གླང་པའ་རྩལ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.11

intro.11

There is to our knowledge no extant complete Sanskrit version of the Hasti­kakṣya­sūtra. Apart from fragments of Khotanese and Sanskrit versions of the text, the complete text is extant only in Tibetan and Chinese translations.² The Hasti­kakṣya­sūtra was translated into Chinese by Dharmarakṣa in the third century and by Dharmamitra in the fifth century (Taishō 813 and 814 respectively). The text is found in Kangyur collections of different periods and is also recorded in the Denkarma³ and Phangthangma⁴ catalogs of Tibetan imperial translations. Thus it appears that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by an unknown translator no later than the early ninth century, as the Denkarma is dated to 812 ce. The Tibetan translations do not mention the names of the translators.⁵ According to the findings of Liu and Chen, the earliest Chinese and the Sanskrit versions share an earlier source text, while the later Chinese and the Tibetan and Khotanese versions share a later source text.⁶ This English translation was prepared based on the Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyur.