa and his followers throw their “fire-worshipping” paraphernalia into the river, some rare phraseology (e.g., 此非小事) also shows that T189 was consulting T185; this same episode is also found in T196, 151b13 ff.; T185, 483b22 ff.; T186, 531c20 ff.
54 E.g., a pericope introducing a tale of past lifetimes, which describes the vast stretches of time over which reincarnations unfold, T189 (III) 621a2-14 = T184 (III) 461b5-10, T185 (III) 472c6-11; or parts of a list of thirty-two or thirty-four miracles, T189 (III) 625b17-c17, T184 (III) 464a3-27, where the relation in wording between T189 and T184, and the numbering of the miracles, is particularly close in items 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 18, 25, 26, 28, 29, and 31.
55 Bareau has compared the treatment of the conversion of Uruvilvā Kāśyapa and his brothers in a range of early texts. He does not directly treat T189, but his analysis should mean that the only possible other Chinese sources of this episode in T189 should be the *Ekottarikāgama (T125) or Mahīśāsaka (T1421) and Dharmaguptaka (T1428) Vinaya versions of the same story; André Bareau, “Le Buddha et Uruvilvā,” in Recherches sur la biographie du Buddha dans le Sūtrapiṭaka et les Vinayapiṭaka anciens. III. Articles complémentaire (Paris: Presses de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1995), 159–160.
56 Nattier, Guide, 102–108.
57 Especially relevant to T189 is Matsumura, “Formation and Development.” For other key portions of this study, see, e.g., Matsumura, “The Sumedhakathā in Pāli Literature and Its Relation to the Northern Buddhist Textual Tradition,” Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies 国際仏教大学院大学研究紀要 14 (2010): 101–133; Matsumura, “An Independent Sūtra on the Dīpaṃkara Prophecy: Tibetan Text and English Translation of the Ārya-Dīpaṃkara-vyākaraṇa nāma Mahāyānasūtra,” Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies 国際仏教大学院大学研究紀要 15 (2011): 134–74 (sic) (this is not a full list of of Matsumura’s work on these texts).
58 Matsumura, “Formation and Development,” 80–81.
59 This link was already observed by Tokiwa, “Kako genzai inga kyō.”
60 Matsumura, “Formation and Development,” 87.
61 This transcription appears in texts which, in light of evidence presented elsewhere in the present study, we might begin to regard as a set of “usual suspects”: *Dharmakṣema’s Buddhacarita T192; Jijiaye’s Za baozang jing T203; Kumārajīva’s Lotus T262; the “Samantabhadra Contemplation Sūtra” T271; *Dharmakṣema’s Trisaṃvara-nirdeśa T311; *Dharmakṣema’s Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra T374 (and T375); the “Ocean Samādhi” T643; the Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya T1425; *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa T1509.
62 E.g., the woman from whom the bodhisatva obtains flowers is a servant in the royal household (Matsumura’s Element 6, Matsumura, “Formation and Development,” 82–83); when the bodhisatva throws the flowers in offering to the Buddha Dīpaṃkara and they miraculously stand still in the air, two flowers take up stations on either hand (Element 7, 83–84).
63 Okumura, “Kako genzai inga kyō ni tsuite.” The evidence Okumura surveys includes the sequence of events in the narrative, the presence or absence of certain telling details, and two items of doctrinal significance. Okumura’s study only covers part of the the text, treating episodes after the awakening.
64 This is as in the Buddhacarita, where this seer also only speaks of one sage; Patrick Olivelle, Life of the Buddha, by Aśvaghoṣa, The Clay Sanskrit Library (New York: New York University Press, JJC Foundation, 2008), 207.
65 Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, 3193, s.v. 提謂波利 mentions that Bhallika is sometimes translated “village” 村落.
66 視東躭著，彌歲忘轉；瞻西躭[v.l. 流]湎，經年不迴; T189 (III) 641c29-642a1. The vocabulary used here is, again, extremely rare, and its distribution interesting; 躭著, for instance (more common with the orthography 耽著), is not listed in the Hanyu dacidian, and to this period, appears (in either form) only in Kumārajīva’s Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā T201, “Larger” Prajñāpāramitā T223, and *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa T1509; *Dharmakṣema’s Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra T374 (and T375); Zhu Fonian’s Udānavarga T212 and Shi zhu duan jie jing T309; and the Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya T1425; the orthography 躭著 is confined to T212 and T189.
67 魔有姊妹，一名彌伽，二名迦利，各各以手執髑髏器，在菩薩前作諸異狀; 640c24-26.
68 Majjhima-nikāya 1:333; Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu and Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 243.
69 Stache-Rosen, “Temptation of the Buddha,” 10; Olivelle, Life, 390–391; Stache-Rosen points out that Johnson had already noticed this peculiarity of T189.
70 Even T193, which is close in context to T189 and also, apparently, some sort of Buddhacarita, interprets as we would read the Skt: 化黑女人如雲山/執器沃[v.l. 妖]呪惑菩薩, T193 (IV) 77b13.
71 The closest match is in fact in T24 (I) 317a21-23 and T25 (I) 372b10-12, both later (Sui).
72 Multiple verbatim matches extended over a longer sequence, interrupted by minor variant readings: T223 (VIII) 395b28-c22; T1509 (XXV) 681a2-24.
73 Also in T128b, which Lévi showed long ago is entirely derivative of T125; Sylvain Lévi, “Les seize Arhat protecteurs de la Loi,” Journal Asiatique, ser. II, 8 (1916): 191, 263.
74 Treated in the Taishō canon as anonymous, and dating to the “three Qin” 三秦. On problems with this understanding of the text, see Demiéville, “La Yogācārabhūmi,” 369, 370, 372.
75 T2145 (LV) 112c18-20; T2059 (L) 339b23-24; T2145 (LV) 12c5-9. This same phrase is found in T1050, a very late translation of the Northern Song.
76 The one partial exception to this assertion, already discussed in Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’?,” is a passage in T189 in which the Buddha refuses Māra’s request, on the banks of the Nairañjanā River, to enter into parinirvāṇa, T189 (III) 649a16-24. With the exception of a very few words, this passage is matched verbatim in a slightly longer and more repetitive passage at T7 (I) 192a22-b12. However, even this long pericope is set in a different larger context in each of the two texts: T189 is describing the initial encounter of Māra and the Buddha, at the beginning of the Buddha’s teaching career, whereas T7 is describing the reminiscence of this occasion forty-five years later, at the end of his career, when the Buddha agreed with Māra that he would enter parinirvāṇa three months later.
77 Some of these transcriptions are discussed in Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’?.”
78 The closely related 優陀夷 is more common. The form in T189 is also found in T187 and T190, which are both later, and can be presumed to have taken it from T189.
79 Also found in the later T190.
80 It is striking that (setting aside later texts like T187 and T190) even 阿羅邏 alone, in this sense, is otherwise found only in Kumārajīva: *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa T1509, Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā T1521, Śata-śāstra T1569; and *Tattvasiddhi T1646; and in *Dharmakṣema: Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra T374 (and T375), and T397(7). What else could this group of texts have in common?
81 Otherwise, to this period, only in T196, Zhu Fonian’s T212, *Dharmakṣema’s T374 (and T375), and the Vibhāṣā T1547.
82 Fan fan yu: 譯曰賢軍.
83 Fan fan yu: 譯曰賢良.
84 Ajapāla is more usually the name of the tree the Buddha sits under; G. P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names (London: Pāli Text Society, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974 [1937]), 1:30 s.v.; Fan fan yu glosses 譯曰羊力 < *Ajabala?
85 憍陳如 for Kauṇḍinya is common; down to this date 摩訶那摩 for Mahānāma(n) is otherwise only found in the Fo zang jing 佛藏經 T653 ascribed to Kumārajīva; 跋波阿捨 is a hapax legomenon, and hard to identify with any of the more usual names, but by a process of elimination should perhaps be *Aśvajit?; 婆闍 *Vāṣpa?; 跋陀羅闍 *Bhadrika? is also a hapax legomenon.
86 Kings/countries: (1) 旃陀羅及多 *Candragupta? (hapax legomenon); (2) 舍衛 Śrāvastī; (3) 偷羅厥叉 (hapax legomenon; Fan fan yu: 應云偷羅厥蹉譯曰大姓; ∼kukṣi? also the home country of Mahākāśyapa, 653a8); (4) 犢子 Vatsa; (5) 跋羅; (6) 盧羅 (Fan fan yu: 譯曰動也; should be Avanti, by the match with Pradyota below); (7) 德叉尸羅 *Takṣaśīla? (also T7, T99, T201, T553, T1421); (8) 拘羅婆 *Kaurava? (Fan fan yu: 譯者曰姓).
Princes: (1) 頻毘娑羅 Bimbisāra (surprisingly rare: T125, T133, Xuanzang’s Bodhisatvapiṭaka 菩薩藏會 T310(12), Xuanzang’s Vibhāṣā T1545; and Yijing’s Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya); (2) 婆斯匿 Prasenajit (in this exact form, a hapax legomenon); (3) 拘臈婆 (hapax legomenon, Fan fan yu: 譯曰不好聲也; could the text here be confusing Ghoṣila, the treasurer of King Udayana, for another prince in his own right?); (4) 優陀延 Udayana; (5)欝陀羅延 (hapax legomenon, Fan fan yu: 譯曰獺行 *Udrayāna, *Urdrayāna); (6) 疾光 *Pradyota? (hapax legomenon as a proper name); (7) 弗迦羅娑羅 *Puṣkarasārin (otherwise only found in T383; v.l. 弗迦羅婆羅; Fan fan yu: 譯曰弗迦羅者蓮花婆羅者力亦云勝也 < *Paṅkajabala?); (8) 拘羅婆 (as for the king/kingdom).
87 However, it is notable that we do not seem to find, among matches elsewhere to the phrasing of T189, the same proportion of “apocrypha” or dubious texts as found for T383.
88 Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’?”
89 An anonymous reviewer of this paper for JCR suggested that only if we could “track down [the] translators and locate in historical time and social milieu the interrelationships between them” would “the article … truly be successful.”
90 For a slightly earlier period, a representative sense of the sorts of difficulties and uncertainties I have in mind is amply conveyed by the masterly survey of the state of our evidence and knowledge in Nattier, Guide.
91 John Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 5.
92 Erik Zürcher, Het leven van de Boeddha vertaald uit de vroegste Chinese overlevering, De Oorsterse Bibliotheek, Deel 10 (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1978), 16–17.
93 Ernst Waldschmidt, ed., Das Catuṣpariṣatsūtra: Eine kanonische Lehrschrift über die Begründung der buddhistischen Gemeinde, Text in Sanskrit und Tibetisch, verglichen mit dem Pali nebst einer Übersetzung der chinesischen Entsprechung im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1952–1962).
94 I will not attempt to list here all texts or studies relevant to the parinirvāṇa of Mahāprajāpati (Gautamī); see, e.g., Jonathan S. Walters, “A Voice from the Silence: The Buddha’s Mother’s Story,” History of Religions 33, no. 4 (1994): 358–379; Elizabeth Wilson, “Sati or Female Supremacy? Feminist Appropriations of Gomati’s Parinirvana,” in Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances, ed. Mathew N. Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 133–150; Reiko Ohnuma, Ties that Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 127–131; multiple versions of this narrative also exist in Chinese. For Śuddhodana, see, e.g., Jingfan wang banniepan jing 淨飯王般涅槃經 T512 (“Sūtra on the parinirvāṇa of King Śuddhodana”), ascribed to Juqu Jingsheng (thus probably dating to about the same period and milieu as the texts under examination here). T512 would reward further study; it, too, contains rare and telling clues in its phrasing (e.g., the transcription 迦維羅衛 for Kapilavastu).
95 T2087 (LI) 904a29-b10; Ji Xianlin 季羨林, ed., Da Tang Xiyu ji jiaozhu 大唐西域記校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 549; Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” II: 175-174.
96 Zürcher, Het leven, 18.
97 These travel companions included Baoyun, to whom T193 is ascribed, and whom, independently of the strength or weakness of that ascription, we might suspect for various reasons to have been fairly central to textual production in this area and time; see Radich, “Was the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra 大般涅槃經 T7 Translated by ‘Faxian’?.”
98 A fly in the ointment here is of course that one Chinese person, famous within living memory when T383 was produced, had also been to Kuśinagara—Faxian himself. But unlike Xuanzang, Faxian does not mention this site in the portion of his travelogue on Kuśinagara; T2085 (LI) 861c2-11; Max Deeg, Das Gaoseng-Faxian-Zhuan als religionsgeschichtliche Quelle: Der älteste Bericht eines chinesischen buddhistischen Pilgermönchs über seine Reise nach Indien, mit Übersetzung des Textes, Studies in Oriental Religions 52 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), 545.
99 Numerous texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon feature the prefix Fo shuo 佛說 “preached by the Buddha” in the title, but comparison with other versions shows that this is often only a formulaic addition on the part of the Chinese translators or the later bibliographic tradition—perhaps in part an unpacking of the meaning of the word sūtra itself—and therefore extrinsic to identification of the text in question. I therefore regularly omit this element in this listing of titles.
100 For an alternate summary of aspects of the content of T383, see also Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” II: 188-187. Durt also translates excerpts/paraphrases of portions of T383 in the Shijia pu 釋迦譜 T2040, with a few stanzas from T383 itself; II: 184-175.
101 As Cole has pointed out, this is a stock motif in Indian literature—“suckling sons at a distance” as proof of genuine motherhood; Cole, Mothers and Sons, 251 n. 26.
102 On this image, see above p. 9.
103 On this term and the ideas behind it, see above pp. 9–10.
104 It is noticeable that many of the episodes summarized briefly here have to do with the origins of various constituent parts of the Saṅgha. See further above p. 26. The brief mention of Devadatta here is probably to be read in conjunction with the intrusion of the episode of his fall to hell later in the text, discussed immediately below.
105 Note, as Utsuo points out, that the Buddha’s sojourn in heaven to preach to Māyā is held in other traditions to occur much earlier in his teaching career; Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō,” 21. This unusual detail is among a handful of features shared by T383 and the “Sūtra of the Original Vow of the Bodhisatva Kṣitigarbha” 地藏菩薩本願經; see T412 (XIII) 777c12 and passim. This text is ascribed to Śikṣānanda of the Tang, but the earliest evidence for its existence dates to the tenth century, and it was only incorporated into the canon during the Ming; it cannot be found in Chinese catalogues down to 800. Though some scholars have suggested that the text might have been compiled in Khotan, it contains elements that also suggest the possibility of composition in China; Zhiru Ng, The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China, Kuroda Institute Series in East Asian Buddhism 21 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 107–108; Ven. Yifa and Peter Matthew Romaskiewicz, trans., Sutra on the Past Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, Translated from the Chinese Version of Siksananda (Hacienda Heights, CA: International Translation Center, 2007), 263 n. 4; Nakamura Hajime, Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 217; Funayama Tōru 船山徹, Butten wa dō Kan’yaku sareta no ka: sūtora ga kyōten ni naru toki 仏典はどう漢訳されたのか: スートラが経典になるとき (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013), 142. To my knowledge, it is relatively rare for texts to present specific teachings supposed to have been delivered on the occasion of the Buddha’s visit to Māyā in the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven, but this is the scene of T412, a feature it shares with T383. Not only is T412 set on the same occasion; like T383, it also situates the Buddha’s visit to Māyā in heaven soon before his parinirvāṇa; T412 (XIII) 785c25-28. This detail in particular suggests that the compiler of T412 may have had T383 specifically in mind. The two texts also share, in different senses, the theme of filial piety towards mothers; on this theme in T412, cf. Ng, The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva, 108–110; Yifa and Romaskiewicz, Sutra on the Past Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, 287–289.
106 Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” I: 253.
107 Utsuo has noted that there seems to be a mistake in the assignment of two of these kings to their respective quarters of the compass. Utsuo, “Makamaya kyō,” 10–11. See above pp. 7–8 and n. 43.
108 As Durt has pointed out, the basic notion that Māyā descended from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three to join the mourners on the Buddha’s deathbed is found in the Chinese *Dirghāgama T1 (I) 27a12-14; Hubert Durt, “Maya in Buddhist Art and in the Buddhist Legend,” in Buddhist Transformations and Interactions: Essays in Honor of Antonino Forte, ed. Victor H. Mair (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2017), 109.
109 Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” I: 261-255; II: 191, 187-186, 175-170, 166-163; also Durt, “L’apparition du Buddha”; Kawasaki Michiko 河崎ミチ子, “Butsu mo kyō ni tsuite 佛母経について,” Tōyōgaku ronsō 東洋学論叢 40 (1993): 167–193; Nishiwaki Tsuneki 西脇常記, “Zum Fo mu jing 佛母経 (Sūtra der Mutter des Buddha),” Acta Orientalia Hungarica 59, no. 1 (2006): 29–46; Nishiwaki, “Butsu mo kyō 佛母経,” in Higashi Ajia no shūkyō to bunka: Nishiwaki Tsuneki kyōju taikyū kinen ronshū 東アジアの宗教と文化:西脇常記教授退休記念論集, ed. Christian Wittern and Shi Lishan 石立善 (Kyoto: Nishiwaki Tsuneki kyōju taishoku kinen ronshū kankōkai, 2007), 23–53; see also Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 70 n. 158, on the influence of T383’s post-parinirvāṇa timetable (including the eventual disappearance of the Dharma) on the later East Asian tradition.
110 Durt, “Post-Nirvāṇa Meeting,” II: 191 speaks in passing of this episode as “the miracle of the Buddha’s ‘resurrection’” (scare quotes in original), but it seems more plausible that the thrilling miraculous force of the event lies precisely in the fact that the Buddha is able to move, speak, perform miracles etc., even though he is still dead.
111 Cf. Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 150–154.
112 Nattier, Once upon a Future Time, 150 ff. Nattier also notes, 215 n. 8, that in its version of the Kauśāmbī narrative, T383 shares an otherwise unattested detail with the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra. If T383 were in fact composed in China, this might be reason to include the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra among its sources.
113 T383 (XII) 1014a21-1015a7.
114 T1 (I) 29b3-30a13.
115 T383 (XII) 1015a9-16.
116 The division between fascicle two and fascicle three even falls at almost exactly the same juncture as a break between Buddhacarita chapters (ch. 8–9). Although she only deals with a small portion of the text, Stache-Rosen, “Temptation of the Buddha,” also notes several respects in which T189 appears especially close to the Buddhacarita.
117 One feature that makes T189 somewhat odd, in formal terms, is that the closing sequence of this “Dīpaṃkara” jātaka, with the identification of the dramatis personae with actors in the Buddha’s present lifetime, etc., only comes some thirty Taishō pages later, at the very end of the text, after a great deal of unrelated intervening narrative action; 653b12-26.
118 Tokiwa, “Kako genzai inga kyō,” sees connections between the signs attending the bodhisatva’s birth in T189 and those enumerated on the same occasion in T186 and T201.
119 On the treatment of this name as indicating two separate teachers, see p. 18 above.
120 Stache-Rosen has compared this episode in T189 with a range of other versions; Stache-Rosen, “Temptation of the Buddha,” passim.
121 In this, T189 differs somewhat from other versions of the story, in which Upaka merely shakes his head saying “That may be so, friend,” and goes off; evaṃ vutte upako ājīvako huveyyapāvuso ti vatvā sīsaṃ okampetvā ummaggaṃ gahetvā pakkāmi; e.g., Vin 1.8; also J 1.81, M 1.170-171; references from Malalasekera, Dictionary, 1:385 s.v. “Upaka.”
122 即於佛前，受三自歸。於是閻浮提中，唯此長者，為優婆塞，最初獲得供養三寶 (645c16-18). There seems to be either an inconsistency here, or some legalistic hair-splitting. Earlier, the Buddha also bestows the three refuges upon the two merchants (corresponding to Trapuṣa and Bhallika) and their companions (perhaps they do not count as upāsakas?)—though the authors, apparently keenly aware that the Saṅgha does not yet exist, are careful to stipulate that in that case, they take refuge in the “future Saṅgha/Saṅgha-to-be”: 即授商人三歸：一、歸依佛；二、歸依法；三、歸依將來僧 (643c7-8).
123 Tokiwa, “Kako genzai inga kyō,” sees here a connection to a small set of texts comprising T186, T196, and T201.
124 The narrative thus ends at a point corresponding to the end of Buddhacarita, ch. 17.