Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c10.s4.2

c10.s4.2

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.