Bodhisattvacharyavatara

by Andreas Kretschmar | 246,740 words

The English translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (“entering the conduct of the bodhisattvas”), a Sanskrit text with Tibetan commentary. This book explains the bodhisattva concept and gives guidance to the Buddhist practitioner following the Mahāyāna path towards the attainment of enlightenment. The text was written in Sanskrit by Shantideva ...

A Buddhist treatise like this text always begins in the same way:

“In the Sanskrit language, the title is Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra.”

Then, the text goes on:

“In the Tibetan language, the title is byang chub sems dpa’i spyod pa la ’jug pa.”

In this way the Tibetan translators of Buddhist texts always preserved the original Sanskrit title by leaving the title untranslated [sor bzhag tu smros pa / ma ’gyur bar smros pa]. They reproduced the Sanskrit title in Tibetan characters so that the Tibetan readers could reproduce the sounds of the Sanskrit syllables. There are four reasons for this.

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