SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 222 March, 2012 Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Interplay of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian Source Materials edited by John R. McRae and Jan Nattier Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS FOUNDED 1986 Editor-in-Chief VICTOR H. MAIR Associate Editors PAULA ROBERTS MARK SWOFFORD ISSN 2157-9679 (print) 2157-9687 (online) SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-in-chief actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. 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You should also check our Web site at www.sino-platonic.org, as back issues are regularly rereleased for free as PDF editions. Sino-Platonic Papers is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Buddhism Across BoundAries The Interplay of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian Source Materials Edited by John R. McRae and Jan Nattier Fo Guang Shan Foundation for Buddhist and Culture Education Taipei, Taiwan and Sino-Platonic Papers John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism Across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 222 (March, 2012) Contents iv Foreword v Preface viii Contributors 1 Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Foreign Input Erik Zürcher 26 Early Prakrit and Sanskrit Manuscripts from Xinjiang (Second to Fifth/Sixth Centuries C.E.): Paleography, Literary Evidence, and Their Relation to Buddhist Schools Lore Sander 50 Buddhist Sanskrit Texts from Northern Turkestan and Their Relation to the Chinese Tripiṭaka Jens-Uwe Hartmann 63 The Oldest Buddhist Incantation in Chinese? A Preliminary Study of the Chinese Transcriptions of the Mantra in the Druma-kinnara-rāja-paripṛcchā-sūtra Paul Harrison and W. South Coblin 86 Aśvaghoṣa in Central Asia: Some Comments on the Recensional History of His Works in Light of Recent Manuscript Discoveries John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism Across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 222 (March, 2012) Richard Salomon 106 Khotan, an Early Center of Buddhism in Chinese Turkestan Prods Oktor Skjærvø 142 Textual Sources for Buddhism in Khotan Hiroshi Kumamoto 150 The Khotanese Antecedents of The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish (Xianyu jing) Victor H. Mair 179 Aršak, Parthian Buddhists, and “Iranian” Buddhism David A. Utz 192 The “Sūtra of Complete Enlightenment” in Old Turkish Buddhism Peter Zieme 212 Rituals, Religious Communities, and Buddhist Sūtras in India and China Nancy J. Barnes 226 The Movement of Buddhist Texts from India to China and the Construction of the Chinese Buddhist Canon Lewis Lancaster 239 Bibliography John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism Across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 222 (March, 2012) John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 207 (September, 2010) Foreword As the world moves into the information age, modernization of Buddhism seems more and more important. With the focus on the wonders of computers and the Internet, people may lose sight of innate goodness and humanity. The new era holds some very sticky moral and ethical issues, which people will puzzle over the rest of the 90’s. You’ll also fi i nd that problems which deal with divorce, AIDS, abuse of alcohol and drugs, step-parenting, and job loss are dragging on everywhere. The 90’s have been the most volatile of decades. To keep up with society’s demand for stabilization, purifying the human mind is a basic way to reduce crime. People may learn discipline through religious practice. Far from being out of touch with the world, Buddhism, above all other religions, is in close contact with the mundane realities of our lives. Buddhism sprang from India and flourished in China. From roughly the fourth cen- tury onwards Buddhism began to spread over all sections of China. It highlights the intimate connection with Chinese culture. It has had an impact on our country for several decades. Buddhism has withstood the test of time after twenty centuries. Not only is it overwhelming in China, but also in other countries such as Japan, Korea, Europe, the United States, and so on. Since its establishment more than thirty years ago Fo Guang Shan, founded in 1967, has been devoted to the propagation of Buddhist teachings through monastic and secular education, cultural activities, Buddhist practice, and charity on every continent. The book Buddhism Across Boundaries was the outcome of the presentation of the conference held in January 1993 at Hsi Lai Temple. All invited speakers were known for their specialities. The main focus was on the relation between Chinese Buddhism and the western regions, placing special emphasis on the culture and language of Buddhism indicated in the early texts and translations. Among the topics discussed in detail were the various attempts to explore an- other new f i ield in Buddhist research. A series of conferences, creating an atmosphere where Buddhism thrives, was our goal. We hoped to break down barriers and get an opportunity to set a new wave of discussion over related aspects in Buddhism. We also hailed the conference as a major breakthrough for re- search. Buddhist thought could reach a new peak, and all efforts we have made would enhance academic developments. Xing Yun Fo Guang Shan April 19, 1999 ivc John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism Across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 222 (March, 2012) John R. McRae and Jan Nattier, eds., “Buddhism across Boundaries,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 207 (September, 2010) Preface This volume is the product of a conference held in January 1993 at Hsi Lai Temple in Ha- cienda Heights, California, under the sponsorship of the Fo Guang Shan Foundation for Buddhist Culture Education and Hsi Lai University. The original goal of the conference, as designed by the editors (primarily by Nattier, with assistance from McRae), was to bring together scholars from around the world who were most knowledgeable in the languages rel- evant to the study of early Chinese Buddhism, i.e., the languages of India and Central Asia, as well as Chinese. As an intellectual and scholarly event the conference far exceeded our greatest expectations. First, we believe that we did manage to assemble some of the very best scholars in the world in their respective fields. To be sure, there were many others who we could not invite, or who could not attend, but we are very honored to have been able to assemble such a gathering of brilliant and eminent scholars. Second, although many of the participants knew of each other through publications prior to the conference, and more than a few were already close collaborators and friends, all who attended pointed out that the conference strategy of bringing together representatives of these various fields was unprecedented. Given the specialization that is endemic to the scholarly community—and, indeed, the linguistic fields represented include some of the most technically difficult and arcane in all of Buddhist studies—no one had ever had the resources or taken the initiative to assemble such a cast of researchers. Third, although it may seem mundane to point this out, everyone got along tremendously well at the conference, both during the formal sessions and the unstructured conversations afterwards. There were disagreements and debates, to be sure, but the participants always managed to undertake these in a spirit of friendly intellectual discussion and collaboration, and there was a genuinely shared atmosphere of gratitude and mutual appreciation. In addition to the contributors to this volume, the following invited participants (some of whose papers had already been, or have since been, published elsewhere) also took part in the conference: Robert E.