འཕགས་པ་སྲད་པ་འཕ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.13

intro.13

Interestingly, the Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese versions of the sūtra unanimously state that “no phenomenon whatsoever transmigrates from this world to another world,” with one notable exception in Bodhiruci’s Chinese translation (Taishō 575), which states in the same passage, “there is one phenomenon that transmigrates from this life into the future life.”¹⁶ Intriguingly, the Bodhiruci version does not indicate what exactly this one phenomenon is or how it functions in the process of transmigration. Discussing this passage, N. Aiyaswami Sastri speculates that this version, as the earliest translation, may indicate that the original narrative of the sūtra originated from schools, such as the Vātsiputrīya and Saṃmitīya, that assert the transmigration of the “person” or some similar phenomenon. In this case, the title of the sūtra, Transmigration Through Existences, would indeed accord with those that say transmigration occurs.¹⁷ However, our research has not unearthed any other evidence that traces the sūtra specifically to these schools, and all the later editions clearly do not reflect this view.