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Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c10.s4: Relation Among the Various Prajñāpāramitās

Aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relation to Hīnayāna c10.s4

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Relation Among the Various Prajñāpāramitās

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It is generally believed,—there is also a tradition to this effect,—that there has been a gradual abridgment of the original Prajñāpāramitā and this has given rise to the various treatises called the Śatasāhasrikā, Pañcaviṃśatisā°, Aṣṭādaśasā°, Daśasā°, Aṣṭasā°, Saptaśatikā, Ardhaśatikā, ending with Ekākṣarī. Strictly speaking all these Prajñāpāramitās excepting the first three or four are not really abridgments of the larger ones but are independent works devised and written by different compilers at different times. The main theme of all the works is, of course, the same, viz., the establishment of the new Śūnyatā philosophy, and the assertion that the Truth can be realised through the practice of the prajñāpāramitā only. There are many extraneous matters, which have been discussed incidentally in the larger Prajñāpāramitās and passed over in the smaller ones, e.g., the sense of the 18 śūnyatās, 118 samādhis, the various cakṣus, the bodhipakṣikadharmas. It seems to me that the larger Prajñāpāramitās are not merely unnecessary expansions of the smaller ones, and that it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the Vajracchedikā is an abridgment of the Śata., or the Ekākṣarī gives all that a Prajñāpāramitā can give.

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And then as against the tradition that the smaller Prajñāpāramitās are abridgments of the larger ones, a view is current among modern oriental scholars that the truth lies in the opposite direction. Dr. Tucci is an advocate of this view. In his introduction to the Saptaśatikā, he says "Save rare exceptions, bigger compilations do nothing but expand in an emphasizing way those fundamental concepts, which constitute the kernel of Prajñāpāramitā. Those fundamental concepts are to be found more succinctly and without excessive repetitions in shorter manuals. The Saptaśatikā goes immediately into the core of the subject-matter and without so many repetitions expounds in one dialogue the theme, the interlocutors being Buddha, Mañjuśrī and Śaradvatiputra" ¹. Prof. Tucci overlooks the fact that the Saptaśatikā touches the fringe of a wide range of topics discussed in the other Prajñāpāramitās and cannot be taken as giving the gist of a large Prajñāpāramitā. To carry to the extreme his line of thought we may say in one word that Śūnyatā is the teaching of the Prajñāpāramitās and it contains the gist of the whole literature. The view which Tucci endorses is really the outcome of the critical study of the brahmanic literature. It has been found that in some cases the brahmanical works were originally short and simple, and in course of time they became voluminous by glosses or philosophical interpretations. The Buddhist literature stands on quite a different footing, and what may be true for the brahmanic literature is not necessarily true for the buddhist. In the latter case we find that the language of the older texts is simpler although they are more verbose and full of repetitions, while the later texts are concise, less verbose, and have fewer repetitions. Again, the voluminousness of the earlier *Prajñāpāramitās* was due to repetitions and not to glosses and philosophical interpretations. Hence the relation between the smaller and the larger *Prajñāpāramitās* should be ascertained by an independent enquiry and not by any general theory. It can only be possible when we have the *Prajñāpāramitās* in handy editions. So, for the present, we must confine ourselves to a comparison of the *Aṣṭa.*, 12 (out of the 72) chapters of the *Śata.* and the recast version of the *Pañcaviṃśati.*, which is in the course of publication.¹ The relation between the *Aṣṭa.* and the *Śata.* can be hardly called that of abridgment or expansion as it can be said between the *Śata.* and the *Pañcaviṃśati.* The *Aṣṭa.* does not contain a word about the glorious Buddhakāya and other matters of the Nidāna. It starts directly with the question as to the propriety of Subhūti in teaching Mahāyāna, a topic taken up in the second chapter of the *Śata.*² In the first chapter, the *Aṣṭa.* discusses when a bodhisattva is to be regarded as mahāsan-nāhasannaddhah (well-armoured), which is treated in the seventh chapter of the *Śata.*³ Then the question "What is Mahāyāna?" is answered at the very beginning of the *Aṣṭa.* while it is taken up in the eleventh chapter of the *Śata.*⁴ Instances of agreement, sometimes verbal, like those mentioned above can be multiplied to show that the *Aṣṭa.* and the *Śata.* deal with identical topics, but the arrangement and the emphasis laid on a particular topic are quite different. Besides this, the Śata. introduced new topics like bhūmis and expositions of the various śūnyatās, samādhis, etc.,¹ which were only enumerated or referred to in the Aṣṭa. So it may be said that the Śata. utilised the Aṣṭa. and not vice versa. Again, some of the Prajñāpāramitās were evidently abridged from the Śata. The Pañcaviṃśati. is clearly an abridgment of the Śata. effected by an omission of set enumerations and repetitions by the use of words, such as yāvad, peyyālam or by sometimes mentioning only the positives in full without the negatives. In short, the Pañcaviṃśati. tried to preserve the original with the utmost accuracy.

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¹ Saptaśatikā Prajñāpāramitā (Memorie della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), 1923, vol. xvii, fasc. iii.

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¹ There is another *Prajñāpāramitā* published first by Prof. Leumann (Schriften der wissenschaftlichen Gessellschaft in Strassburg, 1912) and then by Messrs. H. Izumi and S. Toganov (Kyoto, 1917) called *Prajñāpāramitā-nayaśatapañcāstika*.

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² *Aṣṭa.*, p. 4 = *Śata.*, ch. II.

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³ " p. 23 = " p. 1405.

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⁴ *Aṣṭa.*, p. 24 = *Śata.*, p. 1530.

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¹ See, e.g. Śata., Ch. VIII ff.

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Very recently a fragment of a Prajñāpāramitā manuscript (48 leaves) found in Central Asia has been published in the Memoirs of the Archæological Survey of India (No. 32). The editor, Mr. Bidyabinod, believes on the evidence of the Upright Gupta characters used in it, that the fragments belong to a date earlier than 580 A.C. He has also shown that the subject-matter and phraseology of the fragment resemble those of the Śata. and that the portion contains a slightly shorter version of chapters vii-xi of the latter. The fragment contains the sections on the interpretation of the Pāramitās, Śūnyatās, Samādhis and the Bodhipakṣika dharmas and closely follows the corresponding passages of the Pañcaviṃśati., having slight difference like dharmebhyaḥ for dharmaiḥ, or bāhya for bahirddhāḥ. The fragment might be regarded as a copy of the original Pañcaviṃśati. but the portions found in it are so very common that it is difficult to say definitely that it is a copy of the Pañcaviṃśati. and not of the Aṣṭādaśa. or any other work. It can, however, be said that it is not a copy of the Śata., for in some places the abridgments have been made on the lines of the Pañcaviṃśati. In Ceylon also some inscriptions have been discovered recently, containing fragments of the Prajñāpāramitā.² They correspond to the nidāna-section of the Śata. and the Pañcaviṃśati.; the agreements though quite close cannot be called literal. So it seems they are taken from a recension of either the Pañcaviṃśati. or the Aṣṭādaśa.

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² Ceylon Journal of Science, II.

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The comparison of the Śata., Pañcaviṃśati. and Aṣṭa. confirms our contention that the generalisations regarding abridgment and expansion of the Prajñāpāramitās are not possible and that each book must be judged by its contents. If we consider the Saptaśatikā, which is supposed to be older than the expanded ones, we notice that the interlocutors are Mañjuśrī and Śariputra, and not Subhūti and Śariputra, the most common figures of the very early Mahāyāna treatises. There is a class of literature like the Gaṇḍavyūha, in which Mañjuśrī plays the chief rôle, and so it may be that this Prajñāpāramitā was the production of a class of devotees who held Mañjuśrī in great veneration. The mention of the Nirālamba-bhaginī, i.e., concretion of an abstract idea, hints rather at its posteriority than priority to the larger Prajñāpāramitās.

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