བཅམ་ལྡན་འདས་མ་ཤས་རབ་ཀྱ་ཕ་རལ་ཏ་ཕྱན་པའ་སྙང་པ notes.4

notes.4

4. The Heart Sūtra’s Chinese origins were first pointed out in English by Jan Nattier (1992), who argued that the short version of The Heart Sūtra was originally compiled in China rather than India. Nattier further suggested that The Heart Sūtra was transmitted to the famous Chinese translator Xuanzang (600/602–64), who edited the Chinese text and subsequently translated it into Sanskrit. Some elements in Nattier’s study, such as the role of Xuanzang in producing the Sanskrit translation and subsequently transmitting the sūtra within China, have since been challenged by other scholars, such as Dan Lusthaus (2003, pp. 81–87) and Kōsei Ishii (2015). For a critique of Lusthaus’s arguments, see Attwood 2020. Jeffrey Kotyk (2019, pp. 538–40) also argues that Xuanzang is unlikely to have received The Heart Sūtra prior to his journey to India but suggests that he may have compiled it in Chinese after his return to China. Nevertheless, Nattier’s main thesis—that the short version of The Heart Sūtra was originally compiled in China based on existing sources in Chinese—still appears the most compelling account of events. Notably, Shi (2014) was the first scholar to apply Nattier’s methods to other parts of the text. Over the last decade, Jayarava Attwood has written extensively on this topic (e.g., 2015, 2017a, 2017b, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021) and provided many new insights in favor of the Chinese origin of The Heart Sūtra. Besides adding weight to the argument that the sūtra was compiled in China, Attwood’s writings have also contributed much to our general knowledge of The Heart Sūtra, in particular the history and linguistic nature of the Chinese and Sanskrit sources. Besides the articles by Attwood included in this bibliography, links to his other published articles on The Heart Sūtra can be found at his blog: http://jayarava.blogspot.com.