Introduction to first volume

Here is a first attempt at an annotated translation of chapters I to XV of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā (abbreviated as Mppś) by Nāgārjuna. The work has not come down to us in the original Sanskrit, but only through the intermediary of a Chinese translation, the Ta tche tou louen. This version which contains 90 chapters (p’in) in 100 rolls (kiuan), is by the Kuchanese Kumārajīva who worked in Tch’ang ngan in the Siao yao Park, in 404 or 405 A.D.^[1] I (Lamotte) have used the edition of Taishô Issaikyô, vol. XXV, no. 1509; the numbers in the margins of this translation refer to the pages and columns of this edition.^[2]

The Mppś is a commentary on the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (abbreviated as Pañcaviṃśati) ‘The Perfection of Wisdom in Five Thousand Lines’, as it appears in Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation Mo ho pan jo po lo mi king (Taishô, T VIII, no. 223). Of this Pañcaviṃśati we have four Chinese translations, one Tibetan translation, one Sanskrit revision and one Tibetan translation of this Sanskrit revision.

1. The four Chinese translations are:

i) The Kouang tsan king (Taishô, Vol. VIII, no. 222) in 27 chapters (p’in = parivarta) and 10 rolls (kiuan) by Dharmarakṣa, dating from 286 A.D.

ii) The Fan kouang pan jo king (Taishô, vol. VIII, no. 221) in 90 chapters and 20 rolls, by Mokṣala amd Saṃgharakṣa, dating from 291.

iii) The Mo ho pan jo po lo mi king (Taishô, vol. VIII, no. 223) in 90 chapters and 27 rolls, by Kumārajīva, dating from 403–404. This version is reproduced in its entirety and abundantly commented in the Ta tche tou louen.

iv) The second part of the Ta pan jo po lo mi king (Taishô, vol. VII, no. 220), in rolls 401 to 478, contains long extracts from the Pañcaviṃśati. The translation is by Hiuan tsang and is dated at 660–663.

T. Matsumoto has prepared a useful concordance for these four Chinese translations.^[3]

2. The Tibetan translation is entitled Śes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stoṅ phrag ñi śu lṅa pa; it consists of 76 chapters (leḥu = parivarta) and 78 sections (bam po = khaṇḍa). The name of the translators is not mentioned. The work is part of the Bkaḥ-ḥgyur, section śer phyin, II; it takes up four volumes of the Peking Bkaḥ-ḥgyur (vol. ñi-di: Tibetan collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, no. 40–43) and three volumes of the Narthang Bkaḥ-ḥgyur (vol. ka-ga: Tibetan collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, no. 385–387).

3. The Sanskrit recension which repeats its title at the end of each chapter is entitled: Āryapañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā bhagavatī prajñāpāramitā abhisamayālaṃkārānusāreṇa saṃśodhitā. It contains eight chapters (parivarta).^[4] As its title indicates and as Dutt has established, it is a reworked recension of the original Sanskrit Pañcaviṃśati, modified with the intention of serving as commentary to the Abhisamayālaṃkāra.^[5]

4. The Tibetan translation of this Sanskrit recension is entitled Śes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stoṅ phrag ñi śu lṅa pa, but its real title, which corresponds word for word with that of the Sanskrit recension, is given by the colophon: Ḥpags pa bcom ldan ḥdas ma śes rab kyi rol tu phyin pa stoṅ phrag ñi śu lṅa pa mṅon par rtogs paḥi rgyan gyi rjes su ḥbraṅs nas dag par gtugs pa. This work consists of 8 chapters (leḥu = parivarta) and 74 sections (bam po = khaṇḍa); if the Tibetan indexes are to be believed, it has as author Simhabhadra or Haribadra, as translator Śantibhadra, and as proofreader Jayaśīla.^[6] It is included in the Bsrtan-ḥgyur, Mdo ḥgrel section, vols. III, IV and V (Tibetan material in the National Library, nos. 198–200).

* * *

The prologue (nidāna) of the Pañcaviṃśati, to which the first 15 chapters of the Mppś serve as commentary, is reproduced in almost identical words at the beginning of other Prajñāpāramitās, such as the Śatasāhasrikā and the Daśasāhasrikā. Therefore it is important to give some bibliographical information here on the literature of the Prajñās. For the Tibetan and Chinese versions, it is enough to refer to the excellent studies of Lalou and Matsumoto;^[7] here we will limit ourselves to giving the list of the Prajñās in Sanskrit that have already been edited as a note.^[8]

* * *

The Mppś is attributed to Nāgārjuna: Kumārajīva’s version has as its title ‘Ta tche tou louen, composed by the bodhisattva Nāgārjuna and translated by the Tripiṭikadharmācārya Kumārajīva of the country of K’ieou tseu (Kucha) of the later Ts’in’; the Li tai san pao ki, a catalogue of the Tripiṭaka compiled in 597 by Fei Tch’ang fang, also notes that the original work is the work of the bodhisattva Nāgārjuna.^[9] Nevertheless, it is odd that the Mppś does not appear in the lists of works attributed to Nāgārjuna by the Long chou p’ou sa tchouan (Taishô 2047) and the Tibetan historians Bu ston and Tāranātha.

The bodhisattva Nāgārjuna (Klu sgrub in Tibetan, ‘converted by a dragon’ or ‘converting the dragons’; in Chinese Long chou ‘dragon tree’, Long mong ‘unflinching dragon’ or Long cheng ‘victorious dragon’) is one of the most enigmatic, yet also one of the richest, figures in Buddhism. He lived in probably the second century of our era and played a rôle of primary importance in the formation of the Buddhism of the Greater Vehicle. Originally from the south, the country of Andhra, his influence extended as far as the north-west of India. Dialectician and metaphysician, he is the founder of the Madhymaka or ‘Middle-Way’ school, which, while accepting the buddhology and the mysticism of the Greater Vehicle, submits the old texts of Buddhism to negative criticism and ends up with absolute emptiness (śūnyatā). Nāgārjuna’s theories have been thoroughly discussed in Asia and Europe. The question is whether the Madhyamaka accepts an absolutely existent Reality. L. de La Vallée Poussin has long believed that this school is nihilistic and denies the absolute;^[10] on the other hand, Th. Stcherbatsaky was of the opinion that Nāgārjuna denied appearance only in order to affirm Being.^[11] After an argument which at times turned into a quarrel, de La Vallée Poussin drew nearer to the position held by Stcherbatsky whereas the latter came very close to adopting the theses defended by de La Vallée Poussin.^[12] But this is not the only problem with regard to Nāgārjuna.

Many Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese sources give us much information about the life and works of this author, but the facts they contain are soaked in the miraculous and seem to refer to several Nāgārjunas of different date and origin, so that the re-appearance of the same legends is inextricably tied up among them. They have been analyzed, perhaps with inaccuracies of detail, by Walleser^[13] and summarized by Winternitz in the second edition of his history of Indian literature.^[14] Since then, other information has been collected.

Attention has been drawn to a series of predictions relative to Nāgārjuna found in the Laṅkāvatāra,^[15] the Mahāmeghasūtra,^[16] the Mahāmāyasūtra^[17] and the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa.^[18]

Apart from Nāgārjuna the Mādhyamika philosopher, there was one other (or several) Nagarjunas, magician, alchemist and writer of tantra. Documents published By G. Tucci^[19] and S. Lévi^[20] may be added to the information we already possess. Moreover, it may have been Nāgārjuna who discovered and revealed to humans the Mahāvairocanasūtra, one of the main texts of Buddhist Vajrayana and of the Shingon sect.^[21]

All the sources, in emulation of one another, mention the friendly relations and alchemical collaboration between Nāgārjuna and a king of the Śātavāhana or Śātakarṇi dynasty (perhaps also Andhra) which, in the second or first century before our era until the end of the second century afterward, disputed the empire of Dekhan with the Śuṅga-Kānvas and with the Śakas, before dying out around Dhānyakaṭaka and Amarāvatī in Andhra proper.^[22] S. Lévi has collated these different sources and related them to another cycle of legends relating to the rivalry between a Śātavāhana and the Kuṣaṇa king Kaniṣka.^[23]

Archeological discoveries, old and new, partially confirm the literary documents. According to the Tibetan historians, Nāgārjuna may have spent the last of his life in the land of Andhra, of the Teluga language, between the Godāvarī and the lower Kṛṣṇā. The region abounds in sites made famous by archeology: Dhānyakaṭaka, ancient capital on the lower Kṛṣṇā, corresponding to the actual Dharanīkot, in the district of Guntur, one mile west of the site of Amarāvatī; upstream and on the same south bank of the Kṛṣṇā, Goli and Nāgārjunikoṇḍa; in the north-west, Jaggayyapeṭa. Nāgārjuna, it is said, constructed a building for the shrine of Dpal ḥbras spuṅs (Śīdhānyakaṭaka),^[24] surrounded it with a wall and built 108 cells within the wall.^[25] According to the same historians,^[26] he may have established his residence at Śrīparvata, a monastery situated on a rocky cliff overhanging the Kṛṣṇā, and probably identified with the mountain in the Po lo mo lo k’i li (Bhramaragiri or Mountain of the Bees) which king Śātavāhana had hollowed out and fitted out for the bodhisattva Nāgārjuna.^[27] The inscriptions discovered in the area corroborate all this information. The outer balustrade of the Amarāvati stūpa bears the inscription of two kings of the Andhra dynasty, Pulumāyī and Yajñaśrī^[28] and according to some authors, it is to the latter that Nāgārjuna dedicated his Letter of Suhṛllekha. The Bhadanta Nāgārjunācārya himself is mentioned in an inscription found near the stūpa of Jaggayyapeṭa.^[29] At Nāharallaboḍu, beside the mahācetiya of Nāgārjunikoṇḍa, an inscription mentions the buildings erected by the lay Buddhist Bodhisiri and mentions ‘the monastery on Siriparvata to the west of Vijayapurī’ which must be the monastery of Śrīparvata where the Tibetan historians say that Nāgārjuna died.^[30] In a more general way, the inscribed pillars at Nāgārjunikoṇḍa^[31] bear precious indications on the Buddhism of the south at the time of Nāgārjuna: to a certain point, they inform us about the canonical scriptures (Dīgha, Majjhima and Pañcamātuka), the sects (Caityika, Aparaśaila, Pūrvaśaila, Bahuśrutīya, Mahāśāsaka and possibly also Mahāsāṃghika), the doctrines and especially the area of expansion of the Buddhism of the Andhakas. But the systematic study of these epigraphical facts has hardly yet begun up.^[32] They should be compared with the Andhaka theses, the refutation of which is the particular aim of the Katāvatthu.^[33] The discovery should also be mentioned of a Buddhist monastery at Hārwan in Kashmir, which the Rājataraṅgiṇī (I, 173) calls Ṣaḍarhadvana ‘The Forest of the Six Arhats’, which may have served as residence for Nāgārjuna.^[34] – Finally, according to Bu ston and Tāranātha, Nāgārjuna stayed for a long time at Nālandā, the important center of tantric Buddhism, which he ornamented with monuments and illustrated with his miracles. We may hope that systematic exploration of this site, pursued systematically,^[35] will one day shed some light on the Nāgārjuna of Nālandā.

The literary and archeological information on Nāgārjuna is so plentiful and extends over so many centuries and different regions of India that it may be wrong to consider them as simple elements of biography. With regard to the person Nāgārjuna, they have but mediocre historical value; but they are documents of primordial interest if, giving up the search in them for a biography of Nāgārjuna, we consider them as evidence, naive but sincere, of the religious movement of reform tendencies to which Nāgārjuna attached his name. Leaving the south, this reform expanded to Kashmir and the north-west of India, not without undergoing, in the course of time, substantial transformation: dialectical and metaphysical in origin, it soon became tinged with magic, underwent the influence of the alchemical school and finally ended up in the tantric Buddhism of the Vajrayāna. To sketch even briefly this long history would take us too far away; here I will return to the Mppś and its first fifteen chapters of which a brief analysis must be given.

* * *

The first part of the Nidāna or Prologue of the Pañcaviṃśati begins, as all sūtras do, with the traditional profession of faith: Evaṃ mayā śrutam ekasmin samaye, and provides proof of its authenticity by making known the place where the sūtra was preached, by whom and to whom: ‘Thus have I heard at one time. The Bhagavat was dwelling at Rājagṛha on Gṛdrakūṭaparvata, together with a great assembly of 500 bhikṣus endowed, except for Ānanda, with eleven excellent qualities, with 500 bhikṣuṇīs, 500 upāsakas and 500 upāsikās, with an immense crowd of bodhisattva- mahāsattvas endowed with 28 qualities and led by the 22 principal ones among them.’

The Mppś devotes thirteen chapters of commentary on this first part:

Chapter I: The twenty reasons why the Buddha preached the Prajñāpāramitā.

Chapters II-III: Explanation of the phrase: ‘Thus have I heard at one time’.

Chapter II: Word-for-word explanation.

Chapter III: General explanation.

Chapter IV: Explanation of the word Bhagavat and other epithets applied to the Buddha. – Dissertation on the omniscience of the Buddha.

Chapter V: The place of the sūtra: The abodes (vihāra) of the Buddha. – Gṛdhrakūṭaparvata. – The frequent sojourns of the Buddha at Rājagṛha and Śrāvastī. – The Buddha’s preferences for Rājagṛha and Gṛdhrakūṭaparvata.

Chapters VI-XIII: The assembly surrounding the Buddha

Chapter VI: The assembly of bhikṣus: What should be understood by bhikṣu and saṃgha. – The eleven qualities of the bhikṣus who were present. – Why the arhats surround the Buddha. – Why Ānanda is not an arhat. – Origin of his name.

Chapter VII: The assembly of bhikṣuṇīs, upāsakas and upāsikas.

Chapter VIII-XIII: The assembly of bodhisattva-mahāsattvas.

1. Chapter VIII: The bodhisattva: his place in the assembly. – Definition of the word. – Bodhisattva with regression and without regression. – The bodhisattva in the Abhidharma system. – The bodhisattva in the Mahāyāna system.

2. Chapter IX: The epithet mahāsattva applied to the bodhisattva.

3. Chapter X: Qualities of the bodhisattva: no 1 to 18.

4. Chapter XI: Qualities of the bodhisattva: no. 19 to 21.

5. Chapter XII: Qualities of the bodhisattva: no. 22 to 24.

6. Chapter XIII: Qualities of the bodhisattva: no. 25 to 29. – The twenty-two main bodhisattvas.

Chapters XIV and XV comprise the second part of the Prologue. They appear as a play in ten acts of which here is a summary after a short analysis of the Mppś in k. 9, p. 122b24–122c6.

Act I. The Buddha enters into the Samādhirājasamādhi. – He emerges from it and smiles a first time with his whole body (sarvakāya). – Light rays come forth from the soles of his feet and the other parts of his body. – He lights up the trichiliocosm and the universes of the ten directions; the beings touched by them are established in bodhi.

Act II. The Buddha smiles a second time by all the pores of his skin (sarvaromakūpa); light rays come forth illuminating the trichiliocosm and the universes of the ten directions; beings touched by them are established in bodhi.

Act III. The Buddha, by means of his usual effulgence (prakṛtiprabhā), lights up the trichiliocosm and the universes of the ten directions; beings touched by this light are fixed in bodhi.

Act IV. The Buddha stretches out his tongue and covers the trichiliocosm with it; he smiles a third time and light rays are emanated from his tongue; on each of them there appear lotuses on which are seated imaginary Buddhas who preach the six pāramitās; beings who hear them are established in bodhi.

Act V. The Buddha who has entered into Siṃhavikrīḍitasamādhi shakes the trichiliocosm in six ways. – Description of the sixfold shaking of the earth. – The softening of the earth makes beings joyful. – Beings plunged into the bad destinies of the trichiliocosm are reborn among humans or the gods of kāmadhātu. – They turn to the Buddha to pay homage to him. – The same scene is reproduced in the universes of the ten directions. – In the trichiliocosm, the weak, the sick and the crippled are healed. – All beings are filled with brotherly benevolence; they practice the virtues, are celibate, experience great happiness and rejoice in marvelous wisdom.

Act VI. The Buddha manifests his supernatural qualities in the trichiliocosm.

Act VII. The Buddha shows his ordinary (prakṛtyātmabhāva) body to the inhabitants of the trichiliocosm who come to him with flowers. – They throw these to the Buddha. – The flowers form a belvedere (kūṭāgāra) in the air. – Garlands and bouquets hang from it. – The trichiliocosm and the universes of the ten directions take on a golden color. – Each being has the impression that the Buddha is speaking to him in particular.

Act VIII. The Buddha smiles a fourth time and, in the light of this smile, beings of the trichiliocosm and the universes of the ten directions become aware of one another.

Act IX. At the ends of the universes of the eastern direction, the buddha Ratnākara reigns over the Ratnāvatī universe. – The bodhisattva Samantaraśmi asks him the reason for these marvels that he sees. – Ratnākara explains to him that they are due to the power of the Buddha Śākyamuni who reigns over the Sahā universe. – Samantaraśmi offers to go and pay homage to him. – Ratnākara approves, entrusts him with compliments and precious lotuses for Śākyamuni and makes some recommendations to him. – Samantaraśmi, accompanied by other bodhisattvas, starts his journey to the Sahā universe. – Before departing, he bows to the Buddhas of the East.

Act X. Samantaraśmi, laden with gifts, arrives before Śākyamuni and prostrates at his feet. – He greets him in the name of the Buddha Ratnākara and gives him the lotuses which the latter had intended for him. – Śākyamuni throws the lotuses to the Buddhas of the East. – They immediately fill all the universes of the East. – On each of them, an imaginary buddha preaches the six pāramitās; the beings who receive the teachings are established in bodhi. – Samantaraśmi and his entourage pay homage to Śākyamuni. – The scenes related to Acts IX and X are reproduced to the ends of the other nine directions. – The Sahā universe is transformed in a marvelous way. – It becomes the equal of the most eminent buddha-field (buddhakṣetra). – Śākyamuni gazes upon the immense assembly gathered before him.

* * *

Let the reader not be deceived. This prologue which, at first reading, may appear as a web of childishness, is really a work of precision where every word counts, where every phrase, meticulously chosen, is arranged in a definite order according to a precise purpose. It is the culmination of long centuries of scholasticism. To interpret it correctly a commentary is indispensable, but the Mppś furnishes every desirable explanation for this purpose. It is an enormous compilation abounding in quotations of all kinds made, for the most part, without any precise reference. I [Lamotte] have attempted to identify them throughout the entire Buddhist literature, both canonical and post-canonical. The second fire at the Louvain Library, by restricting me once again to the meager resources of my personal library, made this hunt for references especially difficult. Therefore I did not have access to the Dictionnaire des noms propres du bouddhisme indien by C. Akanuma which would have been useful; on the other hand, I managed to glean from Malalasekara’s Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names the volume of notes appended by E. Chavannes to his translation of Cinq cents contes et apologues tirés du Tripiṭaka chinois, and the rich references gathered by L. de La Vallée Poussin in his translation of Vasubandu’s Abhidharmakośa. By furthering the research and crosschecking, I have succeeded in gathering quite a rich harvest of references which, I hope, will be useful to those who one day will continue this work. If some of my notes have been extended seemingly abnormally, it is because I have tried to present a complete record of sources from which the Mppś was able to draw. It will, I hope, untangle some general conclusions which I intend to formulate in a later work.

Despite the difficulties of the times, the Fondation Universitaire has continued its kindness by defraying the expense of printing the present volume as generously as in the past and I express all my gratitude. How could I not also name J. Duculot, my faithful editor, who knew how to overcome all the obstacles so as to give this work a suitable presentation.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

P.C. Bagchi, Le canon bouddhique en Chine, vol. I, Paris 1927, p. 197. – Different from most Buddhist works, the Mppś was not translated into Tibetan but only into Chinese. For the Mppś and Touen-houang and Kharakhoto, see Bibliographie bouddhique, vol. I, 1930, no. 105; vol. IV-V, 1934, no. 307.

[2]:

The Tripitaka in Chinese, revised, collated, added, rearranged and edited by J. Takakusu and K Watanabe, 55 vols., Tokyo, 1924–1929.

[3]:

T. Matsumoto, Die Prajñāpāramitā-Literatur (Bonner orientalische Studien, Heft 1). Stuttgart, 1932, p. 38–41.

[4]:

The first chapter has been edited by N. Dutt, The Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā, ed. with critical notes and introduction (Calcutta Oriental Series, no. 28), London, 1934.

[5]:

This work has been edited by Th. Stcherbatsky and E. Obermiller, Abhisamayālaṃkāra-Prajñāpāramitā-Upadeśa-Śāstra, the work of bodhisattva Maitreya. Fasc. I: Introduction, Sanskrit Text and Tibetan Translation (Biblioteca Buddhica, no. XXIII), Leningrad, 1929.

[6]:

P. Cordier, Catalogue du Fonds Tibétain de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1915, III, p. 276.

[7]:

M. Lalou, La version tibétaine des Prajñapāramitā, Journal asiatique, July-Sept., 1929, p. 87–102. – T. Matsumoto, Die Prajñāpmaramitā-Literatur, Stuttgart, 1932, p. 22–25.

[8]:

Śatasāhasrikā P.P., ed. Pratāpachandra Ghoṣa (Biblioteca Indica), Calcutta, 1902–1914.

Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā P.P., ed. N. Dutt (Calcutta Oriental Series), London, 1934.

Daśasāhasrikā P.P. in Sten Konow, The two first Chapters of the Daśasāsrikā, restoration of the Sanskrit Text, Analysis and Index (Avhandlinger utgitt av det Norske Videnkaps-Akademi i Oslo), Oslo, 1941.

Aṣtasāhasrikā P.P., ed. Rājendralāla Mitra (Biblioteca Indica), Calcutta, 1888. – This edition, quite faulty, will favorably be replaced by the text of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā incorporated by U. Wogihara in his edition of the Abhisamayālaṃkārāloka, Tokyo, 1932–1935.

Suvikrāntavikrāmi P.P., in T. Matsumoto, op. cit., as appendix.

Saptaśatikā P.P., ed. G. Tucci, in Memorie della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, vol. XVII, 1923, fasc. I; ed. J. Masuda, in Journal of the Taishô University, vol. VII, 1030, p. 186–241.

Vajracchedikā P.P., ed. M. Müller (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, vol. I part I), Oxford, 1881.

Adhyardhaśatikā P.P., ed. E. Leumann, Zur nordarischen Sprache und Literatur, Strassburg, 1912, p. 84 seq; ed. S. Toganoo and H. Izumi, Prajñāpāramitānayaśatapañcsatikā, Kyoto, 1917.

Prajñāpāramitāhṛidayasūtrā, ed. M. Müller (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, vol. I part III), Oxford, 1884.

[9]:

P.C. Bagchi, Le canon bouddhique en Chine, T. I, p. 197.

[10]:

L. de La Vallée Poussin, Madhyamaka, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, VIII, p. 235–237; Nirvāṇa, Paris 1925; Le dogme et la philosophie du Bouddhisme, Paris, 1930, p. 113–118; Madhyamaka, Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques, vol. II, 1932–1933, p. 1–59.

[11]:

Th. Stcherbatsky, Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa, Leningrad, 1927, p. 35–39.

[12]:

Th. Stcherbatsky, Die drei Richtungen in der Philosophie des Buddhismus, Rocznik Orjentalistyczny, vol. X, 1934, p. 1–37; Madhyānta-Vibhaṅga, Leningrad, 1936, p. VI-VIII.

[13]:

M. Walleser, The Life of Nāgārjuna from Tibetan and Chinese Sources, Hirth Anniversary Volume, London, 1922, p. 421–455.

[14]:

M. Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, vol. II, Calcutta, 1933, p. 341–348.

[15]:

Laṅkāvatāra, ed. B. Nanjio, Kyoto, 1923, p. 286; Taishô 671, k. 9, p. 569a; Taishô 672, k. 6, p. 627c.

[16]:

Mahāmeghasūtra cited in the Madhyamakāvatāra, Tibetan version ed. by L. de La Vallée Poussin, Saint Petersburg, 1912, p. 76; transl. in Le Muséon, 1910, p. 274. – Chinese translation by Dharmarakṣa, Taishô 387, k. 5, p. 1099–1100, studied by P. Demiéville, Sur un passage du Mahāmeghasūtra, Bull. de l’Éc. fr. d’ExtrĪme-Orient, vol. XXIV, 1924, p. 227–228. – Tibetan translation of Bkaḥ-ḥgyur ed. by G. Tucci, Animadversiones indicae, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XXVI, 1930, p. 145–147. – Bu ston, Chos ḥbyuṅ, tr. E. Obermiller, II, Heidelburg, 1932, p. 129.

[17]:

Mahāmāyasūtra in Taishô 383, k. 2, p. 1013c. – Cf. J. Przyluski, Légende de l’empereur Aśoka, Paris, 1923, p. 163–164.

[18]:

Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa, ed. Ganapati Śastrī, Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, p. 616–617.

[19]:

G.Tucci, Animadversiones indicae: VI. A Sanskrit Biography of the Siddhas and some questions connected with Nāgārjuna, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Socierty of Bengal, vol. XXVI, 1930, p. 138–155.

[20]:

S. Lévi, Un nouveau document sur le bouddhisme de basse époque dans l’Inde, Bull. of the School of Or. Studies, vol. VI, part 2, p. 427–429.

[21]:

Kin kang ting king ta yu k’ie pi mi sin ti fa men yi kue, Taishô 1798, k. 1, p. 808a–b. – Cf. R. Tajima, Etude sur le Māhāvairocanasūtra, Paris, 1936, p. 30–32.

[22]:

For the history of this dynasty, see L. de La Vallée Poussin, L’Inde aux temps des Mauryas, Paris, 1930, p. 206–222; and Dynasties et Histoire de l’Inde, Paris, 1935, p. 184–185; R. Grousset, L’Asie orientale des origines au XVe siecle, Paris, 1941, p. 53–54, 72–77.

[23]:

S. Lévi, Kaniṣka and Śātavāhana, Journal Asiatique, Jan.-Mar. 1936, p. 61–121.

[24]:

Bu ston, transl. E. Obermiller, II, p. 125.

[25]:

Tāranātha, transl. by A. Schiefner, St. Petersburg, 1869, p. 71.

[26]:

Bu ston, II, p. 127; Tāranātha, p. 73, 81, 303; Dpag bsam ljon bzaṅ, ed. Candra Das, Calcutta, 1908, p. 86.

[27]:

Hiuan tsang, Si yu ki, T 2087, k. 10, p. 929c. – For the Bhramaragiri-Śrīparvata identification, T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels, vol. II, London, 1905, p. 207–308.

[28]:

L. de La Vallée Poussin, L’Inde aux temps des Mauryas, p. 233.

[29]:

J. Burgess, Notes on the Amarāvatī Stūpa, Madras, 1882, p. 57..

[30]:

L. de La Vallée Poussin, Dynasties et histoire de l’Inde, p. 232.

[31]:

J.Ph. Vogel, Prakrit Inscriptions from a Buddhist Site at Nāgārjunikoṇḍa, Epigraphia Indica, XX, i. p. 1–37.

[32]:

See N. Dutt, Notes on the Nāgārjunikoṇḍa Inscriptions, Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. VII, 1931, p. 633–653; L. de La Vallée Pouossin, Notes de Bibliographie bouddhique, Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques, vol. I, 1931–1932, p. 382–383; Bibliographie Bouddhique, IV-V, Paris, 1934, p. 135.

[33]:

See especially R. SaÌkrtyāyana, Recherches bouddhiques, I. Les origines du Mahāyāna, Journal Asiatique, Oct.-Dec. 1934, p. 195–208.

[34]:

R.Ch. Kak, Ancient Monuments of Kashmir, London, 1933, p. 105–111; Annual Bibliography of Indian Archeology, VIII (1933), p. 22; XI (1936), p. 21.

[35]:

See H.D. Sankalia, The University of Nālandā, Madras, 1934; Annual Bibliography of Indian Archeology, I (1936), p. 12–13; III (1928), p. 19–20; VIII (1933), p. 8; IX (1934), p. 4.