ཚའ་མཐའ་མད intro.12

intro.12

In the 1989 supplement (no. 2) of the Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden (“Sanskrit Dictionary of the Buddhist Texts from the Turfan Expeditions”), the Japanese scholar Hisashi Matsumura presented an edition of the Sanskrit text of the Āyuḥparyanta­sūtra together with a critical edition of the Tibetan translation based on five editions (the Narthang, Degé, Choné, Lhasa, and Kangxi Kangyurs). Matsumura prepared his Sanskrit edition on the basis of Raghu Vira and Lokesh Chandra’s (1959–74) facsimile edition of a manuscript from Gilgit in present-day northern Pakistan. Gilgit was an important transit zone for traveling Buddhist monks from India, Iran, and China and an important connector between South Asia and the Central Asian Silk Roads.¹³ During the reign of the Palola Ṣāhis (c. 585–720 ce), who were patrons of Buddhism, Gilgit was a flourishing Buddhist kingdom, and there is evidence that Buddhism was alive in Gilgit until at least the tenth century,¹⁴ an estimate that sits well with the date of the single Chinese translation. The Jiaoliang shouming jing 較量壽命經 was translated in 984 ce by Tianxi Zai, a Kashmiri Buddhist monk who was active as a translator in China from 980–1000 ce; however, Matsumara states that the Chinese translation appears to be based on a different version of the sūtra.¹⁵ It is still possible that Tianxi Zai brought a version of the sūtra with him to China. In any case, the editors of the Gilgit manuscript had given it the mistaken title Kālasūtra, which is the name of one of the hells mentioned in the sūtra itself. Concerning its style, the sūtra’s syntax is very repetitive, except for the fifty-two verses that make up a considerable part of the text. Some of these verses are also found in the celebrated Buddhist verse collections, the Udānavarga and the Dharmapada.¹⁶