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Bodhisattva texts, ideologies and rituals in Khotan in the fifth and sixth centuries

giuliana Martini

This article discusses the apparently hegemonic position of the Mahāyāna, the Great Vehicle, in the Khotanese Buddhist scene of the fifth and sixth centuries.� The earliest extant textual materials in Khotanese – dating to this period – are all of “Mahāyāna” character (i.e., they in various ways iden-tify themselves as such) or tend to be overlaid with “Mahāyāna” ideology (i.e., they are quoted, reworked, and included within literary compositions to serve the purposes of “Mahāyāna” imaginaire). The evidence for the local circulation of Mahāyāna sūtras in Indic languages also points in the same direction. In the following pages I investigate more closely the local reli-gio-historical dynamics which may underlie such a situation. I focus on the interplay of doctrinal and institutional trends that resulted in the seemingly overarching establishment of Mahāyāna thought and rituals in Khotan, sup-

� This is an enlarged and revised version of a chapter of my doctoral dissertation (Mar-tini 2010b). In addition to my presentation at the XVI IABS Congress, I gave a lecture based on this study at the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship, University of Hamburg, on July 12th, 2011. I am especially grateful to Martin Delhey, Jens-Uwe hartMann, and cristina Scherrer-Schaub for their comments and criticism after my presentations, and to Bhikkhu AnālAyo, Mauro MAggi, yAMAbe Nobuyoshi, Jan nattier, Peter Skilling, Alberto Todeschini, vincent Tournier, and Shi Kongmu 釋空目 for their close readings and discussions of earlier drafts. Last but not least, I ought to acknowledge the great personal and academic generosity of Antonello PaluM-bo: without his critical reading of the last draft and profuse comments and corrections, the religio-historical reconstruction I have ventured with this article would have been more imprecise and simply out of focus. – All quotations and translations from the Book of Zambasta are, with modifications and adaptations, after eMMerick �968. ref-erences to Pali texts are to the Pali Text Society editions, unless otherwise indicated. References to Tibetan canonical texts are to the Peking and Derge editions quoted by catalogue numbers (Ōtani and Tōhoku respectively). For all languages and text edi-tions, on occurrence, I have adjusted the sandhi, punctuation, capitalisation, etc. For the word “bodhisattva” I retain the form current in English, although with hesitation because, as discussed by bhATTAchAryA 2010, the spelling bodhisatva is the “standard” in Buddhist Sanskrit. The Khotanese materials themselves, beginning with the Book of Zambasta, reflect this particular spelling; it is, however, theoretically possible that this might reflect the peculiarities of Khotanese orthography (“In the group [tw] Old Khotanese, usually also late Khotanese, has tv (not ttv)”, eMMerick 1981, 186).

�4 giuliana Martini

ported by the local creation of a polemical doxography of the Buddhist ca-reers or vehicles (yānas), which appears to have been directly aimed at pro-moting the path, vows, and rituals of the bodhisattva, that is, of the follower of the Mahāyāna. I explore ritual and ideological aspects of a selection of significant passages found in the Book of Zambasta – probably the earliest extant original Khotanese text, dating from about the mid-fifth century� – in the light of their Indian sources and parallels preserved in other languages. An analysis of these materials suggests (a) that the polemical discourse is complementary to the presence of a Khotanese parallel to the chapter on the bodhisattva’s moral conduct of the Bodhisattvabhūmi (Śīlapaṭala), which is included in the Book of Zambasta as its chapter 12, and (b) that to some extent such a polemical discourse becomes, for the Khotanese bodhisattva, foundational to the very setting out on the Mahāyāna path.

1. The MAhāyānA in KhoTAn

The Dharma of Khotan as we know it from the surviving texts – texts in vernacular and texts in Sanskrit whose circulation in the Southern Silk Road kingdom we can infer from manuscript evidence, quotations of In-dian scriptures in Khotanese works, and a few historical records – appears to be exclusively affiliated with Mahāyāna thought and soteriology. There are a number of chapters in the Book of Zambasta that, if read in isolation, need not be considered as specifically Mahāyāna, for example a version of the Maitreyavyākaraṇa (chapter 22), in that they represent the bodhisattva ideal and other eschatological expectations that are the common inheritance of the Indian Buddhism of the Middle Period, long before the emergence of “Mahāyāna” as a term and a token of sectarian religious identity. The case of the Maitreyavyākaraṇa, however, is particularly noteworthy in that, compared to the other extant versions, the Khotanese recension is somehow “sealed” with the mark of the Bodhisattvayāna. As a matter of fact, especial-ly for the earlier period of the (unknown) history of Khotanese Buddhism, as with the overall history of the Middle Period of Indian Buddhism,� it is not always possible to unequivocally describe a Buddhist community as ei-

� The dating based on structure and palaeography of the earliest extant folio of the Book of Zambasta from the mid-fifth century by Maggi 2004a is confirmed on pal-aeographic grounds by SanDer 2009; I have discussed it on the basis of doctrinal and religio-historical analysis in Martini 2010b, 2011a, and 2012.

� I adopt the periodisation “Middle Period”, demarcating the formative period of both the Vinaya collections and Mahāyāna sūtras, after schopen �995, 476.

Bodhisattva Texts, Ideologies and Rituals in Khotan 15

ther non-Mahāyāna or Mahāyāna, since the development of what would be-come the fully grown Mahāyāna was a multifaceted and gradual process of evolution. However what matters the most as an overriding principle in the present context is that the materials of the Book of Zambasta are presented and incorporated within the “Mahāyāna” program that informs the Book of Zambasta, a composition that, while partaking of the many developments that occurred in Buddhist thought in the course of the Middle Period be-tween the beginning of the Christian era and the start of the sixth century, elaborates them from the perspective of a self-conscious Mahāyāna identity, including practical and theoretical aspects of meditation, traditional narra-tives, Buddhological notions, and eschatological promises.

Notably, not a single manuscript fragment in the Khotanese language containing early Buddhist sūtras or Tripiṭaka collections, which were cir-culating along the Silk Road at least since Kushan times in Indian lan-guages and scripts, has so far come to light.4 This situation might be coin-cidental and could indeed change with new findings. However, the extant evidence, taken together with the lack of any direct or indirect traces of the circulation of non-Mahāyāna scriptures in Khotan even in their origi-nal Indian languages, seems to point to a lack of concern with the older scriptures, which may have not been considered worth the effort of being passed on, copied, or translated. By the fifth century, in Southern Central Asia, the appropriate textual contexts for the formulation and diffusion of new philosophical and religious ideas were obviously quite other than the early Āgamas, and we witness an evolving understanding of the notion of canon and canonisation.

In other words, if one were to judge from the virtually exclusive pres-ence of Mahāyāna sūtras and literary works, compounded with the dearth of Khotanese translations of the early canonical collections, one may come to the conclusion that from the outset, at least as an argumentum e silentio, the Dharma in Khotan was transmitted with neither a living nor a literary concern for the early Āgamas and that it was received in the framework of a canonical paradigm that had absorbed the Middle Period materials and was privileging the adaptation, translation, and propagation of Mahāyāna texts. Only the manuscript containing a Gandhari recen-sion of the Dharmapada, discovered by Jules-Léon duTreuil de rhins in a cave at Kohmārī Mazār in the Khotan area in 1892 and probably

4 The same holds for the Vinayas, but the case of the absence of Khotanese translations of the Vinaya(s) is more complex. I briefly touch on this topic below.


produced between the first and the third century c.e., constitutes an ar-tefact evidencing the transmission of Āgama-related materials in Khotan at an early period.5 The earlier scriptures had by and large lapsed as a point of reference, the Middle Period materials were being recast within a Mahāyāna frame of reference, and thus the very beginnings of a Bud-dhist literature in the vernacular indicate that the Mahāyāna would seem to have emerged on the Khotanese religious scenario as fully-fledgedly hegemonic, with Mahāyāna literacy seemingly the driving force behind the inception of a written literature in the local language.6 on the other hand, an at least partial explanation for the virtually total absence of non-Mahāyāna canonical scriptures can be found in the persistence of the oral transmission. According to Faxian 法顯 (c. 337-422), who went in search of copies of the Vinaya, even in the fifth century there was an active bhāṇaka tradition at the least for the vinaya.7 This is confirmed by the fact that at least three Āgamas, the Madhyama‑, Ekottarika‑ and Dīrgha-āgama, were translated into Chinese between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century on the basis of oral recitations carried out in indic languages.8 In fact, in the context of the Northern Silk Road sites, lore SanDer suggests that the bhāṇaka tradition “may explain the

5 As remarked by neeliS 2011, 296 n. 20, “[i]t is uncertain whether or not this manu-script ... was actually written in Khotan, since arguments for its local composition based on the scroll format and linguistic features have been disconfirmed by recent discoveries of other Gāndhārī scrolls, including one example of another Dharmapada fragment”, on which see sAloMon �999, �0�, ��0, and ��9-��0 and lenz �00�. it is very likely that texts such as the edifying tales of avādana literature that embody the bodhisattva ethos and career but do not represent the Mahāyāna as a spiritual path on its own in sectarian terms were well known in early Khotanese Buddhism, though all surviving avadānas or avadāna-like works extant in Khotanese are in Late Khotanese and are contained in late manuscripts from dunhuang rather than from the Khotan area; for a survey of Khotanese avadāna literature see Maggi �009, �6�-�70.

6 on the oral and aural aspects of the early spread of the dharma to Khotan see MArTini �0��.

7 trans. Deeg 2005, 561; for sūtras see the life of Kumārajīva, trans. liu 1969, 176 (ref-erence from SanDer 1991, 141-142 n. 36).

8 the original translation of an Ekottarika-āgama was based on a text recited in 384 by the Indian monk Dharmanandin, which was then translated by Zhu Fonian 竺佛念. In fact, Dao’an’s 道安 (312-385) preface to T. 125 (Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經) at T. II 549a11 indicates that Dharmanandin was a reciter of two āgamas, which pre-sumably are the Madhyama-āgama (Zhong ahan jing 中阿含經, T. 26) and the Ekot‑tarika-āgama (Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含, T. 125) then translated by Zhu Fonian; the Dīrgha-āgama (Chang ahan jing 長阿含經, T. 1) was also translated by Zhu Fonian on the basis of a text recited by Buddhayaśas in the early fifth century.


total absence of Hīnayāna Vinaya and Sūtra texts before the fifth century AD. The situation changed only when the different nations of the Tarim Basin began to translate Buddhist works into their own languages. Ac-cording to the manuscripts found, this did not occur before the end of the fifth to the sixth centuries AD”.9

One may thus look at the situation from a reverse perspective and it may then rather be the sudden appearance and multiplication of manuscripts (Āgamas in the northern sites, Mahāyāna works in Khotan) at that time and in the following period to call for an explanation. SanDer comments that “[m]any reasons may be advanced for the sudden translation activi-ties at the end of the fifth to the beginning of the sixth centuries in Kučā and at about the same time in Khotan ... Was it [i.e., a widespread interest in Buddhist literature] enforced by the Mahāyānist idea of regarding the reciting, copying, writing, translation and even the possession of Bud-dhist books as being meritorious?”.�0 On this hypothesis, the beginnings of a Mahāyāna written literature in Khotanese – in which the written medium is a crucial aspect of the formation and the transmission of the texts in addition to being at the centre of the ideology of merit based on the Mahāyāna “books”�� – may be one of the key factors that explain the explosion of (non-Mahāyāna) Āgama manuscripts in the non-Mahāyāna centres of the region by way of reaction. An oppositio in imitando, in other words. Were this the case, then the dearth of early Āgamas in Kho-tan (in Indic languages or Khotanese) may be explained partly by an early and at least to an extent continued presence of the oral transmission, and partly by the fact that, once the Mahāyāna had fully exploded in Khotan, the local predominant interest and patronage were by then invested in the new scriptures.

In fact, Khotan is renowned for having become a stronghold of the Great Vehicle in Central Asia from the third-fourth centuries until it was conquered by the Islamised Qarakhānids shortly before 1006.�� this is witnessed by the activity of Khotanese translators and Buddhist travellers in Central Asia and China, as well as by the accounts of Chinese pilgrims.

9 SanDer 1991, 142. In n. 37 she adds as a word of caveat that “[i]t must not be forgotten that the dates given depend on palaeographical studies and that this is a rather weak basis. Established dates are rare”.

�0 SanDer �99�, �4� n. �7.�� see especially hArrison �00� and shiModA �009.�� Only a few Khotanese texts from the second half of the tenth century are specifically

attributable to tantric Mahāyāna or Vajrayāna.


The predominant position of the Mahāyāna tallies with the already men-tioned primary evidence of the extant Khotanese and Sanskrit Buddhist texts themselves, the overwhelming majority of which are Mahāyānist in inspiration.��

To briefly look back at the silent pre-Mahāyāna age – in the sense of the period prior to the development of a sectarian, exclusive, and eventually hegemonic Mahāyāna ideology, which in fact coincides with the period be-fore the Buddhist presence in the Central Asian kingdom has left its traces in literature – it is hardly possible to determine exactly when Buddhism was introduced into Khotan.�4 As already remarked by Paolo Daffinà, a substantial spread of the Dharma into Chinese Turkestan is hard to con-ceive of before and independently of the Kushan expansion into the re-gion.�5 on the other hand, if Buddhism had already penetrated into china via the two branches of the continental Silk Road between the first half of the first century coinciding with the period of the consolidation of Chinese power in Central Asia (the middle of the first century being the period in which the existence of Buddhism is attested for the first time in contempo-rary Chinese sources), then it could well have reached Khotan as early as

�� Of the three Chinese monks who visited Khotan roughly 120 years apart – Faxian, who spent three months in Khotan in 401, songyun 宋雲 (fl. c. 518-522), who was in the Central Asian kingdom in 519, and Xuanzang 玄奘 (600-664), who reached Khotan in 644 on his way back from India and remained there seven to eight months – Faxian especially gives a lengthy description of Mahāyāna temples and Buddhist rituals in Khotan. on the activity of Khotanese masters and translators see KuMAMoTo 1999; on the accounts of Faxian and Xuanzang see Stein �907, �7�-�75, lAMoTTe �954, �9�-�94, deeg 2005, 86-97, and Deeg 2009, 47-51 (who also positions the role played by so-called “pilgrims” within the aspect of collecting and presenting to China information on the Western Regions and that of the Buddhist propagandistic and educational needs met by these accounts).

�4 the Li yul lung bstan pa (Prophecy of the Li [= Khotan] country, ed. and trans. eMMer-ick 1967, 22-25), which relates a local tradition according to which Buddhism reached Khotan 165 years after the foundation of Khotan (ascribed by the same source to a son of Aśoka 234 years after the death of the Buddha) is regarded as trustworthy by eM-Merick 1992, 3 on the grounds that it mentions Aśoka but resists the easy temptation to assign the introduction of Buddhism directly to him and places it in the first century b.c.e. instead (the exact date depending on whichever dates of Aśoka one opts for, cf. Maggi 2009, 340 with n. 41); the likelihood of this date is rejected by yaMazaki �990, who prefers the period between the second and the third centuries c.e. The available literary and historical sources await closer study; an assessment of the Buddhist founda-tion legend of Khotan with a critical discussion of the sources and historical trajectories of transmission of this legend is under preparation by Max Deeg.

�5 Daffinà �975, �9�.


the late first century b.c.e., although probably without being predominant in Khotanese society – which does not contrast with Daffinà’s view.�6

historically, the consolidation of a position of pre-eminence of the Khotanese kingdom over the other city-states in the Tarim Basin had been taking place since the first century c.e.,�7 when Khotan flourished as a regional commercial and religious centre of the southwestern Tarim Ba-sin, serving as a connecting point between China, India, Western Central Asia, and Iran. However, although Buddhist establishments may have been rather well set up in Khotan by 200 c.e.,�8 evidence for stūpas and residen-tial monasteries seems to be lacking before the late third and early fourth centuries.�9

Now, according to the Li yul lung bstan pa (Prophecy of the Li country), Mahāsāṅghika and Sarvāstivāda Nikāyas were present in Khotan when the Khotanese king defeated and converted to Buddhism the lord of Kashgar in about 100 c.e.�0 Reference to the Mahāsāṅghikas is also given in another passage of the same work which connects the building of altogether six-teen monasteries belonging to the Mahāsāṅghikas to King Vijaya Dharma (I) and his elder brother and spiritual mentor, the arhat Dharmānanda, pro-viding the following information: “When the Mahāsāṃghika lineage and the monk Dharmānanda had first come into the Li Country, in Hu-then, the saṅghas of the eight monasteries of ’Dro-tir and of the eight monaster-ies of Kam-sheg belonged to the Mahāsāṃghika lineage”.��

in the same Prophecy of the Li country a monastery of the Sarvāstivādins appears on the stage at a slightly later time in the course of the reign of King Vijaya Dharma (I). The Sarvāstivādins who occupy this monastery

�6 Maggi �009, �40.�7 zhang �996, �84.�8 this is the opinion of rhie 1999, 322; see also zürcher 1990, 174-175 with nn. 42-44.

I ought to add that over the past three decades systematic archaeological excavations have been carried out by Chinese archaeologists in the Khotan area, some in conjunc-tion with Japanese and French teams. I am unfortunately unable to access the recently published preliminary reports. Thus, for the time being, I limit myself to pointing to the importance of the archaeological data in the hope that archaeologists will be able to tell if and how my religio-historical hypothesis relates to the stratigraphy of the excavated sites.

�9 neeliS �0��, �97.�0 eMMerick 1967, 40-47; 1983, 963; 1990, 494-495; and Maggi �009, �4�.�� ed. and trans. after eMMerick 1967, 40-41 with modifications; for the religious aetiol-

ogy of this event see eMMerick 1967, 35-41. On the location of the ’Dro district cf. ThoMAs �9�5, ��4 n. 4.


are explicitly defined “Hīnayānists” (sarbātibād kyi sde theg pa chung ngu ‘the small vehicle of the Sarvāstivāda school’). This label may be used in the neutral sense of designating one of the traditional “eighteen schools”. It needs not necessarily imply that the later compiler(s) of the text per-ceived the adherence of the local communities of the Mahāsāṅghikas to the “Mahāyāna” as opposite to a Sarvāstivāda loyalty to the “Hīnayāna”. the late Prophecy most probably includes earlier Khotanese annalistic sources. I am inclined to understand the label “Hīnayāna” in this context perhaps as reflecting an established usage in earlier or later historiography rather than as necessarily an indicator of a special Mahāyāna partisanship on the part of the original Khotanese source.

the account of the Prophecy of the Li country is difficult to locate in history. There is no external evidence (neither Khotanese documents nor Chinese sources) that allows for a dating of the sequence of Khotanese kings that are listed in the early section of this work of historical hagiog-raphy that deals with the meritorious deeds performed by Vijaya Dharma (I).�� Although it is not possible to arrive at an absolute chronology, the fact that Vijaya Dharma (I) appears as the fifteenth in a list of fifty-seven kings starting from the period of Aśoka Maurya (mid-third century b.c.e.) and ending in the second part of the tenth century, makes it probable that he reigned roughly in the third or fourth century c.e.

Next, there is the well-known account of the journey of the Chinese monk Zhu Shixing 朱士行 (fl. c. 255-260) to Khotan, a journey which is, in the words of Erik zürcher, “the first recorded case of a Chinese leaving his country in quest of Buddhist scriptures, and the first clearly localised Chinese account of Buddhism in Central Asia”.�� Zhu Shixing travelled

�� On the problematic dates of the later kings mentioned in the Li yul lung bstan pa see hill �988, eMMerick �99�, 46-47, KuMAMoTo �996, and Skjærvø 2002, lxvi-lxviii (with references).

�� zürcher �007, 6�. on central asian Buddhism in general see SanDer 1979 (critically reviewed by eMMerick 1987), Puri 1987 (critically reviewed by nattier 1990), eM-Merick �987, eMMerick–Skjærvø �990, KliMKeiT �990, Pinault �994, litvinSky–Vo-robyoVA-desyAToVsKAyA �996, Xu 1998 (with special reference to Tokharians), litvin-Sky 1968 and 1999, the contributions in Mcrae and nattier �999, hartMann �000 and �005, and treMblay 2007 (a general introductory survey relying on secondary literature). On the role played by Khotan and Khotanese translators see lAMoTTe �954 and 1960, and the survey and references in zürcher �007, 6�-6�, and see KuMAMoTo �999, �46-�55 and Deeg 2009, 37 n. 34 (mentioning a quotation about the Mahāyāna in Khotan and Karghalik from an unidentified Xiyu ji 西域記 recorded in the Fahua zhuanji 法華傳記, T. �060 at T. 50b4 ff.) and 47-51 for relevant Chinese sources.


west probably in 260 in search of the Sanskrit Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. He found the text he was looking for in Khotan. According to tradition, only after an ordeal which was to provide the proof for the truth and supernatural imprimatur could he copy the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā and then entrust it to a Khotanese pupil, who brought the text to China in 282, where the Khotanese monk Mokṣala 竺叔蘭 translated it into chi-nese in 291 (T. 221). According to the biographical account, Zhu Shix-ing met with the opposition of the Khotanese “Hīnayānists” who tried to prevent a further spread eastwards of the heretical “Brahmanical book”.�4 Zhu Shixing volunteered to subject the book to a fire ordeal. The scripture came out of it successfully. zürcher comments that, “[i]f this story would have any historical base, it would clearly indicate that around the middle of the third century Hīnayāna Buddhism prevailed even at Khotan, and that the Mahāyāna was still a rather despised minority. But the whole story is rather suspect”.�5 He points out that the immunity to fire of certain sacred scriptures forms a well-known theme in Chinese Buddhist hagiography and that, “[m]ost of all, the story of the ordeal at Khotan is reminiscent of the supernatural contest between Daoist masters in the presence of em-peror Ming in 69 AD”, affirming that, “[n]evertheless, the tradition may be early”, possibly transmitted by one of Zhu Shixing’s disciples who returned to China after the master’s death in Khotan. Thus zürcher concludes that “[i]t is therefore quite probable that at the time of Zhu Shixing’s arrival in or shortly after 260 Khotan was already the stronghold of Mahāyāna in Central Asia, in contrast with the predominantly Hīnayānistic Northern centre of Kuchā”.�6

In 296, a further copy of the Sanskrit original of the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā was brought to Chang’an by another Khotanese monk, Gītamitra. Later, around the end of the fourth century, Zhi Faling 支法領 found in

�4 For the sources of the account (the earliest of which dates from the first years of the fourth century) cf. Zürcher 2007, 61-63 with nn. 340-341; 1990, 175; and deeg 2006, 110.

�5 zürcher 2007, 63 and 341 n. 194, where he refers to hATAni 1933, �� and MochiZuKi 1954-1958, �� holding this opinion.

�6 Zürcher 2007, 62. deeg 2006, 110 further comments: “Dieser Widerspruch in einem chinesischen hagiographischen Text, dem Gaosen-zhuan des Huijiao, des frühen sech-sten Jahrhunderts und die Tendenz, diese Texte historisierend zu lesen, führten selbst einen so vorsichtigen gelehrten wie Zürcher zu den eigentlich unvereinbaren Aussa-gen, Khotan sei in dieser Zeit „schon das Bollwerk des Mahāyāna in Zentralasien‟ ge-wesen, daß aber zur selben Zeit „Hīnayāna Buddhismus sogar in Khotan vorherrschte, und daß Mahāyāna noch der Glaube einer verabscheuten Minderheit war‟”.

�� giuliana Martini

Khotan the text of the shorter recension of the Buddhāvataṃsaka (T. 278).�7 And, finally, when Faxian visited Khotan in the year 401, he described an exceedingly large number of monks and monasteries whose vast majority belonged to the Mahāyāna, that also enjoyed royal patronage.�8

While it seems to be the case that Khotan had indeed already become the Mahāyāna centre of the region in the third century, it is not possible to ascertain whether the Mahāyāna had already gained universal accept-ance in Khotan itself. That is to say, we do not know whether historically Khotan had become more or less suddenly the “stronghold of Mahayāna in Central Asia” prompted, for example, by a decisive act of royal sponsor-ship or else only after religious internecine tension among different groups and their political supporters was settled to a constant value – that of the “Mahāyāna” – in the course of a longer process, perhaps again with the help and as a result of royal patronage. And we do not know the role played by the “Mahāyāna” as an ideological construct, if any, at this early stage.

Regardless of its historical value, it seems to me that the topos of su-pernatural sanction of the “new scriptures” of the Mahāyāna along with its memory preserved by the tradition lends itself to two alternative readings. In both cases the narrative would appear to express and meet real ideologi-cal needs and preoccupations, either from a Khotanese perspective or on the part of the Chinese. Firstly, it could be interpreted in such a way as to alert the historian to the likelihood of the existence of religious ideas and groups that were actively competing to assert their respective legitimacy and struggling for support. Or else it could be entirely the result of a pro-jection on the part of Chinese Mahāyānists seeking legitimacy for the sake of their own religion back in China, who may thus have ultimately been less concerned with Khotan than with Chinese Buddhist historiography.

The legend is attested in Sengrui’s 僧叡 (352-436) Yuyi lun 喻疑論, a “manifesto of Mahāyāna fundamentalism” composed around 420 c.e. that is heavily involved with the pro-Mahāyāna polemical and sectarian context of the time. As noted by Antonello pAluMbo, “[i]n this remarkable text no notice is taken of external opponents of Buddhism; all polemical exertion is directed instead at the internal enemy, the stubborn upholder of the ʻSmall Vehicle , vaguely identified at one point with the Buddhists of Central Asia

�7 Zhi Faling’s journey to Khotan is mentioned in the anonymous preface to the Chinese translation of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, Sifen lu 四分律, T. �4�8 at T. xxii 567a��-576a�5. on the transmission of the Buddhāvataṃsaka in Khotan see Martini �0��, �47-151; for Central Asian Sanskrit fragments of the Buddhāvataṃsaka see now hori �0��.

�8 ed. Deeg �005, 580, trans. Deeg 2005, 511 and 2009, 48; see also zürcher �007, 6�-6�.


(the ‘thirty-six countries’), but otherwise defined by the mere incapacity to acknowledge the holy truths of the sacred Mahāyāna texts”.�9

One interpretation of the topos of the sacred sanction could be to align it to what Max Deeg reads as the artificial creation of a Hīnayāna oppo-nent in china�0 and to the tendency of “pilgrims” to carry back with them stories and materials that provide the king in China with a model that could be implemented in the actualisation of an ideal Buddhist kingdom.�� The perception of such a religious opponent in China, however, cannot be entirely artificial or ascribed to a Chinese idiosyncrasy. The changes that took place in China between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, the translation of Mahāyāna treatises and writings, and the general realignment of religious identities can hardly be made sense of as the exclusive expression of some kind of Chinese idiosyncrasy. The Book of Zambasta and its programme are best read as a constitutive element of a complex process of religio-historical heterogenesis in addition, needless to say, to the local Khotanese perspective.

In fact, as we will see in the following pages, the Khotanese situation displays affinities to the polemical turns and religious controversy of fifth-century China, which in turn has to be situated in the waves and rhetorics of “conversions” that connect the histories of the Late Antique Eurasia, with the “divisive emergence of religious identities” from the Mediter-ranean to imperial china.�� Moreover, the discourse of legitimation of Mahāyāna scriptures in the sixth-century Tarkajvālā, which employs sec-tarian terminology with regard to the eighteen early schools, charged with being an “inferior aspiration”, hīnādhimukta (theg pa dman pa),�� offers an interesting connection in this respect in that it testifies that the fundamen-talist divide had made itself felt back in India itself.

�9 Quotations from pAluMbo forthcoming (§ “Great Vehicle vs. Small Vehicle: from the Sarvāstivāda to the Taoists”).

�0 Deeg �005 and �009.�� On the fictive or unreal opponent in the Chinese polemics against the Hīnayāna see

deeg 2009. Along similar lines, I discuss below the figure of the “significant Other” in the context of the Khotanese Mahāyāna propaganda. deeg �005, �7 and �009, 5�, speaks of a “speculum-motive” with regard to the writings of the Chinese pilgrims: part of their propagandistic and “educational” agenda was to hold a mirror in front of the ruler in order to show him what an ideal Buddhist kingdom should look like.

�� pAluMbo forthcoming.�� Dbu maʼi snying poʼi ʼgrel pa rtog ge ʼbar ba, Tōhoku 3856 and Ōtani 5256. On the

Mahāyānist agenda of this work in general see eckel 2008; on the polemical signifi-cance of the occurrences of theg pa dman pa see AnālAyo forthcoming.


In terms of the historical milieu in which these dialectics are to be situ-ated, it is tempting to imagine a landscape not too dissimilar to that of late Antique Eurasia, namely an alliance between an emergent political power and a church or a particular faction of a certain church. the designated church or faction would have been the Mahāyāna, which would then pro-mote itself and be promoted by means of a hegemonic ascendancy. As far as we know, Khotanese Buddhism seems to have never undergone a process of canonisation in the sense of a programmed, centrally subsidised cultural operation of scriptural selection, classification and translation – i.e., we do not know of the sponsoring or production of a “Khotanese” Tripiṭaka or comparable collections. Yet, it seems to me that the actual writing down of the Mahāyāna Dharma in the local Khotanese language, to coincide with the beginning of a written literature in this vernacular, may have constituted, in practice, a centrally sponsored act of canonisation, with ensuing mutual acknowledgement, promotion, and support between the political and religious institutions. the early Khotanese polemical scholasticism of the ideological monument to the Mahāyāna that is the Book of Zambasta – reminiscent of the scholasticisms of the polemicists of the Catholic Middle Ages in Europe – would thus serve well the purposes of legitimation on three interconnected levels: (a) self-referentially and self-representationally (the Mahāyāna church performing its own supremacy to itself), (b) in relation to the political patron, and (c) towards actual competing factions and groups.

The pious activities of the early Khotanese kings recorded in the Proph‑ecy of the Li country would then quite appropriately serve the purposes of being religious annals at the service of political legitimation. Perhaps a non-Iranian or even an Iranian ruling house in need of sacred sanction was keen on embracing the ideal of the Buddhist cakravartin and was equally ready to adopt Sanskrit proper names (as those featured in the names of the kings associated with sponsorship of Buddhism monasteries and monuments in the Prophecy of the Li country, e.g. Vijaya Saṃbhava, Vijaya Vīrya, Vijaya Jaya, etc.) and thus to undergo religious consecration through, say, rituals such as the rājābhiṣeka. the Book of Zambasta indeed contains the oldest Khotanese reference to the celebration of the quinquennial assembly of the pañcavārṣika.�4 Chronologically speaking, the earliest literary traces of a “Buddhist” pañcavārṣika all seem to point to the second half of the

�4 Z ��.97, �4.466, and �4.474. for a reference to the pañcavārṣika in vv. CP 231 (pajavaṣṭā) = A 237 (paṃjyavaṣāri) of the Khotanese Sudhanāvadāna see de chiArA 2013, 110 (ed.) and 111 (trans.). bailey, KT 4.�7 mentions the origin of the Tales of the wise and of the fool in Khotan during a pañcavārṣika. on the pañcavārṣika in Khotan see Deeg �995.


fourth and the beginning of the fifth century and to be localised in the area between Gandhara and Khotan.�5 This is a bit earlier than, or roughly con-temporary with, the composition of the Book of Zambasta. if it is true that archaeological evidence for stūpas and residential monasteries in Khotan appears to be lacking before the late third and early fourth centuries, then a period of patronage, with monastic complexes built by using more durable and expensive materials and with the monumentalisation of existing and new sites, would fall into place with what could have been an “official” introduction of “Mahāyāna” Buddhist institutions to Khotan.

valerie hanSen offers a well-pondered historical discussion of the cases of Loulan (Kroraina) and Niya, which are both located along the southern rim of the Taklamakan. Her study takes into account secular documents and the archaeological evidence by locating them within the wider context of the political history of the Kroraina region between the Kushan and Han empires. She points out that, in the same way as the assumption that the earliest Buddhist communities in China before the fifth century resembled the monastic, celibate groups so well documented for later periods is un-warranted, also in the case of the Southern Silk Road “we glimpse a strik-ingly different type of Buddhist community in the pivotal third and fourth centuries A.D. Members of the Buddhist clergy, called śramaṇa ... lived at home with their wives and children, owned property, and donned Buddhist vestments only for occasional ceremonies”.�6

Thus, as far as the Khotan area is concerned, it is possible that the lack of structural remains related to settled monasticism and centralised sponsorship before the fourth or fifth centuries may similarly be related to the fact that the local Buddhist clergy lived the household life in ordinary home dwellings.

To summarise the indications surveyed so far: there is no evidence that enables us to know what type of texts were transmitted during the first cen-turies of Buddhist presence (both foreign and local) in the Central Asian kingdom apart from the Khotan Dharmapada; it is problematic to assess the extent to which the Buddhism that had reached the kingdom from In-dia had already evolved to an extent that it can be meaningfully labelled as (exclusively) Mahāyāna; the ways of life of the Buddhist priesthood or monkhood may well have differed between the early period of Buddhist penetration to Khotan and the period from the fifth century onwards (and

�5 on the pañcavārṣika in gandhara see kliMburg-Salter �989, ��-��7 and Deeg �005.�6 hanSen �004, �79.


different modalities may well have coexisted at the same time); the mag-nitude of Mahāyāna hegemony in Khotan remains indefinite before the fifth century; nonetheless, there seems to be a number of clues of a religio-historical nature that do help us imagine very cautiously what the early Khotanese Buddhist scene may have looked like, and why.

2. discourses of ideology And hegeMony

In addition to the records discussed above, the presence of vehemently polemical passages in the Book of Zambasta – a foundational scripture de-voted to teaching the bodhisattva path and asserting its superiority – seems to clearly echo the polemical argumentation that must have characterised the ascendancy of the Mahāyāna as the hegemonic ideology on the Khota-nese religious scene in the fifth and sixth centuries. Taking fully into con-sideration the literary traces of the polemics gives glimpses of dialectics that may explain the background to such an all-pervasive but apparently ex nihilo Mahāyāna prominence. Given the absence of independent, non-Mahāyāna or even non-Buddhist sources, an attempt at tracing the way such a hegemonic position became so strongly established can only rely on the discourse internal to the successful Mahāyāna ideology itself. In other words, if indications of contention are to be found in the texts – and this is patently the case with the Book of Zambasta – then closer inspec-tion might at least reveal a few traces of the formative process that led to the establishment of the religious phenomenon in question. I explore these traces below, showing as much as we may now know about this formative process.

The bodhisattva ideal – being a bodhisattva in order to become a Bud-dha – is at the core of the Mahāyāna soteriology, in contrast to that of the vehicle of the śrāvakas, intent on treading the arhat’s path (and in theory also that of the silent Buddha, the pratyekabuddha. Therefore, a close look at how this central ideal is articulated in the texts can be a promising start to understand the ways an exclusive soteriological paradigm came to be established with the help of specific ideological constructs. Perhaps the most obvious and revealing indicator to understand how the Mahāyāna eventually established its hegemony is to observe the strategies its adepts adopted (a) to persuade non-Mahāyāna followers that the bodhisattva ideal and path of practice was more worthy and superior, as much as (b) to com-fort themselves, as a group, that this truly was the case. As I argue in the course of this paper, it seems that in the Book of Zambasta the core of the


fully formulated bodhisattva path – the formal undertaking of bodhisat-tva vows towards the attainment of Buddhahood – was to be promoted by means of a polemical doxography aimed at ridiculing and disparaging the lower goal of the śrāvakas. In addition, “visionary” rituals of confession and repentance were to be presented as the new, resolutive approach to purification (in the Buddhist classical sense of spiritual, i.e., mental and ethical, purification, but also in the sense of ritual purification), supersed-ing earlier conceptions.�7

In sum, a discourse of hegemony embedded in at times rather aggressive tones appears to provide the driving force for the promotion of bodhisattva “institutions”, namely precepts and rituals. The formulation of bodhisatt-va’s “normative” texts becomes thus “normative” in every respect: ideologi-cal, as much as practical. Texts sometimes referred to as the “Vinaya of the Mahāyāna”�8 appear to have been a major concern shared by Khotanese Bud-dhists in the fifth and sixth centuries and probably earlier than that, although we have no textual evidence for this earlier period. Interestingly, a similar concern is shared by contemporary Chinese Buddhists throughout the Six dynasties period (六朝, 220-589).�9 These texts were instrumental in the very undertaking of the bodhisattva path through commitment to its precepts; and thus it was necessary to make them available in the local language.

Coming back to the textual genres that are represented – or have sur-vived – in the early Buddhism of Khotan, compared, for example, to the landscape of fourth to sixth century China, in which Indian Āgama lit-erature, though translated into chinese, remained peripheral in the then mainstream Mahāyāna religious and literary culture, the Khotanese situa-tion shows both differences and similarities. Although the undertaking of written Khotanese compositions, translations, and mixed assemblages of old and new materials made use of Indian scripts and models for writing, which had been the norm in the region since at least the Kushan period, the rendering of Mahāyāna sūtras into Khotanese had as its cultural an-tecedent, on the one hand, the assemblages of scriptures in India (see for example the case of the Daśabhūmika section of the Mahāvastu whose stratification has been recently studied by Vincent Tournier40) and, on the other hand, the Chinese translations, assemblages, and “transformations”

�7 See the discussion of the quotation of Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā-sūtra 32 be-low (§ 2.1.1).

�8 see Martini �0�0a, �58-�60.�9 see e.g. funayaMa �995 and hureau forthcoming.40 Tournier �0��.


of Mahāyāna works.4� in fact, the Khotanese translation enterprise can best be understood against the backdrop of the fifth-century spread of the Mahāyāna to Central Asia and thereupon China, a context which puts the specific “Mahāyāna-only” character of early Khotanese Buddhism into a transregional perspective. The local Buddhist scene in the Khotanese crossroads is attuned to this larger historical tide and at the same time testifies to a formative stage and the performative strategies of Mahāyāna metaphysics of authority. The process of “vernacularisation” of the Dhar-ma in Khotan, as witnessed by the reception of Indian texts and the incep-tion of a written Buddhist literature in Khotanese, can thus be fully under-stood only by relating the “microhistorical” evidence to the contemporary regional and transregional networks, namely the coming into being of a Mahāyāna hegemonic thought with the emergence of Mahāyāna institu-tions such as formalised sets of precepts, vows, and liturgical procedures.

It thus seems to me that the backdrop against which the Khotanese in-stance needs to be positioned is that of the “Mahāyānisation” of the Indian Buddhist traditions (not to speak of their Chinese reception). The case of Khotan appears to reflect precisely the formative phase of a “local” Mahāyāna in terms of a conscious and exclusive ideology. Doctrinal and institutional schemes need to be constructed together if such an ideologi-cal agenda has to be successfully put into action. A close reading of the unfortunately scarce and limited textual materials at our disposal requires an effort at interpretation, yet it can reward us by giving us at least a few glimpses of this wide-ranging ideological construct.

Besides earlier and contemporary Sanskrit texts (and their Chinese and Tibetan translations, when the Indian texts are no longer extant), the sources available in Old Khotanese on the topic of bodhisattva practice in the fifth and sixth centuries are, most notably, the already mentioned Book of Zambasta plus the so-called Bodhisattva Compendium.4�

4� As a matter of interest, among the different etymologies that have been suggested for the Khotanese verb pīr-, SiMS-WilliaMS 1997 proposes a derivation from Chinese bi 筆 (Early Middle Chinese pit) ‘writing brush’, ‘to write’; on the implications of the expression bishou 筆受 ‘to put into writing, write down’, regularly found in the colophons of chinese translations see fuchS �9�0, 88, Shih �968, �67, and ZAccheTTi 2006, �66 n. 4�.

4� Together with the Book of Zambasta, the so-called Bodhisattva compendium is the only other extant Old Khotanese original composition. Known from a number of fragments, this is a prose work dealing with the duties of the bodhisattva. The fragments were first published by leuMann 1920 and subsequently by bailey, Kt 5.9�-�0�. for additional, partly adjoining, fragments identified by Skjærvø, see eMMerick–Skjærvø �990, 50�-


the Book of Zambasta can be considered as a guide to treading the path of the bodhisattva – from the attainment of the prophecy of Buddhahood onwards4� – a guide in which the tasks of (a) imparting religious instruc-tion and (b) sanctioning a polemical agenda appear to be mutually con-verging. Thus, establishing the superiority of the Mahāyāna – its Bud-dhological and philosophical vision, its goal, its path, its practices – over the Śrāvakayāna, which is indeed pejoratively called “inferior”, becomes a central concern (Z 13.120-121 and 146):

��0 kho nä mulysgä aysmū hīni nvāta käḍe indriya dīra ttäna hīnä śrāvaka-yāni bā’yyau jsa dātu pyuvā’re�� kye indriya hvaṃ’dä utāra balysūñavūysai rraṣṭu ttä mahāyānu pyu’vāre auṣkāṃjsya harbiśśä balysa ...�46 ttäna mahāyāni utārä ku ṣṭa ttädärä vāśane mäśtä ttäna hīnä śrāvaka-yānä cu-ṃ jsa balysūstä ne byode

‘(120) Just as their mind is limited, inferior, their faculties are very con-strained, weak. Therefore through the rays [emanated by the Buddhas] they hear the Dharma of the inferior Śrāvakayāna.44 (121) Those who have the

50� and Skjærvø 1999, 296-297. A complete list of fragments identified as belonging to the Bodhisattva compendium is available in Skjærvø �00�, 607. the Bodhisattva compendium is crucial to the reconstruction of early Khotanese Buddhism, in that the precise identification of its sources, along with a precise philological positioning of chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta, are possibly the two most important elements at our disposal to date and locate early Khotanese Buddhism within the broader con-text of the textual and religious history of the Mahāyāna movement. Unfortunately, the Bodhisattva compendium still awaits (re-)edition and doctrinal study. Maggi �009, 404 notes that “[a] special feature of the manuscript preserving it [i.e., the bodhisAT-TVA coMpendiuM] is the superimposition of Late Khotanese forms upon the original Old Khotanese text by means of additional vowel marks and interlinear additions of akṣaras”. On top of these palaeographical features, the text itself contains linguistically late forms. the fragmentary codex unicus we have makes it difficult to suggest any chronological hypothesis, since the text could be either contemporary with the manu-script which preserves it, and thus perhaps about a couple of centuries (?) later than the Book of Zambasta, or else earlier, in this case superficially ”reformed” by the copyist.

4� cf. Martini �0��, ��7-��8.44 The elusive reference to the rays (bā’yyau jsa) by means of which the Dharma of the

inferior śrāvakas appears to be “heard” can be clarified with the help of a passage in a meditation text that was translated into Chinese by Buddhabhadra in the early fifth century (thus slightly earlier than or contemporary with the Book of Zambasta), the Da‑moduolo chanjing 達摩多羅禪經 (T. 618, otherwise known in Western scholarship as the Dharmatrāta manual). Here, in the context of an examination of dependent origina-


noble faculties of a bodhisattva hear the Mahāyāna correctly: “Eternal are all the Buddhas.” ... (146) Therefore the Mahāyāna is exalted, because in it there are so many great statements. Therefore the Śrāvakayāna is inferior (hīnä śrāvaka-yānä), because awakening is not obtained thereby.’

Chapter 13 appears to be the ideological core of the Book of Zambasta, with a description of the three vehicles, a presentation of the pluses of the Mahāyāna over the Śrāvakayāna, and many Mahāyāna texts mentioned by title, as well as with several scriptural quotations given in support of the exposition. The preceding chapter 12 is entirely devoted to the conduct of the bodhisattva, containing the description of the ritual for the undertaking of the bodhisattva precepts and a list of offences, etc. Chapter 12 follows fairly closely the chapter on moral conduct (Śīlapaṭala) of the Bodhisattvabhūmi.45

The definition of “being a bodhisattva” in the textual materials under consideration is discursive, in that it takes shape in opposition and con-trast to the other soteriological paths (pratyekabuddhas and śrāvakas). The realm of “otherness”, the hīnä śrāvaka-yānä, is varied and changeable, but in order to assert the superiority of their chosen path of salvation the Khotanese bodhisattvas elaborate a discourse characterised by a cohesive ideological undercurrent. This is expressed in terms of opposition to and disparagement of this “Other” whose texts and positions are in fact never quoted by title nor analytically reviewed.

tion, the different depths of the understanding of the śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas are spelled out, with a description of a meditative vision of Buddhas emit-ting ‘great rays of light’ ( fangda guangming 放大光明) which are to fill, in progressive stages of emanation, the realms of the śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas. In-terestingly, at the outset of this passage, the Buddha explains to Ānanda that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas can only enter to a limited extent the sea of the cognitive object of a Buddha (dependent arising, in this case), but cannot reach the bottom (for the entire passage see Damoduolo chanjing 達摩多羅禪經, T. 6�8 at T. XV 324a21-324b16, trans. in yaMabe 2009, 63-64). As pointed out by yaMabe 2009 65 n. 38, this imagery “somehow resonates with the simile of ‘three animals crossing a river’”. Another possibility is that the image of the rays as a vehicle for the transmission of the teachings could be related to the idea – attributed to the Lokottaravādins – that the Buddha never utters a single word, but beings, believing that he does speak, are overjoyed (cf. bareau 1955, 76).

45 Chapter 12 still awaits closer inspection and the precise position of the Khotanese text in relation to the corresponding chapter of the Bodhisattvabhūmi has yet to be deter-mined, a task which is not made any easier by the fact that the Śīlapaṭala itself is far from having been made the object of systematic philological scrutiny; I have briefly discussed chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta in Martini 2010a, 158-160; for a recent study of the Śīlapaṭala see ziMMerMann �0��.


That the “Other” is addressed with the language and contents of a down-putting strategy is quite normal in this genre of polemical literature, but the particularly revealing pattern that emerges here, as I try to show, is that such a strategy is functional and foundational to the institutional discourse of the Mahāyānists, to the extent that (a) the religious motivation itself, (b) the soteriological superiority of this motivation, and (c) the institutional foundation of bodhisattva identity (the embracing of bodhisattva precepts and specific rituals of confession) are asserted precisely on the basis of this polemical stance of legitimacy and superiority. the early Khotanese bodhisattva is thus provided in the Book of Zambasta at once with spiritual direction, religious motivation, and institutional identity.

A question may be raised as to what extent the “Other” as a referent in the discursive – not dialogic – process of identity building is constituted by historical competing Śrāvakayāna communities in the Khotan of the fifth and sixth centuries. As we have seen in the foregoing pages, there appears to be a probability that non-Mahāyānists did actually exist there. At the same time, the strategy generated through and around the perception of the Śrāvakayāna as the first and foremost “significant Other”,46 relies by definition, as a rhetorical operation, on selective abstraction where adher-ence to factual history need be waived to accommodate the new herme-neutics. Yet, the very need for such an accommodation is in my reading a pointer to a reality of conflict without which the rhetoric would not have come into being in the first place.

2.1. Similes

Let us now look directly at a few examples of quotations in the Book of Zambasta adapted from two Indian Mahāyāna sūtras which docu-ment the process of localisation of the Mahāyāna ideological discourse I have been discussing. The first is extracted from the Vinayaviniścaya-

46 Todeschini (forthcoming) adopts the concept of “significant Other” employed in haM-Mer’s 2004 study of the epistemological strategies of new religious movements to de-scribe appeals to meditative legitimation formulated in Yogācāra works prompted by an acute preoccupation with the status of the Mahāyāna versus the Śrāvakayāna. The definition is in turn adapted by haMMer from the work of George Herbert MeaD in the 1930s, a definition which has been used in the theory of personality development and which haMMer 2004, 44 n. 32 metaphorically extends to refer to “the process whereby movement spokespersons construct the identities of their doctrines in relation to ab-stract or concrete Others”.

�� giuliana Martini

Upāliparipcchā, a well-known text of the Bodhisattvayāna, which we know was circulating in fifth-sixth century Khotan precisely because it is quoted in the Book of Zambasta.

�.�.�. Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā quotation in the Book of Zambasta

the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is quoted in Z ��.��-�8:

�� vinayaviniścayo sūttro tta hvate balysä cu ggaja-ggaṇḍä nu pāsä ttu kharä karä pāsu ne buḍu yīndä ttäna cu duṣpä vaṃdä�4 trāmu māñandä mahāyāni kho ggaja-ggaṇḍänu pāsä kharä bataku vindäkä pāsä trāmu samu śrāvaka-yāni .�5 cu svarṇä hota päṣa’ñi ggāmä uysgani trāma ni īndä . cu saruai oṇä bajāṣṣä rrūvāsä trāmu ne hotte�6 cu mahāyāña karīttātä mästä bvāmata mulysdi . trāmu māñandu nä hotāre ttu häru ṣṣāvā biśśu�7 tterä mahāyānä vasutä brūñäte baña śrāvaka-yā ni samu kho urmaysde śrāvaka-yāni kho khārjūrai rruśtä�8 ttäte sūttro autame pharu ṣṭāre cu ttye mästä viśśeṣä cu mahāyānä mästä yāni hīni śrāvaka-yānä

‘(33) In the Vinayaviniścaya-sūtra, thus spoke the Buddha: “As far as the load of fine elephants is concerned, an ass cannot carry this load at all be-cause it is weak and small. (34) In the same way, the Mahāyāna is like the load of fine elephants. The load of an ass is small and limited. So only is the Śrāvakayāna. (35) As for the power and strength of the swift eagle, the vul-ture does not have so much of them. As for the strength of voice of the lion, the jackal is not so much capable of it. (36) As for the vigour, great wisdom (bvāmata, Skt. prajñā), [and] compassion [that are found] in the Mahāyāna, the śrāvakas are similarly not capable of all this thing. (37) So pure[ly] does the Mahāyāna shine in comparison with the Śrāvakayāna, just like the sun. The Śrāvakayāna gleams just like silver.” (38) These many comparisons are [found] in the sūtra, because great is its difference, because the Mahāyāna is a great vehicle, the Śrāvakayāna is an inferior one.’47

47 that ggāmä ʻswiftʼ at Z 13.35 does not refer to the vulture but to the eagle was noted by R. E. eMMerick in his personal copy of the Book of Zambasta, following a sugges-tion made by A. Degener (see Maggi forthcoming, § 6). For a passage echoing Z ��.�8 see e.g. Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra i.�0, ed. léVi 1907, 4,24-25 and trans. lévi �9��, �0: ... tasmād anyonyavirodhād yad yānaṃ hīnaṃ hīnam eva tat na tan mahāyānaṃ


Before turning to the relevant passages in the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā, a brief introduction to this text is necessary in order to appreciate the significance of its being quoted in the Book of Zambasta and the implications of the presence of this specific passage within the economy of the Khotanese ideological discourse.

To begin with, the Book of Zambasta, by sourcing the quotation, pro-vides important evidence for the Sanskrit title of the sūtra, as this was transmitted in Khotan. A Sanskrit fragmentary text containing the first half of the second part of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is preserved in the Nepalese manuscript known as Bodhisattvaprātimokṣa-sūtra.48 But for this extensive fragment and a few quotations in the Śikṣāsamuccaya, Bodhicāryāvatāra-pañjikā, Prasannapadā, and Bhāvanākrama iii, the text of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā – which has been given an approximate terminus post quem to the mid-third century49 – is not other-wise extant in Sanskrit, though preserved in a number of Chinese versions and in an eighth-century Tibetan translation.50

the transmission of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā presents several philological entanglements which go beyond the scope of the present discussion.5� as far as the content is concerned, the materials found in this text represent one of the most important sources for the practice of the bodhisattva precepts in China, particularly in relation to repentance liturgy. They also contain visionary elements that are related to the world of visionary repentance and ordination of fifth-century Cen-tral Asian Buddhism. From the perspective of “Indian” Buddhism, this

arhati, “... [p]ar suite de cette contradiction mutuelle, le Véhicule qui est inférieur est vraiment le Petit; et il ne peut pas être le Grand Véhicule” (for a study of the dicho-tomy Mahāyāna versus Hīnayāna in the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra see d’AMATo 2000).

48 ed. Dutt �9��, �7.8: iti bodhisattvaprātimokṣa-sūtra.49 so pyThon 1973, 4. For the citations in Sanskrit see references in pyThon �97�, �-�,

for Kamalaśīla s Bhāvanākrama iii see list in ed. tucci �97�, ��-�4.50 the three chinese translations are the Youboli hui 優波離會 (T. 310(24), included in

the eighth-century Mahāratnakūṭa collection); the Jueding pini jing 決定毘尼經 (T. 325, a Jin 晉 [265-420] version); Sanshiwu foming lichan wen 三十五佛名禮懺文 (T. ��6, a liu song 劉宋 [420-479] version). Another relevant text is the Youboli wen fo jing 優波離問佛經 (T. 1466), which is a completely different fifth-century version. For an english translation of T. 310(24) see chang �98�, �6�-�79. for the edition of the Tibetan text (collated with the extant Sanskrit text), ’dul ba rnam par gtan la dban pa nye bar ’khor gyis shus pa, Ōtani 760.24, Tōhoku 68, and a French translation, see pyThon 1973 (his text differs entirely from the one studied by sTAche-rosen �984, which is a translation of T. 1466).

5� On the condition of this text in general see MatSuMura �990.


sūtra is seemingly presupposed by the Bodhisattvabhūmi and the so-called Bodhisattvaprātimokṣa-sūtra mentioned above (in which it is included). The text in fact does not contain precepts as such but can be considered as a “companion” to a Mahāyāna ordination manual in that it furnishes precepts with the appropriate ideological doctrinal content.5�

In fact, according to the findings by fujita Kōkan,5� the structure of the Bodhisattvaprātimokṣa-sūtra manuscript is that of a combined manuscript containing an ordination manual proper (a full copy of the *Bodhisattvasaṃ-varavidhi,54 in turn a combination of sections taken from the Bodhisattva‑bhūmi and the *Bodhicittotpādavidhi),55 together with a doctrinal portion based on sections 33-44 of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā.56

yaMabe Nobuyoshi, building on fujita’s scholarship, has suggested that the shape of this manuscript indicates that the textual traditions of the Bodhisattvabhūmi and the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā were closely linked: “In other words I suspect that in practice the apparently rational-looking Bodhisattva Stage [i.e., Bodhisattvabhūmi] was used in conjunc-tion with a more mystical, visionary text, the Upāli’s Questions Sūtra [i.e., the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā-sūtra]”.57

Further, an important aspect of the practice of bodhisattva precepts is their relation to meditative milieux. As pointed out by funayaMa Tōru, the monks who specialised in the transmission of the bodhisattva precepts were often meditators. For example, the famous monk Shi Xuanchang 釋玄暢 (416-484), in addition to being involved in the line of transmission of bodhisattva precepts, taught a ten-steps meditation system,58 and the main subject of the Guan Puxian pusa xingfa jing 觀普賢菩薩行法經 (T. 277) attributed to the dhyāna-master Dharmamitra (347-443)59 during the liu song 劉宋 period

5� on the practice of confession see hōbōgirin 2, 142-146 s.v. bosatsukai, Kuo �994, funayaMa �995, and yaMabe �005.

5� Quoted in yaMabe �005, �0.54 Byang chub sems dpaʼi sdom paʼi cho ga, Ōtani 5404 and Tōhoku 4491.55 Byang chub tu sems bskyed paʼi cho ga, Ōtani 5361 and 5405, and Tōhoku 3966, at-

tributed to the Vajrayāna master Nāgārjuna.56 cf. also Dutt �9��, �0.57 yaMabe �005, �0-��.58 On his activity see funayaMa �995, 40-44 and JAnousch �999, ��7-��8.59 On this text in general, the traditional attribution, and its importance in later Chinese

and Japanese Buddhism see yaMabe 1999, 46-49 (with references). yaMabe �999, 49 is rather suspicious about Dharmamitra’s involvement with the “translation”. He con-cludes that the text has serious textual problems and is very likely to be apocryphal and suggests that considering that according to his biographies Dharmamitra seems to have


(420-479) is, besides repentance and bodhisattva precepts (including a meth-od for self-ordination that requires visionary experience), also meditation.60 thus, according to funayaMa these cases would “suggest that meditation was an essential factor in the bodhisattva precepts which stemmed from the Bodhisattvabhūmi, one of the fundamental treatises of yogācāra teachers in India”.6� yaMabe points out that, although other visualisation sūtras “empha-size the expiation of sins, the GPXY [= T. 277] is representative in terms of the close combination of visionary experiences and ordination/repentance”.6� on the significance of this ritual from the standpoint of the process of mental pu-rification of the practitioner, for example Alex WayMan comments that “[t]he special form of confession done before the thirty-five Buddhas is a Mahāyāna development that combines the procedure of confession with that of medita-tion, and so perhaps does reach the deep-seated impulses of the mind”.6�

It may be also noted that the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is in-cluded in the scriptural collections of works that came to be assembled in the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist canons under the collective title of Mahāratnakūṭa, and that Mahāratnakūṭa discourses are an important component of the Book of Zambasta’s repertory of textual sources.64

In sum, the significance of a sourced quotation of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā for the religio-historical reconstruction of early Khota-nese Buddhism cannot be underestimated.

The excerpt from chapter 13 of the Book of Zambasta quoted above seems to vaguely echo sections 31-32 of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā:

been an eminent meditator, “[p]erhaps his name was used as a convenient mark to give some apocryphal texts an air of authority. ... As a renowned meditator (but probably a poor Chinese speaker/reader) who had eventually settled down in south China, Dhar-mamitra’s name would have been easy to use for such a purpose”; funayaMa �994, �08 does not seem to question Dharmamitra’s translatorship of T. �77. on the close ties between T. �77 and southern china see funayaMa �995, �9-�� and 67-77.

60 funayaMa 1995, 29-32 and 67-77 discusses how this scripture was instrumental in the introduction of bodhisattva precepts to southern China.

6� funayaMa �995, ��8.6� yaMabe �999, 47.6� WayMan 1975, 69 [= 505]. On meditation, repentance and visionary experience in

early medieval Chinese Buddhism see now the major contribution by greene �0��, which came to my attention as this volume was already in press.

64 Bhadramāyākāravyākaraṇa, Kāśyapaparivarta, Samantamukhaparivarta, Vinayaviniśca-ya, and Daśadharmaka-sūtra, see Martini 2010b and 2011a. Strictly speaking, grouping these discourses under the heading Mahāratnakūṭa would only be appropriate in the con-text of the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist canons, where the Mahāratnakūṭa is found as a scriptural division properly so called, i.e., a macro-unit of textual transmission.


“(31) The Blessed One asked this question: ‘Śāriputra, what do you think: could the cat put up with the roar of the lion, the king of the animals?’. Śāriputra replied: ‘No, Blessed One, that surely cannot be!’. The Blessed One asked this question: ‘Śāriputra, what do you think: could the donkey put up with the load of the musk elephant?’.65 Śāriputra replied: ‘No, Blessed One, that surely cannot be!’. The Blessed One asked this question: ‘Śāriputra, what do you think: could a poor person put up with the royal lustre of Śakra and Brahmā?’. Śāriputra replied: ‘No, Blessed One, that surely cannot be!’. The Blessed One asked this question: ‘Śāriputra, what do you think: could a baby vulture put up with the brave assaults of the garuḍa, the king of winged creatures?’. Śāriputra replied: ‘No, Blessed One, that surely cannot be!’.

“(32) The Blessed One explained: ‘In the same way, Śāriputra, whatever may be the faults that come about by loss of knowledge and whatever may be the state of remorse because of offences, the bodhisattvas purify them-selves thanks to being endowed with wholesome roots and thanks to having a spirit full of effort and thanks to obtaining the collectedness [of mind] by rejoicing in the vision of the Buddhas, whereas such purification is impos-sible for all other beings, all śrāvakas and all pratyekabuddhas’.”66

65 The elephant, vehicle of Indra and thus a symbol of royalty in ancient India, is found in several similes to illustrate the scope of the Buddha’s teachings, for example in MN �8 at MN I 184,25 it is said that, as the footprints of all animals fit into the footprint of an elephant, so the teachings of the Buddha are all contained in the four noble truths. On the significance of the simile of the elephant’s footprint and parallels to MN �8 see AnālAyo 2011, 193 n. 257. In a discourse to Upāli (the Buddhist vinayadhara par excellence featuring also as the addressee of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā), AN �0.99 at AN V 202,11, it is said that one who does not have concentration will not be suitable for the lifestyle of a monk, just as a small animal is not able to imitate the conduct of an elephant.

66 ed. pyThon 1973, 39,3-15 (section 31) and 39,16-26 (section 32): (31) śā ri’i bu, ’di ji sn‑yam du sems, ri dvags kyi rgyal po seng geʼi sgra skad gang yin pa de byi las bzod par nus snyam ’am? śā riʼi bus gsol pa: bcom ldan ’das, de ni mi bzod lags so. bcom ldan ’das kyis bka’ scal pa: śā riʼi bu, ’di ji snyam du sems: spos kyi glang po che’i khal gang yin pa de bong bus bzod par nus snyam ’am? śā riʼi bus gsol pa: bcom ldan ’das, de ni mi bzod lags so. bcom ldan ’das kyis bka’ stsal pa: śā riʼi bu, ’di ji snyam du sems: brgya byin dang changs pa. tshangs-pa dag gi gzi brjid kyi rgyal po gang yin pa de mi dbul pos bzod par nur snyam ’am? śā riʼi bu gsol pa: bcom ldan ’das, de ni mi bzod lags so. bcom ldan ’das kyis bka’ stsal pa: śā riʼi bu, ’di ji snyam du sems: bya’i rgyal po nam mkhaʼ lding gi pha rol gnon pa gang yin pa de bya rgod kyi phrug gus bzod par nus snyam ’am? śā riʼi bu gsol pa: bcom ldan ’das, de ni mi bzod legs so! (32) bcom ldan das kyis bkaʼ stsal pa: śā riʼi bu, de bzhin du byang chub sems dpaʼ rnams kyis sems dpaʼ ba dang dge baʼi rtsa baʼi stobs bskyed pa las byung zhing, shes pa las nges par byung baʼi nyes pa gang yin pa dang


Section 32 is also extant in Sanskrit, in a quotation found in the chapter on confession included in the Śikṣāsamuccaya:

“(32) It is not possible for all groups of śrāvakas and Pratyekabuddhas67 to purify the state of offense and regret as [in the case of] a bodhisattva [who] is freed from offense and from regret by day and night, [who] calls upon the names of those lord Buddhas, and engages in the recitation of the triskhandhakadharma, and [who thus] attains samādhi.”68

For the Chinese, suffice it to read the Mahāratnakūṭa version translated by Bodhiruci in 706-7�� (Youboli hui 優波離會, T. 310(24)):

“(31) [The Buddha said:] ‘Śāriputra, what do you think? Are small jackals able to match a great king of lions when he roars his roar?’.69 Śāriputra answered: ‘No, World-Honoured One’. [The Buddha said:] ‘Again, Śāriputra, can a donkey match bearing the same heavy burden as a large musk elephant?’. ‘No, World-Honoured One’. ‘Again, can a poor, humble person match the might and dominion of a Śākra or Brahmā?’. ‘No, World-Honoured One’. ‘Again, can any small bird match the flight of a powerful, golden-winged garuḍa, the king of birds?’. ‘No, World-Honoured One’.70

nyes pa ʼgyod paʼi gnas sangs rgyas mthong baʼi ting nge dzin la snyoms par jug pa thob pas, rnam par sbyong ba gang yin pa de ni sems can thams cad dang nyan thos dang rang sangs rgyas kyi theg pa <pa> thams cad kyis rnam par sbyong bar mi nus so. byang chub sems dpaʼ ni sang rgyas bcom ldan das de dag gi mtshan dzin cing yongs su brjod pa dang phung po gsum paʼi chos kyi rnam grangs nyin lan gsum mtshan lan gsum brjod pas, nyes pa ʼgyod paʼi gnas las nyes par ʼbyung zhing ting nge dzin kyang thob par ʼgyur ro.

67 ed. pyThon �97�, �9, emends: °yānikair but I prefer the reading sarvaśrāvaka-pratyekabuddhanikāyair.

68 ed. benDall �897-�90�, p. �7�,4-6: na śakyaṃ sarvaśrāvakapratyekabuddha-nikāyair āpattikauktyasthānaṃ viśodhayituṃ yad bodhisattvas teṣāṃ buddhānāṃ bhagavantāṃ nāmadheyadhāraṇaparikīrtanena rātriṃ divaṃ triskhandhakadharma-paryāyapravartanenāpattikauktyān niḥsarati samādhiṃ ca pratilabhate; see also ed. pyThon 1973, p. 39,27-31; trans. after benDall–rouse �9��, �67 and pyThon �97�, 106-107 with modifications.

69 This simile is already employed in the early Buddhist discourses, for example in the Pāṭika-sutta, DN �4 at DN III 24,17. Here a messenger sent to the ascetic Pāṭikaputta, who had first announced that he would defeat the Buddha in a contest of magical pow-ers and thereafter did not appear at the venue of the contest, compares Pāṭikaputta’s earlier proclamation to a jackal trying to imitate a lion’s roar. For the parallel to this simile in the chinese DĀ �5, see T. � at T. I 68c6 (esp. 68c29-69a1 for the reference to the jackal).

70 This question recalls the one found at Z 13.30-32 on the respective qualities of kings and merchants (see below § 2.2 with n. 109).


“(32) The Buddha [said]: ‘Śāriputra, whatever wholesome roots and powers of vigour these bodhisattvas have, [all these] depend on, come forth, and depart from wisdom. They can purify the stain of transgressions, be removed from worry and remorse, attain a vision of the Buddhas and attain samādhi. again, worldlings, śrāvakas, and pratyekabuddhas cannot rid themselves of the hin-drances due to such transgressions in the same way. If a bodhisattva invokes the names of those Buddhas and day and night constantly practises the three types of teachings (triskhandhakadharma),7� he can get rid of his transgres-sions, be free from regret and remorse, and attain various samādhis’.”7�

Independently from the variations between the various versions, the citation proper identified, albeit vaguely, in the Book of Zambasta appears to conclude with stanza 13.36. Stanza 13.37 introduces another simile and stanza 13.38 simply concludes the scriptural reference to the comparisons that have been quoted by restating in more explicit terms the inferior-ity of the Śrāvakayāna compared with the superior Mahāyāna. In effect Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā 32 can be only loosely related to the comments on the Śrāvakayāna put forward at stanzas 37-38 of the Book of Zambasta, though it does continue with the same theme.

To sum up, it seems to me that there are a number of important points raised by the occurrence of this quotation:

7� That is, visualising the thirty-five Buddhas, paying respects to all Tathāgatas, and repenting with a pure mind.

7� T. 310(24) at T. XI 516b24-c1 (section 31) and 516c1-6 (section 32): “舍利弗, 於意云何, 如師子王大哮吼時, 諸小野干能堪任不?” 舍利弗言: “不也世尊”. “又舍利弗, 如大香象其所負重驢堪任不?”. “不也世尊”. “又如帝釋及梵天王威德自在, 貧賤之人能堪任不?”. “不也世尊”. “又如大力金翅鳥王翱翔運動, 諸餘小鳥能堪任不?”. “不也世尊”. [32] 佛言: “舍利弗, 是諸菩薩所有善根勇猛之力, 依出離智, 淨諸罪垢, 遠離憂悔, 得見諸佛及得三昧. 亦復如是, 如斯罪障, 非諸凡夫聲聞緣覺所能除滅. 菩薩若能稱彼佛名, 晝夜常行是三種法, 能滅諸罪遠離憂悔得諸三昧”. Trans. after chang 1983, 267 with modi-fications. According to the concordances in pyThon 1973, xxii, the parallel to sec-tion 31 in Dharmarakṣa’s 竺法護 (265-313) translation, Jueding pini jing 決定毗尼經 *Vinayaviniścaya-sūtra, T. ��5, is found at T. XII 39b19-39b24. Section 31 is also found in the Pusa shan jie jing 菩薩善戒經 *Bodhisattvabhadraśīla-sūtra, T. �58� at T. xxx 961b20. This text is a recension of the Bodhisattvabhūmi translated by Guṇavarman in the mid-eighth century and contains a very free rendering of part of the text of the Vinayaviniścaya (corresponding to sections 1-46 of the Sanskrit version, but with gaps, cf. concordances in pyThon 1973, xx-xxiii), which functions as an introductory part to this discourse, see pyThon �97�, � and MatSuMura �990. the parallel to section 32 in Dharmarakṣa’s translation (T. 325) is found at T. XII 39b24 (cf. concordances in pyThon 1973, xxii). Neither of the sections quoted here (31-32) are present in the one-fascicle version of the text (T. 1583), on which see MatSuMura �990, 9�.


a) Patterns of treatment of the sourcesAlthough I have not attempted a comprehensive coverage of the occur-rences of this simile in Mahāyāna literature (as well as of the other similes I discuss in this article), the examples surveyed make it reasonable to con-clude that the quotation reflects a specific mode of treatment of the sources in the Book of Zambasta, that is, a free referencing laden with ideological significance, which is not at all uncommon in Mahāyāna literature.

b) Transmission of the Vinayaviniścaya-UpāliparipcchāPhilologically, the extremely loose shape of the quotation and its reinter-pretation in the target context makes it impossible to find out which recen-sion of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā was circulating in Khotan at the time of the redaction of the Book of Zambasta by comparing it with the partial Sanskrit text and the Tibetan and Chinese parallels. However, the availability of parallels is useful in that they highlight, by contrast, the treatment of the source material adopted by the compiler of the Book of Zambasta, thus revealing one of the patterns of the latter’s approach to the sources (cf. point (a)).

c) Transmission of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā as a Mahāratna-kūṭa scripture

As mentioned above, the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is one of the sūtras that came to be included in the scriptural collection that was assembled as an autonomous section in the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist canons, best known as Mahāratnakūṭa. This collection, taken as a whole, covers a very large spectrum of the bodhisattva practice. The evidence for the transmission of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā in Khotan con-tributes a new piece of information on the circulation of Mahāratnakūṭa scriptures in Central Asia, which will need to be taken into account by fu-ture investigations of the possible Central Asian formation and assemblage of the collection, or of parts of it, and especially of the impact these texts had in the shaping of bodhisattva ideas and practice.7�

d) Bodhisattva’s confession and repentance texts and rituals in Central Asia in the fifth and sixth centuries: the triskhandhakadharma

The context of the original source of the quotation of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā featured by the Book of Zambasta is, as seen above, the passage that deals with the triskhandhakadharma. in terms of the history of the transmission of the Mahāyāna, this finding has quite an important

7� cf. Martini �0�0a, ��5-��9 and �60-�6�.

40 giuliana Martini

bearing on reconstructing the practice landscape of the Book of Zambasta. it implies that, for the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā to be quoted, the community that used the Book of Zambasta must have been acquainted with this text, which must have circulated in Khotan in a Sanskrit recension (and perhaps also in Khotanese, though no Khotanese translation is known). The Khotanese certainly knew the text well enough if they accepted it as author-itative and if, as seems probable, they derived their practice of repentance and confession from it. the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is a crucial, if not the crucial reference text for the triskhandhaka repentance ritual,74 thus the citation of this discourse in the Book of Zambasta implies that the triskhandhaka liturgy was known and practised by the community that re-garded the Book of Zambasta as their work of reference. Since the quotation in chapter �� refers to a passage of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā that is placed immediately before its treatment of the triskhandhaka, fa-miliarity with this discourse is all the more to be expected.75

e) Placement of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā-sūtra quo tation with-in the architecture of the Book of Zambasta

yaMabe’s remarks on the complementary function performed by systematic treatises such as the Bodhisattvabhūmi (as well as its sources and the texts depending on it) and texts such as the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā – both present in the Book of Zambasta, as we have seen – offer a possible interpretative key to some structural aspects of the Book of Zambasta. the

74 on the triskhandhaka ritual and texts see pyThon �98�, bArnes 1993, nAKAMiKAdo 2000, fuJinAKA–nAKAMiKAdo 2011, and especially the analysis by nattier �00�, ��7-121 (with discussion of and references to previous literature).

75 other Mahāratatnakūṭa scriptures that contain references to the triskandhaka are the Svapnanirdeśa (Jing ju shi tianzi hui 淨居士天子會, T. 310(4), rmi lam bstan pa, Tōhoku 48 and Ōtani 760.4), where ritual purification is associated with dream yoga as a source of revelations received from dharmabhāṇakas and overall as a legitimating device (for a description of the content of this sūtra see hArrison 2003, 136-141); and the Vimaladatta-paripcchā (Wugoushi pusa ying bianhui 無垢施菩薩應辯會, T. 310(33), trans. in chang 1983, 73-99; Dri ma med kyis byin pas zhus pa, Tōhoku 77 and Ōtani 760.33), which seems to link the attainment of pratibhāna (spobs pa) with the upholding of the bodhisat‑tva-piṭaka (byang chub sems dpa’i sde snod) and with the day and night recitation of the triskandhaka (nyin mtshan du phung po gsum pa’i chos kyi rnam grangs kha ton byed pa dang) in a list of four practices, see Tōhoku 77, dkon brtsegs, ca 256b7-257a2 and Ōtani 760.��, dkon brtsegs, zi 269b7-270a4, with the bodhisattvapiṭaka given at the end as one of the names of the sūtra, dkon brtsegs, ca 260a4, and Ōtani 760.33, dkon brtsegs, zi 274a2 (I have not been able to locate a reference to the triskandhaka in the Chinese version, which also seems to lack the mention of the bodhisattvapiṭaka among the names of the sūtra).


Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā quotation, though brief and imprecise, has much significance, in that it shows that early Khotanese bodhisattvas had access to such an essential text for the bodhisattva’s practice. Access to the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā, considered in the light of the presence of a technically speaking normative chapter on the bodhisattva’s conduct (chapter 12), of Kāśyapaparivarta/Ratnakūṭa materials quoted with regard to misbehaviour leading to the downfall of the bodhisattva,76 and of the over-all purpose and content of the Book of Zambasta, allows for a first, tentative outline of the practice of the fifth-sixth century Khotanese bodhisattva.

All of these points reflect a common ground between the undertaking and observance of the bodhisattva’s code of conduct and a clear awareness of being upholders of the Great Vehicle rather than of the Śrāvakayāna, a shared ground that is clearly indicated by the prologue to chapter 12, which is peculiar to the Khotanese text and absent in the Bodhisattvabhūmi par-allel (Z 12.1-5):77

� ce yäḍe praṇähānu se balysūśtu bvāne . numandräte satva aysū trāyämä bäśśä .� praṃmānī dātä mahāyānä se rraṣṭä balysä hvate harbäśśu ttäna byaude balysūstä� ttye rro nāsāñi ṣä gratä tcamna balysūstä . thatau haṃbīḍū puña mästa hämāre .4 prraṇähānai harbiśśä säjīndä kho yande balysūśte vaska u biśśä trāyäte satva5 pārāmate mulysdi satva-saṃgrahä hota panye kṣaṇä huṣṭä kye ttū nāste parāhu .

‘(1) Success. One who has taken a vow: “May I realise awakening”, (who) has convened beings [by making the determination]: “I will save you all”, (2) (who) has the Dharma of the Mahāyāna as his authority: “The Buddha has expounded it all correctly: therefore he realised78 awakening, (3) that one must also undertake this commandment, through which awakening is quickly fulfilled and great merits arise. (4) All his vows are successful when he undertakes [them] for awakening and he delivers all beings. (5) [As for] the perfections, compassion, the capacity to attract beings, the ability [in them] increases every moment for one who undertakes this restraint.’

76 Martini �0�0a, �57-�60.77 The entire prologue, including the introduction, covers Z ��.�-54.78 Byaude is here � sg. pf. tr. from byev‑ ‘to obtain’ (Maggi).

4� giuliana Martini

2.1.2. A possible landscape for the early Khotanese monastic bodhisattva

closely related to the placement of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā-sūtra quo tation in the framework of the Book of Zambasta (point (e) above) is the question of which stage of the institutional development of the Mahāyāna the Book of Zambasta portrays.

Around the middle of the fourth century a wave of fully ecclesiasti-cal incarnation of the Buddhist institution, most notably Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda, reaches Southern Central Asia from Northwest India, Kashmir and Bactria. The adoption of Sanskrit as its church language, the abhidharmic scholasticism, the redaction of expanded Vinayas, the shaping of the legend of Aśoka as a righteous religious king devoted to the Buddhist church,79 all provide the backbone of an ecclesiastical vision which in turn stands as the background of a missionary, expansive success, as reflected in the establishment of “state” monasteries, the impressive production and cir-culation of Sanskrit manuscripts, and the support of devout monarchs in the north-western Tarim Basin (Kucha and Turfan).80 the irregular and erratic model that had spread earlier in the southern Khotan-niya areas and the ec-clesiastical organism that was exported to the northern route mutually repelled one another and yet would have been reciprocally competing and imitating.

Faxian mentions the famous Gomati monastery as an all-round Mahāyāna settlement.8� His indication that the construction of a “New Royal Monas-tery” (Wangxinsi 王新寺) taking eighty years and three kings8� provides use-ful chronological clues that suggest that there existed royal sponsorship of a Buddhist monastic institution (presumably Mahāyāna) by at least 320 c.e.

in the case of the Buddhist Khotan of the Book of Zambasta, a very likely scenario is that of an adhesion to Mahāyāna views within the insti-tutional context of the ordination lineages of Buddhist monasticism, re-ceiving the ordination according to the standard Vinaya procedures and

79 on the Khotanese Aśokāvadāna – to be situated in the broader context of the Sarvāstivāda creation of the Aśokan myth – see the references in Maggi �009, �6�-�64. in addition to the Aśokāvadāna, the Khotanese Kaniṣkāvadāna, which, interestingly, appears to stand out by comparison with similar stories found in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources for having organised them into a wider narrative (Maggi 2009, 364), seems to me to partake of this ideological program of patronage, and in doing so it aligns with the same Sarvāstivāda trajectory (on which see the discussion in pAluMbo 2012, 305-318).

80 On this ecclesiastical model and its relation to the Sarvāstivāda see pAluMbo �0��.8� trans. Deeg �005, 5��.8� trans. Deeg �005, 5��.


observing the prātimokṣa.8� at the same time, an additional, more dis-tinctly institutionally and ritually sanctioned identity would be integrated in the religious life of Mahāyāna followers.84 This “identitarian” stance was to be based on a set of precepts and rituals (that can only improperly be called Bodhisattva-prātimokṣas85 and Bodhisattva‑vinayas), namely the procedure set forth in chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta.

8� This picture would concur with the oft-quoted Yijing’s 義淨 (635-713) account of Bud-dhism in Northern India (trans. li 2000, 14), which however remains an ambivalent and later source.

84 still useful on this topic is hirakaWa �96�, 7�-84. despite the fact that hirakaWa’s view of the lay origins of the Mahāyāna is now discarded, his observation that “in the period of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra the renunciant bodhisattva received the upasaṃpadā and be-came a bhikṣu like the śrāvaka by the vinayapiṭaka, but there also existed a bodhisattva śīkṣā with its own method of ordination and there were people who undertook it. But we must not conclude that a similar situation existed in the early Mahāyāna Saṁgha based upon this fact” (p. 79) remains valuable. For a critical appraisal of hirakaWa’s view on the incompatibility of bodhisattvas and śrāvakas in the Buddhist community see nattier 2003, 84-89. This topic involves the problem of the still mysterious bodhisattvapiṭaka, on which see Pagel �995, 7-�6, braarvig–Pagel 2006, and the observations in nattier 2003, 80-81 with nn. 14-15, 100-102, and 193-197. It seems to me that, contrary to the critical remarks by Pagel 2006, 79 (“[she] appears to subscribe to the much criticised hypothesis that the Mahāyāna developed into a separate Saṅgha, distinct from main-stream communities. In her closing remarks of the Analysis Section she proposes that the increasingly antagonistic attitudes among Mahāyāna followers caused an institutional fission with their mainstream brethren that led eventually to a ʻseparate communityʼ (p. 196), ʻdistinct institutionʼ (p. 100), or a ʻnew movementʼ (p. 194)”), nattier expresses in fact a more nuanced position. her position appears to rely on an articulated category of what an ʻinstitution , or, for that matter, a ʻreligious institution , is, taking into account important ideological and cohesive factors in terms of self-identity that are crucial to understanding the religio-historical process and that also eventually generate new rituals and thereby liturgical (see, for instance, the triskhandhakadharma discussed above) and ethical texts (as well as normative, cf. for example the function of the bodhicitta as a nor-mative and institutional category within the Mahāyāna, on which see e.g. de lA VAllée poussin 1930). These stand at the same time on a par and in a complex relationship with the “traditional” tools of communal integration, namely the ritual and legal procedures of the Vinaya. On this point see also the discussions by schopen �000 and Silk �00�.

85 For quotations from a Bodhisattvaprātimokṣa in the Śikṣāsamuccaya, see ed. benDall 1897-1902, 11,11; 17,16; 18,17; 20,12; 34,13; 36,15; 55,6; 125,5; 125,7; 144,9 and 188,17. These quotations are not based on the text later edited by Dutt �9��, cf. benDall �897-1902, 11, n. 9, but on the Indian original of a text preserved in Tibetan translation, the *Bo‑dhisattvaprātimokṣacatuṣkanirhāra (Ōtani 914, Tōhoku 245); for the Chinese counterpart (T. 774) see MatSuMura 1990, 88 n. 67. For a characterisation of the difference between the śrāvaka-śīla and the bodhisattva-śīla cf. the passage from the *Daśabhūmikavibhāṣā-[śāstra] (Shizhu piposha [lun] 十住毗婆沙[論], T. 1521) translated in hirakaWa �96�, 78.

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Apparently the Buddhist communities of Khotan never undertook the translation of the Vinaya(s). Probably they used Sanskrit, but it cannot be excluded that there existed Vinaya texts in Khotanese, as there were in the case of the gandhari and tocharian traditions.86 The absence of positive evidence (surviving manuscripts or fragments of Khotanese translations of Vinaya materials), read in the light of a similar situation observable in the case of other vernacular Buddhist traditions (for example, the case of an-cient and modern Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka), would suggest that the Prātimokṣa-sūtra(s) and other Vinaya texts perhaps were never translated into Khotanese and that Sanskrit was most likely relied on for transmission, memorisation, and recitation purposes, while the Khotanese medium might well have been relied on for oral and now lost written commentaries and even for translations not destined for formal and legal performance. This state of affairs is quite different from the case of China,87 and also from that of another vernacular tradition, that is, the Vinaya texts in Sogdian.88 the Sogdian evidence indicates that the idea of translating canonical Vinaya materials into the local Iranian languages was not alien to the Central Asian Buddhist world, but it needs to be kept in mind that the Sogdians translated their texts much later and secondarily from Chinese, whereas the Khotanese as well as the Gandharan Buddhists were much closer in time and culture to the Indian and Indianised world of Greater India. This closeness might ex-plain the possible persistence of Sanskrit as the sacred liturgical language.

Interestingly, the combined use of Khotanese and Indian languages, in the case of bodhisattva liturgy, is documented by the already mentioned chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta, the local adaptation and translation of the Śīlapaṭala of the Bodhisattvabhūmi (Z 12.36-37):

�6 ttīyä panamāñu ce ttū saṃvaru heḍä . baña balysi ṣṭānī hiṃdvānäna hauna

86 a Karmavācanā has survived in Tumshuqese, see bailey �950, eMMerick �985, Skjærvø �987, and ogihArA in this volume. For fragments of a Karmavācanā formu-lar (BC 13) and of Prātimokṣa-sūtra(s) (BC 7) in Gandhari in the Bajaur Collection see Strauch 2008, 116-118. The Niya fragment no. 510 has been identified as belong-ing to a Prātimokṣa-sūtra, see bernharD �970 and sAloMon 1999, 167-168; however, boucher 2000 considers this identification weak, cf. also hanSen �004, �� n. 4�. for tocharian a see SchMiDt �989 and ogihArA in this volume.

87 For general surveys of the transmission of Indian Vinayas to China cf. yuyAMA 1979, funAyAMA �004, heirMan �007, and AnālAyo �009.

88 yoshidA Yutaka’s personal communication; cf. also yoshidA �0�0, ��4-��5 and, on a sogdian translation of the Fanwang jing 梵網經 (T. 1484), see yoshidA 2008b.


�7 nyānartha tcera daso diśe vätä balysa kho rro sūtro hvīnde ce ttū saṃvaru heḍä

‘(36) Then the person who is imparting this discipline should rise up. Stand-ing before a Buddha, he should, in Indian language (hiṃdvānäna hauna), (37) inform the Buddhas in the ten directions just as it is prescribed in the sūtra for the person who is imparting this discipline.’89

Thus a possible landscape for the early Khotanese monastic bodhisat-tva would be one comprising:

a) Indian Prātimokṣa-sūtras and other Vinaya texts (and perhaps in some cases ancillary oral and written Khotanese materials?);

b) Indian and Khotanese normative scriptures on the bodhisattva’s con-duct;

c) Indian and Khotanese texts offering a more elaborated Mahāyāna doc-trinal back-up to their normative counterparts (i.e., precepts and lists of offences), which would be instrumental for both ideological self-repre-sentation and missionary campaigning;

d) Indian (and perhaps in some cases Khotanese) Mahāyāna liturgical texts such as, for example, the triskhandhakadharma, along with the so-called deśanā texts.90

Regrettably, we do not have enough evidence in terms of manuscript or-ganisation (the manuscript being the material and concrete carrier of ideas and practices) that could testify to the use of these texts in practice.

89 on this passage Scherrer-Schaub 2010, 312 comments: “[l]a langue ‘sacrée’ cependant persiste dans la liturgie et le rituel. À Khotan par exemple la langue indienne est de rigueur dans l’administration des saṃvaru (saṃvara, sdom pa). L’officiant doit parler en ‘langue indienne’ au moment où il informe les buddha des dix directions que l’im-pétrant souhaite prendre les vœux, en somme le sanskrit est ici la ‘langue des dieux’, comme dirait Sheldon Pollock”; cf. also the remarks in Scherrer-Schaub �009, �60.

90 on the Bhadracaryā-deśanā and other deśanā texts, which in spite of being crucial to the religio-historical reconstruction of Khotanese Mahāyāna are still awaiting closer inspec-tion from the point of view of their sources and affiliation, see the survey and references in Maggi 2009, 375-380. These extant deśanā texts are all in Late Khotanese, and one of them, the Verses of Prince Tcūṃ-ttehi:, is surely a Khotanese composition, cf. Maggi 2009, 377-378. As far as Old Khotanese is concerned, a paraphrase of stanzas 4-21 of the Bhadracaryā-deśanā is found in chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta (11.62-77) (a complete Late Khotanese version with a Khotanese introduction is extant, ed. and trans. aSMuSSen 1961). Fragments of the Deśanā-parivarta of the Old Khotanese recension(s) of the Suvarṇabhāsottama-sūtra, which survive beside a complete Late Khotanese version of the chapter, can be mentioned as well (ed. and trans. Skjærvø 2004, vol. 1, 34-65).

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As to the practical use of the Vinaya(s) and bodhisattva texts, an ex-ample can be mentioned again in the context of Sogdian Buddhism. The text identified by yoshidA Yutaka as a translation of the Ratnarāśi-sūtra (a “Mahāratnakūṭa” text) happens to come from the same manuscript as a Vinaya text that was apparently translated from Tocharian. The reason why the text of the Ratnarāśi-sūtra is accompanying a Vinaya text be-comes a little clearer in the light of the above considerations. That is, the choice mirrored by the manuscript selection could reflect the complemen-tary use of the two textual categories in actual practice.9�

2.2. The local building of a Mahāyāna polemical doxography: more similes

I present now two more passages from the Book of Zambasta in which the common ground between the undertaking and observance of the bodhisat-tva’s path and a strong sense of belonging to the Great Vehicle come to the fore again.

The attribution of the above discussed passage on the Buddhist vehicles compared to the three animals in Z 13.33-38 to such an authoritative text as the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā is, rhetorically, a means of legiti-misation in relation to the target audience that empowers the text as much as its propagators. in fact, the entire content of chapter �� of the Book of Zambasta can best be interpreted as an expression of what can be perhaps termed a Mahāyāna polemical doxography. Here the vision and practice endorsed by both the Book of Zambasta and its indian source are promot-ed in explicit opposition to those of the non-Mahāyāna vehicles.

Another related context where the three yānas are illustrated by way of a simile employing three conveyances is found in the same chapter 13. This time as well a scriptural reference is provided, in this case to the Aniyatāvatāramudrā (Z 13.146-149):

�46 ttäna mahāyāni utārä ku ṣṭa ttädärä vāśane mäśtä ttäna hīnä śrāvaka-yānä cu-ṃ jsa balysūstä ne byode�47 anäggattāvattāro mudru vīrä tta vara vāśana hīśtä

9� On this text see yoshidA 2008a, 337-340; I am indebted to yoshidA Yutaka for this observation. If one looks at contemporary Chinese Buddhism, the practice of the con-ferral of bodhisattva precepts on monks and nuns on the occasion of their higher or-dination ( juzujie 具足戒, Skt. upasaṃpadā) is an example of the close relationship of these two “institutions” in Mahāyāna monastic communities, as far as the actual ritual and legal ceremonies (and respective ideologies) are concerned.


kau ye dryau bāryau haṃjsaṣḍa ttū lovadhātu narīnde�48 śye ju pasä bārai āya śye hastä bārai āya . śśau j[u] rrah[u] ba[ḍḍe . . .] u purra-bāyä [. . . .]9�

�49 trāmu balysūśta mahāyāni kho rraha-bārai baḍḍe ttāri duva yāna kho pasa-bārai o hasta-bārai

‘(146) For this [reason] the Mahāyāna is exalted: because [in it] there are so many great utterances (vāśane, Skt. vācanā). For this [reason] the Śrāvakayāna is inferior: because awakening is not attained thereby. (147) So in the Aniyatāvatāramudrā the statement (vāśana, Skt. vācanā) is therein found: “Should one aspire to leave this world (lovadhātu, Skt. lokadhātu) by means of the three vehicles (148) and for one there should be a goat as a vehicle, for another there should be an elephant as a vehicle, and [yet another] one would ride a chariot and the moon rays ... (149) The Mahāyāna rides towards awakening like one who rides the chariot, [while] the other two [vehicles] are like one who rides the goat or one who rides the elephant.’

At this point a brief excursus on the Aniyatāvatāramudrā is necessary, in that a closer look at the position of this text adds to the micro-histori-cal perspective on fifth-sixth century Khotanese Mahāyāna I am trying to pursue in this article.

the Aniyatāvatāramudrā (quoted twice as Z ��.86 aniggattāvattāra-mundro and ��.�47 anäggattāvattāro mudru) is a relatively short Mahāyāna text preserved only in Chinese and Tibetan translations that was consid-ered lost in Sanskrit until karaShiMa Seishi recently identified a Sanskrit

9� The evidence provided by the parallel supersedes the tentative emendation and trans-lation proposed by Maggi 2004b, 1277 n. 97: śśau j[u] rrah[u] ba[ḍḍe ⏑−⏑−] u purra-bāyä [ṣä pande], trans. p. 1239: “Se si intendesse uscire da questo universo (lokadhātu) con tre mezzi di trasporto e uno avesse per cavalcatura una pecora, un altro avesse per cavalcatura un elefante e un altro ancora guidasse un carro (trainato da ...) e i raggi lunari (fossero la sua strada)”; cf. also p. 1277 n. 97: “A trainare il carro erano proba-bilmente degli esseri soprannaturali” (see also ed. and trans. in leuMAnn 1933-1936, 191: “Wenn – (denkt) auch – man mit drei Fortbewegungsmitteln beabsichtigen sollte, den Welt-Bezirk zu verlassen, (und wenn) einem etwa ein Rind [oder: eine Ziege] (als) Fortbewegungsmittel wäre, einem ein Elefant (als) Fortbewegungsmittel wäre (und) einer [der dritte] etwa einen (von Pferden gezogenen) Wagen fährt [benutzt] ... und der Vollmond ...”, and eMMericK 1968, 209: “If one should intend to leave this world-sphere by means of three vehicles (and) for one vehicle there should be a goat, for one vehicle there should be an elephant (and) as one (vehicle) one rides a chariot ... and the moon would guide ...”.

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fragment in the Berlin turfan collection.9� This identification documents that the text once circulated in Central Asia in an Indian language and points to the circulation (if not formation) in Buddhist Central Asia of pos-sibly large numbers of now lost Mahāyāna sūtras in Indian languages that evidently played a crucial role in the formation of local religious identities. Because the location of the fragment finding is Šorčuq, this testifies to the penetration (unsuccessful in the final event) of Mahāyāna sūtras into the non-Mahāyāna Northern Silk Road, a penetration that is documented by a few other findings of Khotanese materials.94 Unfortunately, because the original Sanskrit fragment of the Aniyatāvatāramudrā is lost and no reproduction is available, it is not possible to say whether palaeographi-cally the manuscript in question may be ascribed to a Khotanese scribal environment.

On reading the Khotanese excerpt against the Tibetan and Chinese ver-sions of the text, in addition to several variations in wording,95 once again a pattern of free adaptation of the source passage and selection in support of the polemical argumentation of chapter 13 is apparent. The text presents the simile of five different conveyances in the context of a discussion of certain or uncertain destinations of bodhisattvas with regard to their at-tainment of the final goal. In particular, the passage in question is occa-sioned by the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s request for an exposition on the de-termined and the undetermined destinations of bodhisattvas who are not to turn away from the path to unsurpassed knowledge. The Buddha first introduces five destinies of bodhisattvas and then assigns them to their respective categories with regard to the certitude or the uncertainty of the goal. I translate here a section from the Tibetan version:

“[The Buddha said:] ‘Mañjuśrī, there are five destinations of bodhisattvas. What are the five? These are: [1] the destination of those [who proceed] by a cart [pulled by] a cow, [2] the destination of those [who proceed] by

9� SHT Viii, 157, see KArAshiMA 2010; for quotations in the Śikṣāsamuccaya see ed. bendAll 1902, 7.1 and 87.14. The Chinese versions are the Bubiding ruding ru yin jing 不必定入定入印經 (T. 645) and the Ruding buding yin jing 入定不定印經 (T. 646); the Tibetan translation is the nges pa dang ma nges par ’gro ba’i phyag rgya la ’jug pa, Ōtani 868, Tōhoku 202.

94 Maggi �004a, �86 and �88-�89 n. �0 and MArTini �0��.95 For example, the Khotanese quotation mentions moon rays (purra-bāyä), whereas the

Tibetan and Chinese texts have throughout the sun and the moon and do not speak of rays (zla ba dang nyi ma ‘moon and sun’ in the Tibetan version, yue ri 月日 ‘id.’ in T. 645 and ri yueshen 日月神 ‘Sun and Moon gods’ in T. 646).


a cart [pulled by] an elephant, [3] the destination of those [who proceed] by a cart [pulled by] the moon and the sun, [4] the destination of those [who proceed] through the supernatural powers of the śrāvakas, and [5] the destination of those [who proceed] through the supernatural powers of the Tathāgatha. Mañjuśrī, these are the five destinations of these bodhisattvas. Mañjuśrī, in that respect there are two types of bodhisattvas whose des-tination is determined with regard to unsurpassed perfect awakening and there are three types of bodhisattvas whose destination is not determined with regard to supreme perfect awakening’.

“Mañjuśrī asked: ‘Blessed One, how can bodhisattvas whose destina-tion for supreme perfect awakening is not determined once again turn away from the path to unsurpassed wisdom?’

“The Blessed One answered: ‘Mañjuśrī, the destination of bodhisattvas [who proceed] by a cart [pulled by] a cow [1], and the destination of bodhi-sattvas [who proceed] by a cart [pulled by] an elephant [2], Mañjuśrī, these are the two types of bodhisattvas whose destination for supreme perfect awakening is not [yet] determined. They are the ones [who can] once again turn away from the path to unsurpassed wisdom. Mañjuśrī, the destination of bodhisattvas [who proceed] by a cart [pulled by] the moon and the sun [3], the destination of bodhisattvas [who proceed] through the supernatural powers of the śrāvakas [4], and the destination of bodhisattvas [who pro-ceed] through the supernatural powers of the Tathāgatha [5], are the three types of bodhisattvas whose destination for supreme perfect awakening is determined, they are those who cannot turn again away from the path to unsurpassed wisdom’.”96

96 Nges pa dang ma nges par ’gro ba’i phyag rgya la ’jug pa, Tōhoku 202, mdo sde, tsha 63b5-64a4 and Ōtani 868, mdo sna tshogs, tsu 66b7-67a6: ’jam dpal byang chub sems dpa’ rnams kyi ’gro ba ni lnga po ’di dag yin te. lnga gang zhe na? ’di lta ste phyugs kyi shing rtas ’gro ba lta bu dang glang po che’i shing rtas ’gro ba lta bu dang zla ba dang nyi mas ’gro ba lta bu dang nyan thos kyi rdzu ’phrul gyis ’gro ba lta bu dang de bzhin gshegs pa’i rdzu ’phrul gyis ’gro ba lta bu ste. ’jam dpal lnga po de dag ni byang chub sems dpa’ rnams kyi ’gro ba yin no. ’jam dpal de la byang chub sems dpa’ gnyis ni bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs pa’i byang chub tu ma nges pa’i ’gro ba pa yin no. byang chub sems dpa’ gsum ni bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs pa’i byang chub tu nges pa’i ’gro ba pa yin no. ’jam dpal gyis gsol pa: bcom ldan ’das byang chub sems dpa’ bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs pa’i byang chub tu ma nges pa’i ’gro ba pa bla na med pa’i ye shes kyi lam las slar ldog pa dag gang lags? bcom ldan ’das kyis bka’ stsal pa: ’jam dpal byang chub sems dpa’ phyugs kyi shing rtas ’gro ba lta bu dang glang po che’i shing rtas ’gro ba lta bu yin te. ’jam dpal byang chub sems dpa’ ’di gnyis ni bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs pa’i byang chub tu ma nges te bla na med pa’i ye

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The presentation continues up to the end of the text with a detailed description of the characteristics of the five types of bodhisattvas as ex-emplified by the five conveyances, with the first two categories naturally engrossed in teachings that are not meritorious enough, and the third be-ing the first of three types of irreversible bodhisattvas. Thus, the citation in the Book of Zambasta has either extracted and simplified the first three types of conveyances in order to make its point or else it reflects a different recension of the original. This remains difficult to determine because the quotation in itself and the verse form of the Book of Zambasta naturally make for somewhat free adjustments of any quoted material.

A further comparison of the three vehicles with three animals of different strength and demeanour is found in yet another quotation in chapter 13, attributed to an as yet uniden tified text. Its title occurs as praśñātaraṇu sūttru in Z ��.�0. ernst leuMann ventured to emend it to praśñ<av>ātaraṇu sūttru on metrical grounds and reconstructed the san-skrit title as *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra.97 he pointed out that the compound praśna-vyākaraṇa occurs in the Mahāvyutpatti,98 but that, as a title, it only applies to a Jaina work.99 In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the title re-mains unknown in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist literature. The comparison runs as follows (Z 13.20-23):

�0 praśñātaraṇu sūttru vīri tta hvate sarvañi balysä kho ju draya nitā ttähvaindä hastä aśśä sahäcä�00 hamālä

shes kyi lam las phyir ldog pa yin no. ’jam dpal byang chub sems dpa’ zla ba dang nyi mas ’gro ba lta bu pa dang byang chub sems dpa’ nyan thos kyi rdzu ’phrul gyis ’gro ba lta bu pa dang byang chub sems dpa’ de bzhin gshegs pa’i rdzu ’phrul gyis ’gro ba lta bu pa ’di gsum ni bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs pa’i byang chub tu nges te bla na med pa’i ye shes kyi lam las phyir mi ldog pa yin no, cf. Bubiding ruding ru yin jing 不必定入定入印經, T. 645 at T. xv 699c9-699c�4 and Ruding buding yin jing 入定不定印經, T. 646 at T. XV 706b18-706c5.

97 or °praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra “Sūtra on the explanation of ...’s question”?98 Mahāvyutpatti 6��0, ed. Sakaki �9�6, 407: gal te zhub zhus nas lung bstan pa’i slad

da skabs phye na = sa cet pṣṭaḥ praśnāvyākaraṇāya avakāśaṃ kuryāt ‘When asked, may he concede an explanation of the inquiry’.

99 leuMann �9��, 54 and �9�9, 4� and 45-46.�00 The word division sahä cä in eMMerick’s edition is not reflected in his translation and

must be an undesired remnant of the interpretation by leuMann �9��-�9�6, �68-�69: ‘ein Hase (irgend)welcher [irgend ein Hase]’ (cf. leuMann �9�9, 4� on cä as an in-definite pronoun). The Old Khotanese diminutive sahäca- (< *saha-ca- by trisyllabic weakening) from saha‑ ‘hare’ is continued in Late Khotanese as sahaica-, on which see bailey 1979, 423, who keeps the word division sahä cä hamālä with the unlikely


�� kho hastä nätā ttähvaittä darroṇa trāyäte satva ttrāmu māñandu mahāyānina saṃtsāri ttähvaindä .�� pratyeka-yānäna trāmu samu kho aśśä nitā ttähvaittä pharuī käḍe khvīhätä ūtca nai rraṣṭo yīndi ttähvastä�� sahe ju kari ūce ne butte ceri baysga nai bunu . skote nāvuñī hämäte narandi trāmu samu śrāvaka-yāni

‘(20) In the *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra, thus did the all-knowing Buddha speak: “Just as [these] three, the elephant, the horse, [and] the hare cross a river together, (21) as the elephant crosses the river [and] delivers beings with courage, likewise with the Mahāyāna they cross [the river of] the round of birth, (22) so with the Pratyekayāna it is just as a horse crosses a river: the water is very greatly disturbed by him, [and] he cannot cross it in a straight line; (23) the hare does not know at all concerning the water how deep it is, [and] he does not touch its bottom but, being not without merit, he can get out; just so is the Śrāvakayāna.’

A parallel to this simile is found in the chapter on three kinds of awaken-ing (those of a śrāvaka, of a pratyekabuddha and of a Buddha) of the Youpo‑sai jie jing 優婆塞戒經 (Discourse on the upāsaka precepts, *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra, T. 1488), another influential text for the Chinese reception of the bodhisattva ideal:

“Good man, the Tathāgata, the World-Honoured One, has perfected wisdom. Although śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas�0� understand the four noble truths, they have not perfected wisdom. Therefore they are not called Buddhas. The Tathāgata, the World-Honoured One, who has perfected wisdom, is called a Buddha. Good clansman, [it is] just like three kinds of animals that cross over the Ganges, [namely] a rabbit, a horse, and a musk elephant. The rabbit does not reach the bottom of the river, but crosses over floating on the water; the horse may or may not reach the bottom; the musk elephant fully reaches the bottom. [Here] the water of the Ganges represents the “river” of twelve causes and conditions [i.e., of dependent arising]. When the śrāvaka crosses over, he is like the rabbit. When the pratyekabuddha crosses over, he is like the horse. And when the Tathāgata crosses over, he is like the musk elephant. Therefore the Tathāgata is called a Buddha. Although the

translation ‘hare, which is companion’, and Degener 1989, 129, who sees the suffix -īca- in it and does not record the Old Khotanese occurrence (Maggi).

�0� Lit. pratyayabuddhas, yuanjue 緣覺. on the etymology of pratyayabuddha see nor-MAn 1983 with a rejoinder by AnālAyo 2010, 11-16; cf. also Von hinüber �00�, �9�.


śrāvakas and the pratyekabuddhas sever their afflictions, they do not sever their habits. The Tathāgata has pulled out the roots of all afflictions and habits, and therefore he is called a Buddha.”�0�

the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra, translated by Dharmarakṣa 竺法護 (�84-4��), otherwise known as *Sujāta-sūtra among contemporary chinese Buddhists because Sujāta features as the Buddha’s questioner,�0� revolves around the good conduct of a lay bodhisattva and the procedure for un-dertaking the precepts. This is a text with a complex history.�04 inter alia,

�0� Youposai jie jing 優婆塞戒經, *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra, T. �488 at T. XXIV 1038b5-1038b14: 善男子! 如來世尊緣智具足. 聲聞緣覺雖知四諦緣智不具. 以是義故不得名佛. 如來世尊緣智足故得名佛. 善男子! 如恒河水三獸俱渡. 兔馬香象. 兔不至底浮水而過. 馬或至底或不至底. 象則盡底. 恒河水者即是十二因緣河也. 聲聞渡時猶如彼兔. 緣覺渡時猶如彼馬. 如來渡時猶如香象. 是故如來得名為佛. 聲聞緣覺雖斷煩惱不斷習氣. 如來能拔一切煩惱習氣根原. 故名為佛; trans. with modifications after heng-ching �994, �6.

�0� cf. chaPPell �996, �7�.�04 according to heng-ching �994, �, the Upāsakaśīla-sūtra is an enlargement and the

“Mahāyānisation” of three smaller sūtras: the Shijialuo yue liu fang li jing 尸迦羅越六方禮經 (Sūtra on the worship of the six directions of exhortation [越, Skt. avavāda and also ovāda] to Shijialuo [*Sīgāla or *Siṅgāla], T. �6 at T. I 250c11), the Sujāta-sūtra translated by Zhi Fadu 支法度 (Shansheng zi jing 善生子經, T. �7 at T. I 252b6; on the title cf. nAnJio 1883, 148 no. 595), and the Sujāta-sūtra in the Dīrgha-āgama = Chang ahan jing 長阿含經 (Shansheng jing 善生經 DĀ �6, T. � at T. i 70a�0, parallel to the Sīgālovāda-sutta [variant titles: Siṅgala° in the Burmese edition, Sīgāla° in the ceylonese edition, and Siṅgālaka° in the Siamese edition], DN �� at DN III 180, with another parallel in the Shanshen jing 善生經, MĀ ��5, T. �6 at T. I 638c6). Contrary to the Taishō attribution, accepted by heng-ching, the Shijialuo yue liu fang li jing 尸迦羅越六方禮經 (T. 16) is not generally included by scholars within the genuine corpus of translations by An Shigao 安世高, not only because of particular vocabulary items, but also because it contains passages in five-character verse which are not found in any genuine work by An Shigao. On external grounds, Sengyou 僧祐 (445-518) classi-fies it as an “anonymous translation” (shi yi 失譯), and does not credit it to An Shigao (cf. nattier 2006, 383 n. 92), probably reflecting the position of Dao’an’s 道安 An lu 安録, the no longer extant catalogue of the canon published in 374 on which Sengyou based his own catalogue (cf. chaPPell 1996, 372). T. �6 is not included in a list of pos-sible translations by An Shigao in zürcher �99�, nattier 2008 or ZAccheTTi 2010. a Japanese translation is available in KAneKo–oyAMA–hAyA �995. tSuchihaShi �964 has proposed that a portion of this discourse was based on the Bodhisattvabhūmi. Another text bearing the same title as the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra is the Youposai jie jing 優婆塞戒經, T. 1488, translated by Dharmarakṣa (385-433). For Sanskrit frag-ments of a version of the Śikhālaka-sūtra from Gandhara, possibly testifying to a Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda recension, and for an appraisal of the different recen-sions of this discourse, see hartMann–Wille �006. an introduction to and english


a manuscript of this sūtra was found at the site of Toyok, which testifies to the spread of this scripture in this area of northern central asia.�05 from an ideological point of view, it is remarkable that within a text concerned with the effective undertaking of the bodhisattva path by means of its precepts one finds again elements of the same polemical doxography dis-cussed above, which somehow motivates the practitioner by convincing him or her of the superiority of the chosen path. The doxographic map that a community accepts as its point of reference for the representation of the Buddhist vehicles and thereby for its own self-assessment and place-ment within this map is a very important ideological factor in the shap-ing of the identity of religious groups within the Mahāyāna movement. Naturally, any such map is by definition informed by purposes that are inherently sectarian.

The simile of the three animals occurs in a vast array of Chinese texts, for example in another translation by Dharmarakṣa, the Puyao jing 普曜經 (T. 186), a work that is sometimes referred to as the earliest translation of the Lalitavistara, although the actual textual relationship between the text translated by Dharmarakṣa and the Sanskrit Lalitavistara is not of direct dependence. The interest of this occurrence lies in its being some-how unexpected within a biography of the Buddha that is not supposed to be an overtly Mahāyāna text.�06 another less surprising instance of the

translation of the four chinese translations of the sūtra (T. 16, 17, 26 [MĀ 135], and 1 [DĀ 16]) in comparison with the Pāli version is found in PannaSiri 1950. It is worth noticing that the way the Mahāyāna tradition regards this discourse as “the Vinaya of the lay bodhisattva”, similar to the way the Theravāda tradition regards the Pali Sīgālovāda-sutta, which is commonly referred to as “the householder’s Vinaya” (gihi‑vinaya) cf. barua �9�5, rhys dAVids–rhys dAVids �9��, �68-�7�, laW �9��-�9��, 85 n. �, laW �9��, ��, naraDa �995, Von hinüber �996, ��-��, freiberger 2000, 197-200 and �005, bodhi �005, �09, and crosby 2006. For a quotation from a Śīkhāla-sūtra in the Karmavibhaṅga see ed. lévi �9��, 56,�-5 and ed. Kudo �004, �5�-�55 n. 27, 260-261 n. 35, and 269 n. 47. This label continued to be productively appropriated as late as 1898, when Anāgarika dhArMApālA produced a pamphlet in sinhala titled “Gihi Vinaya ‘The daily code for the laity’”, in which he aimed at introducing Bud-dhist ethical principles as a means of reforming the social behaviour and etiquette of the emerging Sinhala elite, sometimes drawing on Western notions of decorum, thus testifying to the potential for renovation and reinterpretation of the traditional category of the “domestic Vinaya”, see goMbrich 1988, 213-215. On the significance of the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra for Mahāyāna ethics see chaPPell �996.

�05 yaMabe �005, ��.�06 T. �86 at T. 488b20-488b26: 世有三獸: 一兔, 二馬, 三白象. 兔之渡水趣自渡耳; 馬雖差

猛, 猶不知水之深淺也; 白象之渡盡其源底. 聲聞緣覺其猶兔馬, 雖度生死不達法本; 菩薩

54 giuliana Martini

appearance of the simile is found in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra.�07

the simile of the three animals that the Book of Zambasta quotes from the *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra is then followed, in Z 13.24-32, by four more comparisons that are attributed to the same sūtra but have not been so far identified. Interestingly, the quotation imme diately precedes that of the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā:

�4 pātcu hvate augamo mäśtu ttäña hamäña sūttäro balysä kho ju draya hvąndi barāru kīnthālsto bārā draya�5 śśau hasta-bārai āya śätä ju aśśa-bārai āya däddä ju khara-bārai āya hamäña kīnthālsto barāre .�6 hastä māñandä mahāyānä u kharä śrāvaka-yāni . prattyeka-yāni kho aśśä baḍe u nirvānä kho kaṃtha .�7 kho ye ggaṃggo nitā ttätsaiyi mästä no pharu käḍe hva’ndi . ttrāmu māñaṃdu mahāyāni kho no ggaṃgga kho klaiśa .�8 kho ju ysāysīno dālysu hve’ bañite bendī nättä . ttäna ggaṃggo nitā ttitsaiyi ttrāmu samu śrāvaka-yāni�9 kyerä balysä ṣṣāvā rrīye kyeri hastarä biśśäna padīna ttärä hastari dātä mahāyāni kho biśśä śrāvaka-yāni�0 kyeri rrvīyä ggūträ utāri tteri mahāyāni utāri . ttäna cu ttäna ggūtriṇa balysa balysūśtu hastama busta�� kho ju hārñä ggūtträ biśśānu ṣṣāvānu ggūttärä ttrāmä . kvī darro hāruvi hvą’ndi ko tta kei’ rruśti yanīmä .�� ttäna ni ttäña ggūttäru ysātä nai mäśtä rrvīye padaṃje . trāmu māñandina mulysgä ṣṣāvānu aysmū hīni

‘(24) Afterwards, in the same sūtra, the Buddha spoke of a great simile: “Just as when three men ride to a city, [those] three riders (25) – be one an elephant-rider, be the second a horse-rider, be the third a donkey-rider – ride to the same city. (26) The Mahāyāna is like the elephant and the Śrāvakayāna like the donkey; the Pratyeka[Buddha]yāna is like riding the horse; and Nirvāṇa is like the city. (27) As one crosses the river Ganges – great is the ship and very

大乘譬若白象, 解暢三界十二緣起, 了之本無, 救護一切莫不蒙濟. the Répertoire of the Hōbōgirin reconstructs the title of T. �86 as *Lalitavistara. a later translation of the Lali‑tavistara is the Fang guang da zhuang yan jing 方廣大莊嚴經 (T. 187), trans. by Divakāra in 683; many more parallels to the Lalitavistara are found in T. 190, a vast compilation of biographies of the Buddha translated in 587-591 (or 592) by *Jñānagupta. T. 186 has been studied by KAWAno 2006; on the Mahāyāna in the Lalitvastara see de Jong �997-�998.

�07 e.g. Da banniepan jing, 大般涅槃經, T. �74 at T. xii 5��c�9-5�4a�: 故不能得見, 又未能渡十二因緣河猶如兔馬 (for the title of the sūtra I follow habata 2007, xliii-li).


many are the men [embarked on the ship] – likewise the Mahāyāna is like the ship, the Ganges like [one’s] defilements. (28) As a man binds a raft of reeds, sits on it, [and] by it crosses the river Ganges, just so is the Śrāvakayāna.�08 (29) As much as the Buddha has excelled the śrāvakas, how much better he is in every way, so much better is the Dharma of the Mahāyāna than the entire Śrāvakayāna. (30) As noble as the royal lineage, so noble is the Mahāyāna, because Buddhas from this lineage have realised best awakening. (31) Just as the merchant lineage, so is the lineage of all the śrāvakas. If a merchant man had the courage, would that he should think thus: “I will act royally.”�09 (32) For this reason he was not born in that lineage: he does not possess the great, royal customs. Like such a one, the intelligence of the śrāvakas is limited, inferior.’

The same simile of the three animals crossing a river also occurs in the Vibhāṣā compendia, according to which a rabbit (the śrāvaka) swims on the surface of the river of dependent arising, a horse (the pratyekabuddha) some-times treads the bottom of the river and sometimes swims on the surface, and an elephant (the Buddha) always threads the bottom. The simile is employed in a context that deals with the difference between the three vehicles and therefore presupposes a Mahāyāna taxonomy of the vehicles, but the tone of the passage is not especially polemical.��0

On account of the presence of elements that can be related to (Mahāyāna) Sarvāstivāda-Yogācāra milieux in the Book of Zambasta, and of specific themes shared by the Book of Zambasta and Vaibhāṣika texts (including the Mahāvibhāṣā itself),�� this parallel occurrence is particularly signifi-cant in terms of defining the religio-historical context of early Khotanese

�08 I am tempted to read the ship and raft simile in stanzas 27-29, perhaps over-interpret-ing it, as a polemical, somewhat parodistic appropriation of the famous raft simile, MN �8 at MN i �60,�� and MĀ �0�, T. �6 at T. I 767c5, a parable which is also often quoted in support of a somehow modernistic and relativistic interpretation of Bud-dhist texts, cf. AnālAyo 2011, 152-153 with nn. �5-�6.

�09 The king and merchant simile in stanzas 30-32 echoes the symbolism of the Bud-dha’s and bodhisattva’s royal genealogies found in works such as the Mahāvastu, see Tournier �0��. cf. n. 70.

��0 Apidamo da piposha lun 阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論, T. �545 at T. XXVII 735b16-735b21: 說名為佛: 二乘不爾. 有說. 若有於甚深緣起河能盡源底. 說名為佛: 二乘不爾. 故經喻以三獸渡河. 謂兔馬象. 兔於水上但浮而渡馬或履地或浮而渡. 香象恒時蹈底而渡. 聲聞獨覺及與如來. 渡緣起河如次亦爾 (on this passage cf. yaMabe 2009, 63); cf. the ear-lier recensions of the Vibhāṣā, Piposha lun 毘婆沙論, T. �547 at T, XXVIII 445c8 ff. and Apitan piposha lun 阿毘曇毘婆沙論, T. 1546 at T. XXVIII 277a16 ff.

�� see Martini �0�� and �0��.

56 giuliana Martini

Buddhism, while at the same time it reveals how the Book of Zambasta seems to bend to its own polemical purposes materials that were not neces-sarily meant to indicate such a conspicuous fracture between the emergent Mahāyāna communities and the non-Mahāyānists.

2.3. Style and aim of the simile quotations

As we have seen, the illustration of the three vehicles as three animals of dif-ferent faculties found in a quotation the Book of Zambasta attributes to the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā only loosely reflects its alleged source. As to the quotation of the Aniyatāvatāramudrā, it matches its indian source (to the extent that this is reflected in the Chinese and Tibetan translations of the text), but the citation is bent to serve the purposes of the Khotanese Mahāyāna discourse. And the passage with the simile of the three animals at-tributed to the *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra goes with that of the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra, although it is unlikely that the quotation was derived directly from the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra�� because the other comparisons revolving around the superiority of the Great Vehicle quoted in the subsequent stanzas quoted from the *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra are absent in the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra (at least as this discourse is preserved in the extant Chinese translation).

3. conclusion

If the religio-historical reconstruction I sketched in the first part of this study stands any chance to be by and large correct, with the emergence of a politically sponsored Mahāyāna ecclesiastic institution, then the literary evidence afforded by the similes of the Book of Zambasta would be a direct indicator of the mechanisms instrumental in the creation of divisive reli-gious identities that were functional to the establishment of the hegemony of the Mahāyāna and the political power behind it. It would be only natural for the “institutions” of bodhisattva precepts and rituals to be located at the cen-tre of such dynamics, as my reading of the Book of Zambasta shows. That is, the survey of the different ways the Book of Zambasta exploits these similes for the purposes of propaganda clearly indicates that the textual materials in question are informed by an ideological preoccupation to provide authorita-tive frames of references for the bodhisattva practice. The Khotanese mate-rials reflect a common ground between the undertaking and observance of

�� Were this the case, the title *Praśnavyākaraṇa-sūtra could be an alternative title of the *Upāsakaśīla-sūtra.


the bodhisattva’s code of conduct and a clear awareness of being upholders of the Great Vehicle rather than of the Śrāvakayāna. The formation of sche-mata and scriptures of bodhisattva precepts in India is an intricate subject,�� located, as it is, at the intersection of doctrinal and institutional religious history. In this respect, works such as the Vinayaviniścaya-Upāliparipcchā and the other texts discussed in the foregoing pages testify to the interwoven normative and ideological imperatives in the Khotan of the fifth and sixth centuries. Because of its contents, cross-referencing, structure and agenda, the local Khotanese Book of Zambasta also inhabits such a frontier region.

This sort of ideological tendencies, as we have seen, can be traced back, in India or China, to texts that are earlier than or roughly contemporary with the Book of Zambasta, fitting well with the landscape of the time. This finding contributes to the placement in history of the Book of Zambasta and of the early Buddhism of Khotan. At the same time, although sufficient and reliable historical, let alone micro-historical data, are unavailable in the case of Khotan, the ideological discourse that emerges on making the interpretative effort to read the Khotanese Mahāyāna polemics historically can indeed be made better sense of when read from the angle of the long tides and trajectories of Late Antique Eurasia.��4

TeXT AbbreViATions

AN Aṅguttara-nikāyaDĀ Dīrgha-āgama (T. 1)DN Dīgha-nikāyaMĀ Madhyama-āgama (T. 26)MN Majjhima-nikāyaZ Book of Zambasta (ed. eMMerick 1968).

�� As pointed out by MatSuMura �990, 85 n. 5�, “[i]t is still a desideratum to establish a chronology of the various Mahayana texts on the Vinaya of the Bodhisattva and trace how its conception developed”; for sources and literature on the subject see Mat-SuMura �990 and funayaMa �005.

��4 pAluMbo forthcoming (“Epilogue”) warns historians of religions to ascribe sectarian divides and developments to purely internal or doctrinal factors, and proposes that “their infectious germ should rather be sought in the eristic discourse that Buddhist missionaries from northwestern India and Bactria introduced in northern China in the last two decades of the fourth century ... an impact of the ongoing Christianization of the Mediterranean, the allure of rulers professing a universal religious norm, and of raucous sectarians carrying the day in their shade, may have been felt well into the Buddhist workshops to the east of Iran and of the Arabian Sea, sparking ... a divisive emergence of religious identities across Late Antique Eurasia”.

58 giuliana Martini

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Volume details:

Series: Multilingualism and History of Knowledge vol. 1 (Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse vol. 848; Iranische Onomastik vol. 11)

Series editors: Jens E. Brarvig, Markham J. Geller, Velizar Sadovski and Gebhard Selz

Volume title: Buddhism among the Iranian Peoples of Central Asia

Editors: Mattedo De Chiara, Mauro Maggi and Giuliana Martini

Publisher: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Place of publication: Vienna

Year of publication: 2013

ISBN13: 978-3-7001-7274-1

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