Tibetan Kanjur

This philological study presents a collation of Old Tibetan Dunhuang fragments of the Avaivartikacakrasūtra compared against a text-critical edition of Tibetan Kanjurs. The Avaivartikacakrasūtra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist discourse that describes how bodhisattvas become irreversible (avaivartika) from perfect Buddhahood and how they achieve irreversible bodhisattva status, a prestigious attainment among Mahāyāna Buddhist movements in South, Central, and East Asia. Although previously unstudied, this prominent scripture is one of the most influential of Mahāyāna sūtras in Buddhist culture, preserved and transmitted in South, Central, and East Asia over many centuries. Analysis of the Old Tibetan Dunhuang Avaivartikacakrasūtra provides a number of valuable contributions to the study of the formations of Mahāyāna Buddhism, to the understanding of Old Tibetan language, and to the systematic study of Tibetan Kanjurs. Enhancing the scholarly knowledge of the transmission history of the Tibetan collected teachings of the Buddha (Kanjur), this monograph contributes to the philological study of Tibetan Buddhist canonical texts and traces the genealogical development of the Tibetan language in translating Indian Buddhist canonical texts.

On the basis of an examination of twenty-seven textual witnesses of the section on nuns’ conduct (Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga) in the monastic law code (Vinaya) of the influential north Indian Buddhist school known as the Mūlasarvāstivāda (Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya), I argue that a distinct Bhutanese recension is discernible. Found in six of the twenty-seven witnesses—sTog and Shey Palace manuscripts, and four Bhutanese manuscripts (Chizhi, Dongkarla, Gangteng, and Neyphug)—this recension resolves many of the inconsistencies present in the most commonly consulted editions of the Tibetan translation of the Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga. The discrepancies between these two recensions are of considerable interest and importance given that these recensions differ significantly in terms of the presence and absence of certain rules, frame stories, and legal analysis for nuns.

The present article is divided into eight sections. In the first section, I discuss a number of characteristics that make the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya unique among the corpus of extant Buddhist monastic law codes: its linguistic diversity, the sheer volume of canonical texts, the enormous number of commentarial treatises, and the sometimes seemingly insurmountable philological challenges. In the second section, I provide a brief overview of the corpus of canonical Tibetan Buddhist texts devoted to rules for nuns (Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga, Bhikṣuṇī-prātimokṣa, and Ārya-sarvāstivādi-mūla-bhikṣuṇī-prātimokṣa-sūtra-vṛtti). Here too I discuss the unique position of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya as the only monastic law code preserving frame stories and canonical legal analysis—word-commentaries, casuistries, exception clauses, and discussion of mitigating and aggravating factors—for nuns’ rules which are common to both female and male monastic orders. I also briefly discuss the unique situation of the lack of correspondence between the Tibetan Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga and the Bhikṣuṇī-prātimokṣa, first noted by the Tibetan polymath Bu sTon rin chen grub (1290–1364).

In the third section, I outline the sources used in the present study, and discuss their historical relationships. In the fourth section, I provide an overview of the idiosyncratic numbering system employed in the Tibetan Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga. I also outline one of the key inconsistencies in this text: the fact that the section said to contain 180 pāyantikā rules for nuns contains considerably more than the stated number. In the fifth section, I cite a number of examples of differences between what are ostensibly the same rules in the Tibetan Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga and the Tibetan Bhikṣuṇī-prātimokṣa. In the sixth section, I examine a number of irregularities related to the 72 shared pāyantikā rules for monks and nuns in order to demonstrate the existence of a distinct Bhutanese recension, one which is considerably closer to the normative Mūlasarvāstivādin tradition of the Indian disciplinarian Guṇaprabha (c. 5th–7th cents.) than the text found in other manuscripts and xylographs that are regularly consulted in the study of Indian and Tibetan female monasticism. The conclusion (seventh section) is followed by an Appendix (eighth section) listing details of the twenty-seven witnesses of the Tibetan Bhikṣuṇī-vinayavibhaṅga surveyed herein.

Draft for The Third International Conference On the Wutai Cult (Mount Clear and Cool and the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra: Multidisciplinary, Inter-cultural, and Interreligious Studies of the Mañjuśrī Cult, Mount Wutai, and the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra) July 12-15, 2017

The chapter titled “Bodhisattva-abodes” (*Bodhisattvavihāra; Pusa zhuchu ping 菩薩住處; byang chub sems dpa’i gnas) of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra is available in the sixty- and eighty-fascicle Chinese translations and extant as Chapter 38 of the Tibetan Buddhāvataṃsaka in the Tibetan Kanjurs. Though the overall structure and wording of the Tibetan chapter are roughly the same as its Chinese counterparts, there are some key differences in the rendering of proper names. For example, whereas Mañjuśrī resided on Mountain Clear-and-cool (Qingliangshan) in the northeast direction in the Chinese translation, in the Tibetan text Mañjuśrī resided on Grassy Mountain  (sPang ri) or Hermitage Mountain (sPong ri) in the north or east direction.

First, the paper utilizes different Kanjur recensions to collate Chapter 38 so that the direct textual source of the chapter can be traced to the last chapter of the Sūryagarbha Sūtra (T. 397, 293b16- 294b03), a sūtra partially produced in Khotan. Second, based on a critically edited version of the Tibetan and Chinese texts, the paper attempts to reconstruct the underlying Sanskrit proper names and resolve some of the textual issues.  Lastly, the paper attempts to situate this chapter in its Mahāyāna context and to account for its novelty with the doctrinal confluence that brought this chapter into being.

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.

This study investigates the Mongolian manuscript Kanjur preserved at the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The manuscript previously belonged to the Chesan Buddhist monastery of Central Transbaikalia and was brought to the Buruchkom, a first academic institute of the Republic of Buryat-Mongolia (Ulan-Ude) by the eminent Buryat writer Khotsa Namsaraev. The manuscript is an almost complete copy of the Ligdan Khan’s Kanjur presumably made in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century in Beijing. The article presents a description, analysis and brief catalogue of Ulan-Ude manuscript Kanjur.

This chapter briefly explains the critical editing and restitution of Tibetan Buddhist canonical texts through the text critical analysis of manuscripts supported with computer technology. The chapter succinctly outlines the principles and methodology involved in applying phylogenetics to investigating the genealogy of texts found in Tibetan Kanjurs. In the following sections I discuss the current known history of Tibetan Kanjurs to account for the textual witnesses under philological consideration, outline the principles of text criticism for editing Tibetan versions of Buddhist canonical texts, and explain the method of applying phylogenetic analysis to critical editions of Tibetan texts. The chapter concludes with a brief example that illustrates the techniques involved in utilizing phylogenetic analysis in text criticism.

Hundreds of Buddhist scriptures originating in South Asia over the centuries have come to be classified as “Mahāyāna sūtras,” yet less than five percent of this literature has been studied in modern scholarship. The historical importance or past influence of a given sūtra among such texts is generally unknown. One way to assess the historical importance of an Indian Buddhist text is to document its later significance in Indian Buddhist commentaries.  This paper examines a self-proclaimed Mahāyāna sūtra, the Avaivartikacakra, that is unknown to modern scholarship and documents its historical importance in Indian Buddhist history through tracing its citation and usage in Indian Buddhist commentaries.  The paper documents the citation of the Avaivartikacakra in commentaries of prominent Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist scholars such as Nāgārjuna (2nd century), Kamalaśīla (8th century), and Jayānanda (12th century), among others, to explain the sūtra’s significance among Indian Buddhist communities from the second to twelfth centuries.

This study investigates the Mongolian manuscript Kanjur preserved at the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The manuscript previously belonged to the Chesan Buddhist monastery of Central Transbaikalia and was brought to the Buruchkom, a first academic institute of the Republic of Buryat-Mongolia (Ulan-Ude) by the eminent Buryat writer Khotsa Namsaraev. The manuscript is an almost complete copy of the Ligdan Khan’s Kanjur presumably made in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century in Beijing. The article presents a description, analysis and brief catalogue of Ulan-Ude manuscript Kanjur.

The Mahāratnakūṭa is a collection of Buddhist texts, the bulk of which belong to the early Mahāyāna tradition. Its extant versions are included in the Chinese Tripiṭaka as well as the Tibetan and Mongolian Kanjurs. The collection has been studied to a certain extent with the use of the Chinese and Tibetan sources but almost nothing is known of its Mongolian-language versions. The article aims to provide a preliminary study of the Ratnakūṭa in the Mongolian manuscript Kanjur compiled in 1628–1629. It examines the structural traits of the collection, the data of the colophons and some textual elements preserved from the Tibetan original/s. The analysis reveals that, possibly, the major part of the Ratnakūṭa or the whole collection was translated into Mongolian en bloc in 1628–1629. The collection lacks eight sutras and places the final forty-ninth work between texts thirty-five and thirty-six. A number of textual elements preserved from the Tibetan source/s point to the proximity and possible relation of the Mongolian Ratnakūṭa to the Them spangs ma and Western Tibetan Kanjurs.

A Kangyur (Tibetan bka’ ’gyur), commonly known under its Mongol pronunciation “Kanjur,” is an authoritative collection of the Tibetan translations of the “Word of the Buddha.” This piece provides a brief overview of Kanjurs in Tibetan religious traditions.