Tathāgatagarbha Literature (Introduction)

The appearance of the Mahāyāna Buddhism around the beginning of the Christian era brought about a wave of philosophical idea and religion in ancient India. The profound and sublime thoughts of Mahāyāna schools have fueled creative energy for Mahāyāna literature. The Mahāyānists began to compile scriptures that they call sūtra and then added their commentaries that they called śāstra on sūtra to canon. All of the Mahāyāna texts were written in Sanskrit; however there are a few palm leaf manuscripts that survive in India. As Buddhism began to spread outside of India, most of the Mahāyāna texts were introduced and translated into Chinese and Tibetan.

Some scholars wrongly referred the term “Mahāyāna sūtras” to the so-called “Nine Dharma Jewels” which consists of nine works recently found in Nepal.^[1]

These nine works are:

1. Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā,
2. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka,
3. Lalitavistara,
4. Laṅkāvatāra,
5. Suvarṇaprabhāsa,
6. Gaṇḍavyūha,
7. Tathāgataguhya,
8. Samādhirāja and
9. Daśabhūmika.

Mahāyāna Sūtras,^[2] in fact, are much more than these nine works. In other words, those nine Sūtras are not representative of Mahāyāna sūtras. Mahāyāna is a movement which is based on the progressive thinking and not being much strictly in formality; therefore, Mahāyāna literature was composed at different periods, in different persuasion and by somewhat uncertain authors. There are many classifications of Mahāyāna scriptures such as the Mādhyamika literature, Yogācāra literature, Tathāgatagarbha literature, Tantric literature, and so on.

The Tathāgatagarbha literature, which carries the thought of the Buddha-nature or Tathāgatagarbha, is considered one of the main streams of the Mahāyāna literature. This literature is not the property of any identical person, group or school in Indian Buddhism. Arising between the third and the fourth century CE in India,^[3] the Tathāgatagarbha literature has been quickly introduced and translated into Chinese, and has contributed to the rise and development of the thought of Chinese Buddhist schools.

The concept of “Tathāgatagarbha literature” might be first mentioned in China in the seventh century CE by Chinese monk Facang in the introduction to his commentary on the dashengqixinlun, in which he referred to the Tathāgatagarbha literature by classifying all Indian Buddhism under the following four categories: (1) Hīnayāna; (2) Mādhyamika; (3) Yogācāra; and (4) Tathāgatagarbha. For the important works belonging to the Tathāgatagarbha literature, he lists such texts as the Lankāvatārasūtra, Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra, dashengqixinlun, etc.^[4]

Thus, the Tathāgatagarbha literature, which represents the trend toward a more realistic way of ultimate reality, is one of the main lines of Buddhist literature. Although the idea of “all sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature” and other thoughts concerning with it are identifiable in the texts of the early time of the Tathāgatagarbha literature such as the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, etc., we cannot recognize the authors of these texts. In other words, we cannot identify the Tathāgatagarbha literature belonging to any group or school of Indian Buddhism. Recently, Hajime Nakamura (1912-1999), a famous Japanese scholar of Indian philosophy, classified the Tathāgatagarbha literature into three major periods according to the relation of Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna.^[5] The first period includes scriptures that present a pure thought of the Buddha-nature without Ālayavijñāna. The second period is a mixed concept of Buddha-nature and Ālayavijñāna. The third period consists of texts that present the identification of the Buddha-nature and Ālayavijñāna. So this classification reflects the historical development of the Buddha-nature thought.

Based on his classification of Tathāgatagarbha literature, along with other Mahāyāna scriptures, the thesis now analyzes the thought of the Buddha-nature in Mahāyāna literature.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The collection of these nine Mahāyāna Sūtras is among various manuscripts discovered by Mr. Brian Hodgson in 1824 CE in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. (See: Rājendralāla Mitra, The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1882, reprint 2005, p. xxxv)

[2]:

G.K. Nariman, Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism, p. 64; Maurice Winternitz, Aṅguttaranikāya History of Indian Literature, Vol. II, p. 283;Akira Hirakawa, Aṅguttaranikāya History of Indian Buddhism: From Śākyamuni to Early Mahāyāna. tr. Paul Groner, p. 294.

[3]:

The Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra which was composed in about the third century CE is considered the earliest among the scriptures setting forth the conception of Tathāgatagarbha. (Cf. Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism: Aṅguttaranikāya Survey with Bibliographical Notes, p. 229)

[4]:

The Awakening of Faith: Attributed to Aśvaghoṣha, tr. Yoshito Saṃyuttanikāya. Hakeda, p. 14.

[5]:

Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism: Aṅguttaranikāya Survey with Bibliographical Notes, p. 229;Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. II, pp. 470-72.