འཕགས་པ་བ་མ་བླ་གྲས་བཟང་མས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད notes: Notes

The Inquiry of the Girl Sumati notes

Language: English

Notes

notes.1

1. The Sūtra Teaching Four Factors (translated 2019).

notes.3

3. The Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Four Factors (translated 2023).

notes.4

4. For studies of this topic see Burlingame 1917, Brown 1972, Thompson 1998, Yagi 2007, and Michaelis 2016 (p. 56, n. 18).

notes.5

5. The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (translated 2017).

notes.6

6. The Questions of Gaṅgottarā (translated 2024).

7. The deliberate transformation of sex, as described in this and a number of other sūtras, has been the subject of several scholarly studies. Two early studies are Paul 1979 (especially chapter 5), and Schuster 1981. Other discussions include those found in Peach 2002 and Young 2007. On Buddhist attitudes toward women and sexuality, more generally and in classical South Asia, one may also consult the collection edited by Cabezón 1992 and Cabezón’s monograph (2017).

notes.8

8. These catalog entries are noted in Herrmann-Pfandt 2008 (p. 31, no. 54). See also Denkarma, 296.a.6.

notes.9

9. Dunhuang manuscripts (IOL Tib J 203).

notes.10

10. University of Cambridge (MS Or.131.1).

notes.11

11. Information on the Chinese translations can be found in Lewis R. Lancaster’s catalogue of the Korean Buddhist canon: http://www.acmuller.net/descriptive_catalogue/index.html [last accessed 19 Jan 2024].

notes.12

12. https://lapislazulitexts.com/tripitaka/T0310-LL-30-sumati/ [last accessed 21 May 2024].

notes.13

13. https://lapislazulitexts.com/tripitaka/T0336-LL-sumatidarika/ [last accessed 21 May 2024].

notes.14

14. The Degé Kangyur has yid du ’ong ba, which we interpret as yid du ’ong bar, as all four Chinese translations have some variation on “giving with joy.”

notes.15

15. Among the Chinese translations, Taishō 310 (p. 961) and Taishō 336 (p. 2) say that one offers flowers, fruits, and fine powder, while Taishō 334 (p. 2) and Taishō 335 (p. 2) suggest that one crushes the lotus flowers, mixes them together to make a fine powder, and offers that to the Buddha’s stūpa and relics.

notes.16

16. All the Chinese translations say “without using flattery.”

notes.17

17. The Chinese translations all interpret this to mean “not feeling envy toward others’ virtues or possessions.”

notes.18

18. Taishō 310 (p. 961) and Taishō 336 (p. 2) indicate that this means “not hiding one’s faults from one’s spiritual friends,” while Taishō 334 (p. 2) and Taishō 335 (p. 2) suggest it means “to be always sincere” toward them.

notes.19

19. While Taishō 310 and Taishō 336 are similar to the Tibetan, Taishō 334 (p. 2) and Taishō 335 (p. 2) have “always upholding the precepts, meditative concentration, and wisdom.”

notes.20

20. In Taishō 334 (p. 2) and Taishō 335 (p. 2), the first item listed here is absent and instead one finds “frequent recollection of the Buddha,” which is equivalent to the third item listed in the Tibetan, and for the third item Taishō 334 and Taishō 335 read “frequent recollection of the Dharma.”

notes.21

21. In the dialogue and narrative events that follow, the four Chinese translations agree with and differ from each other and the Tibetan translation in various ways. However, for the most part, we have not noted the differences here. A full comparison among the different versions thus awaits further analysis.

notes.22

22. As another example of the differences found between the different versions, Taishō 310 (p. 962) and Taishō 336 (p. 3) say more simply that there will be no women in that buddha realm, which is the apparent implication here in the Tibetan as well, while in Taishō 334 (p. 3) and Taishō 335 (p. 3) there is no mention made of Māra, the lower realms of rebirth, or women.

notes.23

23. The term translated here as “objective basis” is dmigs pa (Skt. ālambana), a term that refers to the mental image that forms the basis for a perception or cognition. The point being made here is that such statements as “this is a man” or “this is a woman” involve an active perception of mental objects that are taken as real things, even though they do not have any objective basis in reality.

notes.24

24. The single folio of the Sanskrit fragment begins with this sentence and runs to the end of the sūtra.

notes.25

25. The various translations of this sūtra into Chinese and Tibetan often attest to different numbers of beings and eons, both previously as well as here. For example, Taishō 310 (p. 962) and Taishō 336 (p. 3) both have “a thousand eons,” while Taishō 334 (p. 4) and Taishō 335 (p. 5) both have “ten eons,” and the Sanskrit manuscript also has “ten eons.”

notes.26

26. Following the Tibetan translation. The Sanskrit manuscript seems to say that their name will be Praṇidhānālaṅkāra or “Adornment of Vows,” though this is only a difference of two syllables from Pratibhānālaṅkāra, which would be the hypothetical reconstruction of the Sanskrit name from the Tibetan translation. Bodhiruci’s Chinese translation (Taishō 310 and 336) has 辯才莊嚴 (“Adornment of Eloquence”), which matches the Tibetan. By contrast, Dharmarakṣa’s much earlier translation (Taishō 334) has 莊飾預知人意 (“Adornment Foreseeing People’s Thoughts”), a name that appears with only slight variation in Kumārajīva’s subsequent translation (Taishō 335), which reads 莊飾豫知人意 and translates the same way (“Adornment Foreseeing People’s Thoughts”). It may be that the name in the Sanskrit bears some correlation to the earlier Chinese translations, but this is not entirely clear to us.