Bulletin of SOAS, 71, 2 (2008), 323–343. E School of Oriental and African Studies.
doi:10.1017/S0041977X08000566 Printed in the United Kingdom.
Lost in translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna
Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its
modern readings1
Francesca Tarocco
University of Manchester
francesca.tarocco@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract
The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous
Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist
treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian
Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (foxing),
buddha bodies (foshen), and one mind (yixin), among others, served
from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of
East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The Treatise is putatively
attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghosa, and its current Chinese
version was traditionally conceived of ˙as a translation from an
original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however,
many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the
textual history of the Treatise. Even if the specific circumstances of its
creation are still largely unknown, the view that the Treatise is an
original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native
Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more
than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of
knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English
translations. After examining the early textual history of the two
existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its
modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters,
an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the
twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East
Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society.
Introduction
The Dasheng qi xin lun or Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith is a
highly influential text in the history of East Asian Buddhism.2 Even if it is a
1 I would like to thank Stefan Sperl, Stefano Zacchetti and an anonymous reviewer
for providing detailed commentary and helpful suggestions for revisions on a
previous version of this paper.
2 With regard to the use here of the term ‘‘East Asian Buddhism’’, it should be noted
that the Buddhist source texts used in China, Korea, Japan and even Vietnam are
identical and that together they form the tradition that gave rise to what is
commonly referred to now in Chinese as dazangjing or the canon of Buddhist
scriptures written in literary Chinese.
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lun – the term generally used in Chinese to translate the Sanskrit śāstra –
meaning a work of exegesis or a doctrinal treatise, it has none the less been
regarded as a text containing teachings on the same level as scriptures
(sūtras, what is heard) that conveyed the word of the Buddha.3 The
Treatise’s key concern is the discussion of ultimate reality, referred to as
‘‘suchness’’ or ‘‘thusness’’ (zhenru). The text examines this concept in
relationship to what it refers to as the ‘‘two aspects’’ (er zhong men) of
the ‘‘one mind’’ (yixin), which are mutually inclusive and embrace all
things (she yiqie fa). This is an important discussion in that it suggests
that the absolute does not belong to an order of being completely distinct
from the phenomenal order. One of the metaphors used in the text to
illustrate the relationship between principle (li) and phenomena (shi),
between the pure mind and the world, and so on, is the famous metaphor
of the wind and the waves.
All the characteristics of the mind and of consciousness (xin shi zhi
xiang) are produced by ignorance. The characteristics of ignorance
(wuming zhi xiang) are not separate from the nature of awakening (jue
xing) and thus are not something that can either be destroyed or not
destroyed. It is like the water of the big sea, which is turned into waves
by the wind. The characteristics of the water and of the waves are
inseparable, and yet the nature of movement does not pertain to
water. When the wind ceases, the characteristics of movement also
cease, but the nature of wetness remains undestroyed.4
Another key doctrinal formulation expounded in the text is that of the
‘‘buddha bodies’’ (foshen), which entails the analysis of buddhahood in
terms of the doctrine of multiple coexisting buddha bodies that possess
different characteristics and can thus respond to the prayers of the suffering
living beings. Finally, the treatise elaborates upon earlier Indian Buddhist
notions of tathāgatagarba (literally, ‘‘womb’’ or ‘‘embryo’’ of the Tathāgata, the latter being an epithet for Buddha) instilling them with a
distinctive cosmological dimension whilst initiating a new discourse on the
intrinsic possibility for all beings to reach enlightenment, which had
enormous consequences for the development of East Asian Buddhist
soteriology.5 Arguably, however, the popularity of the text was not only
connected with its doctrinal content, but also with what could be described
3 The title of many East Asian sūtras begins with the words fo shuo or ‘‘the Buddha
says’’. The widespread use of this formula highlights the importance placed on
direct oral transmission to authenticate Buddhist writings. On issues of translation
and Buddhist language see, for example, Nattier (1990). For some interesting
comments on the use and reception of sacred texts within Buddhist traditions see
Levering (1989: 13–14; 58–101).
4 See Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (hereafter abbreviated as T.), No. 1666, p. 576c, 9–13.
5 See T. 1666, p. 576a–c. For a discussion of the doctrinal contents of the text see for
example Williams (1989: 109–10). On tathāgatagarba thought see for example
Ruegg (1969) and Grosnick (1995). On the ‘‘buddha-body’’ (buddhakāya) doctrine
in China see Sharf (2002: 100–14).
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T H E M A H Ā Y Ā N A A W A K E N I N G O F F A I T H
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as its ‘‘spiritual capital’’.6 In fact, East Asian Buddhists read it and
worshipped it as the original work of Aśvaghosa, the first-century Indian
˙
Buddhist patriarch author of a very important work
on Buddha’s teaching
7
career. Its translation from Sanskrit was attributed to Paramārtha
(Zhendi, 500–569), an equally important figure in medieval Chinese
Buddhist circles.8 Yet, no original Sanskrit manuscript has ever been
found, nor is there any reference to the Treatise in Buddhist texts composed
in India.
In modern times, not least because of the emergence of the modern study
of Buddhism in Asia and in the West, and the Orientalist quest for
ascertaining the Indian pedigree of all things Buddhist, the genealogy of the
treatise has been the focus of intense scrutiny.9 Ultimately, the idea that the
Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith is an indigenous Chinese
composition gathered consensus, especially in scholarly circles, but this
agreement is still far from universal. Theories surrounding the text’s
creation remain largely speculative, spurring on the debate on its possible
ancestry.10 Recently, the truthfulness of all teachings connected with the
tathāgatagarba tradition has been questioned in both Chinese and Japanese
Buddhist circles,11 yet it seems unlikely that the Treatise will ever be
expunged from the East Asian Buddhist canon. In this paper, I first outline
the history and reception of the Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of
Faith since its first appearance in medieval Chinese Buddhist monastic
circles, and then examine its manifold metamorphoses in modern times.
6 For a discussion of the meaning and the making of ‘‘spiritual’’ capital see Verter
(2003). See also Bourdieu.
7 There is no consensus on the exact dates of Aśvaghosa’s life, but the majority of
˙
scholars indicate a period from the first to the second century
CE. A recent study by
Alf Hiltebeitel, after surveying the existing literature on this issue, favours the first
century as the more likely dating (2006: 233–5). While I was preparing this paper I
was not aware of the forthcoming dissertation by Stuart Young, ‘‘Conceiving the
Indian Buddhist patriarchs in China’’ (Princeton University). Young addresses the
issue of the attribution of the Treatise to Aśvaghosa in chapter 4.
˙ be the real author of the text,
8 William H. Grosnick suggested that Paramārtha may
see Grosnick (1989). For a critique of Grosnick’s and others’ methodological
assumptions in the study of medieval Buddhist texts see Sharf (2002: 104, n. 85; 4–
21).
9 For a study of the founding figures of Buddhist studies in the West see Lopez
(1995). See also the comments in Nattier (1997) and in Silk (1994). For Japan see
Jaffe (2004) and Snodgrass (2003). For some preliminary comments on the
beginning of Buddhist studies in the modern Chinese context see Goldfuss (2001).
See also here below.
10 Some of the major contributions to the question of the authorship of the Treatise on
the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith are the studies by Demiéville (1929),
Liebenthal (1958), Lai (1980) and Grosnick (1989). Grosnick (1989) has suggested
that Paramārtha may be the real author of the text. For a critique of Grosnick’s
methodological assumptions see Sharf (2002: 104, n. 85).
11 See for example the study on doctrinal transformation in twentieth-century Chinese
Buddhism in Hurley (2004). See also here below.
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Composition and reception
One of the most distinctive features in the history of East Asian Buddhism
is that the collection of Buddhist texts preserved in literary Chinese, what is
commonly referred to as the Chinese Buddhist canon, was printed from a
very early stage. The earliest printing from woodblocks – no fewer than
130,000 blocks were used – of a collection of Buddhist texts in Chinese that
comprised translations from Indian languages as well as indigenous ones,
was carried out by imperial order between 971 and 983. Perhaps the most
influential of the early printed editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon is
that of the ‘‘Tripitaka Koreana’’, the Korean edition of the canon. The
woodblocks for this edition were carved in the middle of the thirteenth
century and consist of 1,521 separate texts in more than 6,500 scrolls.
Regardless of the fact that it was transmitted in print, the ‘‘canon’’ of East
Asian Buddhism was, and in theory still is, an ‘‘open’’ canon, as opposed to
the relatively ‘‘closed’’, and comparatively very short, canonical collections
found in Islam or Christianity. Currently the most widely used modern
edition of the collection of Buddhist scriptures in Chinese script, also
thanks to its being the foundation of the digital format edition (CBETA), is
the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, originally edited and compiled in Japan (1924–
34) on the basis of the thirteenth-century xylographic edition produced in
Korea.12
The Taishō edition of the East Asian Buddhist canon contains two
versions of the Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, numbers
1666 and 1667. T. 1666 is the shorter version in one fascicle (juan), while T.
1667, which is entitled New Translation of the Mahāyāna Awakening of
Faith (Xinyi dasheng qixin lun), is in two fascicles.13 The preface appended
to T. 1666 attributes it to the Indian patriarch Aśvaghosa, known in
˙
Chinese by the rather unusual name of Maming or ‘‘horse neigh’’
because,
says his Chinese hagiography, even ‘‘the horses could understand his
words’’.14 Maming is indeed a legendary figure to whom medieval and later
Buddhists granted an important place in the genealogy of transmission
from India to China of the fofa (Sanskrit: buddhadharma, the Buddhist
teachings), and who thereby populates a rich body of images and stories in
Chinese exegetical materials and in ritual texts. As with the well-known
12 For Buddhism and the rise of printing in medieval China see Barrett (2001). For
alternative strategies of canon formation in medieval East Asia see Deal (1999). For
the Taishō edition of the canon see Vita (2003).
13 Currently the most widely used, the CBETA digitized canon is largely based on the
Taishō edition, see http://cbeta.org. For a preliminary assessment of the use of
digitized source materials in the study of East Asian Buddhism see Schlütter (2005).
14 The Chinese Buddhist canon contains countless references to the magical and
numinous powers of Aśvaghosa, not least in the hagiographical account Maming
˙ bodhisattva Aśvaghosa, T. no. 2046). For a
pusa zhuan (Biography of the
˙ Aśvaghosa’’, by S. H.
translation of this text see ‘‘Biography of the Bodhisattva
˙
Young, available at the URL http://ccbs.ntu.ed.tw/FULLTEXT7JR-AN/103180.
htm (accessed March 2008). For an example of nineteenth-century Western
scholarly interest in Aśvaghosa as a historical figure see Lévi (1928) and here below.
˙ hagiographies in India and China see Kieschnick
On religious biographies and
(1997); Granoff and Shinohara (1988).
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T H E M A H Ā Y Ā N A A W A K E N I N G O F F A I T H
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Nāgārjuna, the purported founder of the Madhyamika Indian school of
Buddhist thought, the poet and philosopher Aśvaghosa was worshipped in
˙ to be, from the early
China as a salvific figure and as a bodhisattva, a Buddha
medieval period. Thus, the attribution of the text to Aśvaghosa/Maming may
˙
initially have been understood in terms of spiritual inspiration,
as it were,
rather than actual authorship in the modern sense. Indeed, the medieval
collection of Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan) claims that
specific commentaries produced by prominent Chinese monks were dictated
by Aśvaghosa, who had manifested himself in the guise of a horse.15
˙ the preface to T. 1666 is almost certainly spurious. It is
Of course,
inaccurate with reference to Paramārtha and contains several other
anachronisms.16 Moreover, it is important to point out that the Treatise
on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith was initially listed in a catalogue of
canonical texts in 594 as a text of ‘‘dubious’’ (yi) origin, a fact that modern
Buddhist interpreters, of course, found very problematic (more on this
below). Eventually, however, the highly authoritative catalogue Kaiyuan
shijiao mulu (T. 2154), composed by Zhisheng (active c. 730), declared T.
1666 a legitimate translation of an Indian original, thus guaranteeing its
entrance in the body of accepted canonical texts. The catalogue also gives
notice of the ‘‘new translation’’ (xinyi), now preserved in the Taishō edition
of the Buddhist canon as T. 1667.17
After the initial uncertainty among medieval Buddhist scholars
regarding the status of the Treatise as a genuine translation was overcome,
the text went on to become one of the most emblematic cases of the
enculturation of Buddhism in East Asia.18 After its canonization, the
widespread fortune of the Treatise is witnessed, above all, by the wealth of
commentarial literature composed by eminent scholar-monks in the premodern period. According to a Japanese survey from the 1920s there are about
173 surviving commentaries on the Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of
Faith.19 As I will show below, many further studies, commentaries and
translations have been added to this list over the past eighty or so years.
Perhaps the most influential medieval commentary is that of the
patriarch of the Huayan school, Fazang (643–712), who not only accepts
the text as the work of Aśvaghosa, but also assigns it a key role in his own
˙
doctrinal classification scheme (panjiao)
of the Buddhist teachings, together
20
with a number of sūtras. For the purpose of monastic study and practice,
15 See Liebenthal (1958: 157, n. 2).
16 See Demiéville (1929: 11–5).
17 For a study of Chinese Buddhist medieval catalogues and their role in canon
formation see Tokuno (1990).
18 See for example the comments in Sharf (2002: 107–10) on the passages in which the
text combines the Buddhist doctrine of the three bodies of the Buddha with earlier
Chinese philosophical terminology of ‘‘essence’’ (ti) and ‘‘function’’ (yong).
19 See Hakeda (1967: 5).
20 Fazang’s commentary, the Dasheng qixin lun jiyi, is a fairly expansive text that
covers some forty pages of the modern edition of the canon and can be found at T.
1846. For the early commentaries to the Treatise, including Fazang’s, see Demiéville
(1929). For a recent study on Fazang see Chen (2007). For the context in which the
monk lived see Weinstein (1987: 46–7 and passim).
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such doctrinal classifications were perhaps more important than the sum of
the texts contained in the canon.21 The transmission beyond China is well
attested. For example, the early eighth century saw the emergence of a text
closely related to the Treatise, namely the Explanation of the Treatise on
Mahāyāna (Shi Moheyan lun, T. 1668). Again, the Explanation is attributed
to the Indian patriarch, Nāgārjuna, but the text is clearly of East Asian
provenance and was widely read throughout China and Japan, especially in
esoteric contexts.22
A new ‘‘translation’’ of the Treatise (Xinyi dasheng qixin lun) is
attributed to the Khotanese monk Śiksānanda (active in China between
˙
695 and 710). Once again, this attribution
is made in the anonymous
preface appended to the text (T. 1667, pp. 583bc–584a). It is worth noting
that the two versions contain some significant terminological differences,
particularly with regard to the concept of ‘‘thought’’ (nian) and ‘‘nonthought’’ (wu nian), and its relation to the mind (xin) and enlightenment
(jue). The preface to T. 1667 deliberately attributes the differences to the
existence of two Sanskrit versions, or to translators’ choices. But in fact the
production of this new version is probably an attempt to explain away some
of the more controversial passages of T. 1666, those close to Daoist, and
generally pre-Buddhist, understandings of xin, the ‘‘mind’’.
According to the preface, the new translator obtained the much soughtafter Sanskrit original in a very intriguing way, among the texts stored in
the pagoda of the Monastery of ‘‘Great Compassion and Grace’’ at the
Western Capital Chang’an. This is the monastery where the great translator
monk and pilgrim traveller to India Xuanzang (602–664) lived and worked
and to which he added the pagoda to store the scriptures and relics he had
brought back from his travels. This story is interesting because it connects
the composition of the later version of the text to the diffusion, thanks to
Xuanzang’s translations, of the thought of the Yogācāra school in China,
and the criticisms of some of the teachings of the Treatise on the Mahāyāna
Awakening of Faith which resulted. Thus, as Whalen Lai has suggested, the
appearance on the scene of the ‘‘second translation’’, with its conscious
quasi-commentarial approach to the earlier redaction and its attempt to
bring it in line with the new orthodoxy, which was then being introduced
from India, is no mere coincidence. As not all of the reliable historical
sources concerning the work of the translator monk Śiksānanda mention
˙
this work, it is likely that the second version was a deliberate
rewriting of
the existing version carried out at a later stage in China or Korea.23
For a variety of reasons, including perhaps the fact that it almost reads
like a commentary on the earlier version, T. 1667 did not enjoy much
critical fortune and there exist only three commentaries on it, all by the
21 On the use of the treatise within medieval panjiao systems see for example Gregory
(1983).
22 For the formation of indigenous Buddhist schools in China and Korea and the role
of the Treatise see Buswell (1989). For Shingon associations with the Shi Moheyan
lun see Rambelli (1994).
23 See Lai (1980: 35); and also pp. 45–8 for a discussion of the Sinitic nature of the
concept of ‘‘no-thought’’.
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T H E M A H Ā Y Ā N A A W A K E N I N G O F F A I T H
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same author. Thus, it is intriguing that D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966), the highly
influential modern writer and popularizer of Buddhism to the West, chose to
translate this text rather than the more established version of the East Asian
exegetical tradition, thus opening a new chapter in the fascinating history of
the readings and interpretations of T. 1666 and T. 1667 (see below).
What happened to the Treatise after the medieval period? A cursory
examination of a few library collections of pre-modern texts indicates that
the Treatise was one of a finite number of canonical texts that were
individually reprinted, a common act of devotion among Chinese Buddhists
and a sure indication of popularity among the faithful. Thanks to the
nineteenth-century British missionary Robert Morrison (1782–1834), one
can gauge the importance of the Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of
Faith in the world of late imperial southern China, particularly between the
second half of the seventeenth century through to the first quarter of the
nineteenth century.24 Morrison lived in one of China’s most important
centres of commercial publishing, the southern city of Canton (modern
Guangzhou) and in Macao between 1807 and 1823. Over a period of about
sixteen years, he amassed some 10,000 Chinese-style thread bound volumes,
an important library by any standard. In Morrison’s times, commercial
publishing houses in Canton were responsible for the carving of printing
blocks for religious texts on behalf of Buddhist monasteries. The blocks
were stored in monastic libraries, whence practitioners could print off
copies for charitable distribution. Of the 120 Buddhist texts in the Morrison
Collection, eighty-four were printed between 1658 and 1823 from blocks
held at the Haichuang Monastery in Canton. Buddhist books are very well
represented with 120 records as compared, for example, to only 23
Confucian works. This appears to be a veritable cross-section of the most
commonly used texts, including the most ubiquitous sūtras (jing), namely
the Diamond Sūtra (Jingang bore boluomi jing), the Lotus Sūtra (Miaofa
lianhua jing), the Sūtra of Bodhisattva Dizang (Dizang pusa benyuan jing),
and an interesting selection of their commentaries, as well as the ritual
manuals, liturgical texts and collections of charms and spells that served as
the backbone of religious practice.25 The collection also contains an
24 See the published catalogue of the Morrison Collection in West (1998), especially
pp. 169–204. The collection of pre-modern printed texts at the Shanghai Library
contains several copies of the Treatise printed at different times and on behalf of
different donors, as well as copies of some of the later commentaries. The Collection
of Chinese Books at the Vatican Library in Rome contains at least one copy of the
text, printed at the Changsha Scriptural Press (Changsha kejingchu) in 1877.
25 For ritual practices associated with Buddhist texts of various kinds see also
Strickmann (1996), Stevenson (2001) and passim Lopez (1998). Recently, Barend ter
Haar (2001) examined the importance and variety, albeit in an earlier period, of
Buddhist-inspired religious activities and lifestyles in the context of China’s local
religious cultures. The practices he describes range from the performance of death
rituals to the recitation of Buddhist texts, and from the liberation of animals (fish or
fowl) during the Setting Free Life Gatherings (fangshen hui) to keeping a vegetarian
lifestyle. The sponsorship of printed collections of Buddhist texts under the
leadership of local monasteries was also regarded as highly meritorious. For other
uses of the Diamond Sūtra in Chinese culture besides reading, copying, memorizing
or reciting it see passim Chern Shu-ling (2000).
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example of the later commentarial tradition of the Treatise on the Mahāyāna
Awakening of Faith, authored by the illustrious monk Deqing (1546–1623),
one of the key figures of late imperial Buddhism, and composed in 1620, a few
years before the death of the master. The book in the Morrison Collection was
printed and distributed in Canton in 1751. It is worth noting that this is one of
the very few texts of its kind, namely the commentary of a lun or doctrinal
treatise, rather than the commentary of a sūtra, or the sub-commentary of a
sūtra, that are preserved in the Morrison Collection.26
Modern readings in China
As I suggested above, the significance of the Treatise in pre-modern times
was perhaps not only due to its hermeneutical value for the exegetical
constructions of medieval and post-medieval East Asian Buddhist thinkers,
but also to the fact that its association with the Buddhist patriarch
Aśvaghosa granted it a special status in the eye of the practitioner, and
˙ all kinds of powers akin to those of some key sūtras. Similarly,
maybe even
modern interpreters justified their re-reading of the text on the basis of
philosophical and doctrinal arguments, and yet the accumulated weight of
the symbolic capital of the Treatise is never completely absent from their
pronouncements. In the course of the twentieth century, the text has
captured the imagination of many modern Buddhist interpreters, but also
of Christian missionaries, and of members of East Asia’s modernizing
elites. Thus, several key thinkers of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century
China have used it.
Conventionally described as the ‘‘father of modern Chinese Buddhism’’,
Yang Wenhui (courtesy name Renshan, 1837–1911), was one of the most
influential laymen of his generation, and the founder in Nanjing of a very
active private Buddhist press, which survives to this day.27 Prior to devoting
all of his energies and economic resources to Buddhism and to the
collection and carving of woodblocks for printing texts, Yang worked as a
government official and visited Europe twice, from 1878 to 1881 and from
1886 to 1889. In Oxford, he met the Japanese buddhologist Nanjō Bun’yū
(1849–1927), with whom he formed a life-long friendship based on similar
bibliographical interests and the communal search for ‘‘lost texts’’. Nanjō
belonged to a new generation of Japanese scholar-monks trained in
Sanskrit and Western philological and textual approaches to the study of
Asian religion, and was a collaborator of the highly influential Orientalist
F. M. Müller (1823–1900).28 One of the topics discussed in the letters
26 The collection contains, for example, an interesting combined edition of two
translations of a commentary on the Diamand Sutra (Jingang bore boluomijing lun)
putatively attributed to the Indian master Vasubandhu and printed in Canton in
1800.
27 For a classic study on the so-called Buddhist revival beginning in late imperial
China see Welch (1968), particularly pp. 2–10 for Yang Wenhui. For a more recent
study of Yang Wenhui’s activities see Goldfuss (2001).
28 For a study of nineteenth-century Japanese clerical travels see Jaffe (2004). On
Müller’s attitudes towards Indian and Chinese Buddhism and see Girardot (2002).
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T H E M A H Ā Y Ā N A A W A K E N I N G O F F A I T H
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exchanged between Yang and Nanjō is the importance of the Treatise for
their tradition. Yang was very much convinced of its Indian origin and,
together, the two looked in vain for the lost Sanskrit original, which would
have confirmed that the text was a legitimate source of Buddhist doctrinal
authority.29
According to some sources, Yang’s conversion to Buddhism was indeed
sparked by reading the Treatise.30 Undoubtedly, he refers to it often, and
manifests interest in both its doctrinal content and in its final exhortation to
practise Buddhism. In a short note entitled The True Fruit of the Treatise on
Awakening the Faith (Qixin lun zhenguo), for example, Yang uses the text to
discuss the complex theory of the ‘‘three bodies’’ (sanshen) of the Buddha.
In other writings he encourages students to use the text to approach various
aspects of Buddhist thought and practice.31 Yang’s influence is probably
one of the key reasons for the widespread knowledge of and interest in the
Treatise in modern China. During the first decades of the twentieth
century, several other Chinese commentators in fact appropriated it and
reshaped its content to suit a variety of agendas. Indeed, according to the
contemporary observer of things Buddhist Lewis Hodous, ‘‘Not only
monks, but laymen trained in Japan are delivering lectures on Buddhist
sūtras. The favourites are the Awakening of Faith and the Saddharmapundarika Sūtra’’.32
In the first issue of Haichaoyin (The Sound of the Tide), the most
popular and influential of a novel type of Buddhist periodical publication
that emerged in the 1920s, the monk Taixu (1889–1947) uses the wellknown metaphor of the water and wind quoted at the beginning of this
article to explain the ‘‘mind of modern people’’ (xiandairen xin). He
reminds his readers that the relationship between ignorance (wuming) and
enlightenment (jue) is similar to that between open waters and the waves
stirred by the wind. Water moves because of the wind but movement is not
inherent to its true, fundamental, nature. Thus, while the ‘‘mind’’ (xin) of
sentient beings is inherently pure, it is stirred by ‘‘wind of ignorance’’
(wuming feng). Yet, because the mind is not by its own nature movable,
once the wind of ignorance ceases so does the production of delusional
thoughts. In his untiring attempts at finding new ways to communicate
traditional Buddhist ideas to his contemporaries, Taixu understands the
usefulness of the Treatise’s concept of xin, and the potential of its
29 On the exchanges between Yang Wenhui and Nanjō Bun’yū see Goldfuss (2001,
especially 68–78). Yang’s letters to the Japanese buddhologist are published in
volume 10 of his Collected Writings, see Yang Wenhui (1918). For a study of the
intellectual context surrounding Nanjō Bun’yū and other Asian scholars at Oxford
see Girardot (2002).
30 One source for this statement is the autobiography written by Yang Wenhui’s
granddaughter Yang Buwei Chao (1970: 82), but see also here below.
31 See Yang Wenhui (1918), especially vol. 9, ch. 6 and 7. The final part of the Treatise
is interesting in that it refers specifically to the practice of the ‘‘faith’’ (xin)
mentioned in the title. Some scholars consider this section the creation of a different
author from the one who wrote the main body of the text. See for example
Liebenthal (1958: 196–7).
32 See Goldfuss (2001: 203) and Hodous (1924: 67).
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FRANCESCA TAROCCO
soteriological appeal to ‘‘modern people’’ (xiandairen).33 Haichaoyin and
the other Buddhist journals of the 1920s and 1930s return again and again
to such Buddhist xin, and to the Treatise.34
Interestingly, so far as I am aware, with few exceptions (one of which I
shall examine here below), modern Chinese Buddhists remained faithful to
tradition and maintained that the treatise was the word of the Bodhisattva
Aśvaghosa.35
Some ˙cultural activists outside of Buddhist monastic circles also sought
to construct Buddhism as a possible solution to the dilemmas of Chinese
modernity. The influential writer Liang Qichao (1873–1929), for example,
best known for his commitment to a ‘‘new’’ society, and his skilful use of
the possibilities offered by the emergence of the modern periodical press,
also features among the modern commentators on the Treatise. Liang, one
of a number of late nineteenth-century intellectuals advocating reform in
China, took an active part in the Hundred Days Reform of 1898, after the
failure of which he was forced to flee China and take refuge in Japan, where
he continued his political and journalistic activities. Incidentally, immediately prior to his exile, between 1895 and 1896, Liang worked as the
secretary of Timothy Richard, the British missionary who translated the
Treatise into English (more on this below).36 According to Chan Sin-wai,
Liang Qichao, although not strictly speaking a practitioner, was nevertheless interested in the study of Buddhism, and introduced in his daily
schedule a period devoted to reading Buddhist texts.37 His interest was of a
peculiar kind though, and had perhaps more to do with the perceived
33 The passage is quoted in Yinshun (1995: 59–60). For Haichaoyin and other
Buddhist periodicals see Tarocco (2007: 75–81). Between 1911 and the early 1940s,
some 150 Buddhist periodicals were circulated in China. Beginning with the
Buddhist Studies Miscellany distributed in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin on the eve
of the 1911 revolution, a list of Buddhist periodicals would have to include The
Buddhist Monthly; the New Buddhist Youth, the Buddhist Studies Monthly, the
Buddha Mind, the Buddhist Critic, the Buddhist Research, the Modern Sangha and
the New Buddhism. The titles of some of the periodicals are themselves illustrations
of the attention Buddhists had to wider cultural trends emerging in Chinese
intellectual circles. For a recent study of the multifarious activities of the monk
Taixu and his approaches to modernity see Pittman (2001).
34 In an ironic twist of events, Yinshun (b. 1906), one of Taixu’s main disciples and a
very active and influential contemporary scholar-monk, has a very different
position regarding the importance of tathāgatagarbha thought and its place in the
future of the Chinese Buddhist community. Through the use of classical Buddhist
hermeneutics, Yinshun repudiates the commonly held East Asian Buddhist view,
long established also thanks to the Treatise, that the teaching of tathāgatagarbha
represents the ultimate teaching of Buddhism. This, he believes, resides instead with
the teaching of emptiness. Unlike Japanese proponents of the so-called ‘‘Critical
Buddhism’’ movement, however, Yinshun does not completely reject tathāgatagarbha thought and highlights instead its soteriological value for the
practitioner. On Yinshun’s critique of tathāgatagarbha see Hurley (2004).
35 For a recent example of Chinese commentarial scholarship see Gao Zhennong
(1992).
36 For a classic study of Liang Qichao see Alitto (1982). For Liang Qichao’s
journalism see, more recently, Vittinghoff (2002).
37 See Chan Sin-wai (1985: 41 and passim).
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problems of then contemporary China than with Buddhist doctrine. In fact,
Liang argued that since religion was at the root of Western civilization and
an important element of its success, China should also resort to the
‘‘ancient teachings’’ of Buddhism and Confucianism. In an essay entitled
‘‘On the relationship between Buddhism and social order’’ (Lun Fojiao yu
qunzhi zhi guanxi), Liang laments the fact that China, unlike Europe or
America, does not have a national religion. He then goes on to say, ‘‘Will
progress in governing China be attained using faith? … [I believe that] the
root of faith is religion … some say that education can take the place of
religion, but I dare not accept this statement. And even if it may be so this
would apply only to countries where education is universal … This time has
not yet arrived for China’’. According to Liang, there are various reasons
for why Buddhism would be the ideal choice as the Chinese national
religion. Buddhism is ‘‘a rational belief’’ (zhexin) and not a superstition
(mixin) and it trusts in one’s strength and not in the strength of others. On
account of the bodhisattva vows, Buddhists believe in universal goodness
and not in individual goodness. It also teaches equality because all living
things possess the nature of buddhas, a reference to the doctrine of Buddha
nature (fo xing) expounded in the Treatise.38
The edition of Liang Qichao’s Textual Criticism on the Treatise on the
Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith I consulted was published in 1935 (it was
first printed in 1922) by the Commercial Press. This publishing house was
perhaps the most important mainstream Shanghai-based commercial
publisher of Republican China, well known for its new-style textbooks
and periodical publications: Liang’s work was not meant to be read by a
small Buddhist readership, but was aimed at a more general intellectual
elite.39 The principal point Liang appears to be making in his study, partly
based on the wealth of scholarship on the Treatise that had appeared in
Japan since the late nineteenth century, is that the text was composed in
China by a Chinese person. Thus a strong nationalistic sentiment, then
widespread among members of Chinese modernizing elites, is perhaps
Liang’s main motivation for deciding to rewrite this particular segment of
Chinese Buddhist history.40
T. Richard’s and D. T. Suzuki’s Awakening
A few English versions of the Treatise were published during the course of
the first decade of the twentieth century, a period in which translations of
Chinese religious texts, let alone of Buddhist texts, were still few and far
between. The first translation, published in 1900, was carried out by the
Japanese scholar and popularizer of Buddhism D. T. Suzuki, and the
38 See Liang Qichao (1910: 33–6; 1990: 49–56).
39 For the Commercial Press and Shanghai publishers see especially Reed (2004: 203–
25). For Buddhist publishers see Tarocco (2007: 41–65).
40 See Liang Qichao (1935: 82–6). Note that Liang makes abundant use of the terms
then current among reformist nationalists including ‘‘nation’’ (guo) and ‘‘citizens of
the nation’’ (guo min), etc. For religion and the nation in Republican China (1911–
49), see in particular Duara (1995); Nedostup and Liang Hong-ming (2001).
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second, completed earlier but eventually published in 1907, was carried out
by Briton Timothy Richard (1845–1919).
A Baptist missionary, Richard arrived in China in 1870 and lived there
for almost 45 years. One of his key proselytizing strategies was to open a
dialogue with Chinese political and cultural elites and to seek to influence
them.41 In 1892, he presented the work Historical Evidences of the Benefits
of Christianity to the Chinese authorities, and we know that his views on
modern education were certainly known to, among others, the Qing
reformer Li Hongzhang (1823–1901). Richard’s purpose was to provide
books and pamphlets that would show ‘‘the bearing of educational and
religious development in industries and trade and in every department of
national progress’’.42 The views he put forward to the Chinese can be
glimpsed in the following excerpt, where he makes an explicit connection
between religion, modernity and national prosperity:
The result of this advance in the Christian religion has been to give
liberty to men to progress on all lines, and they have progressed in the
last 300 years more than they have progressed in the 3000 years
previously. This we say to all the followers of the non-Christian
religions; we bid them not to take alarm because we bring them new
religious ideas which may supplant those they now hold; for we say
that it will not rob them of a single good which they have without
supplying them with something better … Those who oppose change in
religion are to-day in danger of retarding progress, as Roman
Catholicism and Islam do in all countries under their sway. They
bring on inevitable national death … Hence the prosperity of all
Protestant countries … In religion, we must not be behind, but before
every kingdom of this world. If we do not embrace all branches of
knowledge, ours is not worthy to be the one religion of the future of
the whole world.43
In an improbable rehearsal of earlier approaches to Chinese religious life
devised by seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries to China, Richard also
put forward the theory that the so-called Buddhism of the ‘‘Great Vehicle’’
(Mahāyāna) was not Buddhism at all, but rather a form of Christianity. In
fact, he writes, when the apostle Thomas went to India he met the Indian
Buddhist master Aśvagosa and preached to him. Eventually, Aśvagosa
˙ Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith that caused
˙
wrote the Treatise on the
Buddhism to be transformed from the more primitive ‘‘Small Vehicle’’ into
the more advanced Mahāyāna form. Apparently, Richard was so impressed
by the ‘‘Christian nature of the teaching of the book’’, he decided to
translate it. The fruit of his labours was initially published by the Christian
41 The main sources on Richard are his own memoir published in 1916 and the
biography written by the missionary and professor of Chinese at Oxford W. E.
Soothill. On the ecumenical attitudes of some Protestant missionaries see Lian
(1997).
42 See Richard (1916: 222).
43 Soothill (1924: 210).
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Literature Society in 1907 as The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna
Doctrine: The New Buddhism, and still enjoys an incredibly wide
distribution, especially now various digitized versions have appeared on
the World Wide Web. The claims initially made in that text are even more
clearly articulated in a subsequent collection of translations from Chinese
scriptures that also includes the translation of the Treatise, The New
Testament of Higher Buddhism. Richard writes that:
The Mahāyāna faith is not Buddhism but an Asiatic form of the same
gospel of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, in Buddhistic
nomenclature, differing from the old Buddhism just as the New
Testament differs from the Old … It commands a world-wide interest,
for in it we find an adaptation of Christianity to ancient thought in
Asia, and the deepest bond of union between the different races of the
east and the west, namely the bond of a common religion.44
According to the missionary, the ‘‘Awakening of Faith’’ – as he and others
called the text, perhaps because of the resonance of the word faith in
Christian contexts – is among the great ‘‘Books of the World’’, together
with the Quran, the Bible, and the Vedas. ‘‘The book is Brahmanistic and
Buddhistic, Indian and Western in some aspect of philosophical thought’’,
and yet it also presented itself as very practical.45 After having described the
emergence of ‘‘New Buddhism’’ some 500 years after the death of the
Buddha, and after having made Jesus a contemporary of Aśvaghosa,
˙
Richard astutely describes its presumed state of decline he apparently
witnesses. ‘‘The reader who is acquainted with the low state of Buddhism in
China to-day may naturally ask, since the New Buddhism was so full of
such high teachings on some of the greatest problems of life and since it was
so flourishing for many centuries, why is its glory departed?’’ The answers
are that ‘‘later writers’’ attempted to ‘‘combine the primitive with the
advanced’’, and that Buddhists, being ‘‘ignorant’’ of their own religion,
were simply incapable of doing anything right.46
In a strange twist of destiny, the eminent layman Yang Wenhui, one of
the people who did most to encourage the study and understanding of
Buddhism and of the Treatise in modern China, was called to collaborate
with Richard, and ultimately and unwittingly helped the missionary to
produce a Christian-influenced translation of his favourite Buddhist text.
He was clearly unaware of Richard’s transformation of the Treatise into a
sort of preparatio evangelica, and extremely frustrated when (too late) he
finally discovered it.47 This is how Richard relates their first encounter, and
legitimizes his choice to translate the Treatise:
44 See Richard (1910: 43–6).
45 See Richard (1910: p. vi).
46 See Richard (1910, pp. vi, xv and passim). Criticism of Buddhism was common
among missionaries of this period. See passim Welch (1968) and Pittman (2001).
47 See Yang Wenhui’s letter to Nanjō Bun’yū in which he relates some of the facts
(Yang Wenhui 1918, vol. 10, ch. 7, letter 13).
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In 1884 I visited Nanking …Whilst there, I sought for some books
which I could not procure in the North of China. I learnt that a
Buddhist Book Society had been started in Nanjing, Soochow, and
Hangzhou, three of the leading cities in Central China, in order to
replace those destroyed by the Taiping rebellion. Of these three
societies, the most important was that at Nanking, and the prime
mover over the whole three societies lived there. His name was Yang
Wên Hui. I called on him and found the most intelligent Buddhist I
had ever met. He had been several years in Europe as treasurer to the
Chinese embassy when the Marquis Tseng represented China in
England and France. Mr Yang had had interviews with Max Müller
and Julien and Bunyû Nanjo of Tokyo, who had studied under Max
Müller. Thus, besides being well acquainted with the best authorities
in Europe and Japan, Mr Yang was not a Buddhist priest, but a
Confucianist with the B.A. (siutsai) degree and was only a lay
Buddhist. I said to him, ‘‘How is it that you, with a Confucian degree,
should have ever become a Buddhist?’’ His answer was striking: ‘‘I am
surprised that you, a missionary should ask me that question, for you
must know that Confucianism shirks some of the most important
questions. It only deals with human affairs now, not with the
superhuman.’’ But do you mean that Buddhism answers those
questions? He said: ‘‘Yes’’. ‘‘Where?’’ I asked again. He answered:
‘‘In a book called the Awakening of Faith. That book converted me
from Confucianism to Buddhism’’.48
Of course, this dialogue may not have taken place in the exact terms with
which Richard reports it. And perhaps the missionary was not completely
convinced that later Buddhism was an offshoot of Christianity, or that the
apostle Thomas had preached to Aśvaghosa in India; most missionaries
˙
were probably not. Yet Richard’s archetypically
Orientalist appropriation
of Buddhism to serve his missionary agenda was not an isolated case. And
he was certainly not alone in offering an essentialist reading of the Treatise,
adapting its description of the absolute to suit his proselytizing agenda. In
fact, the transnational exchanges that characterized the religious life of East
Asia, Europe and America since the late nineteenth century, have left a
clear mark on another modern interpretation of the Treatise.49
Outside of China, the Treatise became part of what has been described as
the ‘‘occidentalist strategies’’ of Japanese Buddhists, whereby they
discovered the role Western studies of Buddhism could play in legitimizing
their tradition in the eyes of their local critics.50 In particular, to those
Japanese Buddhist clerics and lay people interested in what James Ketelaar
calls ‘‘the construction of Eastern Buddhism’’, the Treatise represented a
great resource: it was one of the texts that could be used to manufacture a
48 Richard (1907: pp. ix–x).
49 For some recent studies of these exchanges see for example Tweed (2005) and Jaffe
(2004).
50 On Japanese Occidentalism see Ketelaar (1991) and Snodgrass (2003).
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Buddhism beyond sectarian boundaries, a united, trans-historical, essential
Buddhism. Thus some Japanese thinkers looked on the text as a clear
articulation of Buddhism itself.51
A not yet famous D. T. Suzuki translated the Treatise in 1900.
Puzzlingly, and offering little by way of explanation for this choice or even
acknowledging the wider diffusion of the other version, Suzuki decided to
use the second version for his English version.52 One reason for this may be
that the later version, in its commentarial attitude towards the earlier
formulation, offered greater scope for smoothing down the ‘‘Chineseness’’
of the text. To the best of my knowledge, this is still the only English
translation based on T. 1667.
This work is Suzuki’s first major effort to present Buddhism to Western
audiences, North Americans in particular, an endeavour that was going to
last for more than sixty years. In 1897, he went to the United States to
study with the eclectic thinker Paul Carus (1852–1919), and learn the
‘‘various skills required to disseminate knowledge of Buddhism to the
West’’.53 A speaker at the World’s Parliament of Religion of 1893 and
editor of the journals The Open Court and The Monist, Carus was the
author of the popular volume The Gospel of the Buddha and of many other
writings on all things Buddhist, including a baffling collection of Buddhist
Hymns containing pseudo-Buddhist lyrics set to music by Chopin and
Beethoven.54 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the brief Publisher’s Preface to
Suzuki’s translation, is a typical example of Carus’s discourse on
Buddhism. First it tells the reader that Aśvaghosa ‘‘is the philospher of
˙ of Faith is recognized
Buddhism’’ and that his ‘‘treatise on The Awakening
by all Northern schools and sects as orthodox and used even to-day in
Chinese translations as a text-book for the instruction of Buddhist priests’’.
Unfortunately, the original Sanskrit has not yet been found, thereby
limiting ‘‘our knowledge of Aśvagosha’s [sic] philosophy’’ to ‘‘its Chinese
translation’’.55 Eventually, Carus reassures the reader of the importance
and accuracy of the English translation, not least because it confirms his
own interpretation of Buddhism. The idea of ‘‘Suchness’’ contained in the
Treatise, in particular, confirms what he had written in his own Gospel of
Buddha. Further, ‘‘Suchness’’ is also connected with many other aspects
of European philosophy and literature, apparently, it is ‘‘Plato’s realm of
ideas and Goethe’s ‘Mothers’ of the second part of Faust’’.56
In his own Introduction, Suzuki defends Buddhism saying that ‘‘The
Awakening of Faith is dedicated to the Western public by a Buddhist from
Japan, with a view to dispelling the denunciations so ungraciously heaped
upon’’ Mahāyāna Buddhism.57 It is worth remembering, incidentally, that
51
52
53
54
See Ketelaar (1990: 186–7).
See Suzuki (1900: 41).
See Snodgrass (2003: 260).
For Carus’s thought and its influence on Suzuki see Sharf (1995). See also
Snodgrass (2003) and Tarocco (2007: 111–2).
55 The first quotation is from Suzuki (1900: iii); the second from Suzuki (1900: iv).
56 See Suzuki (1900: iv, v).
57 See Suzuki (1900: xii).
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in 1895, within months of its American publication, Suzuki translated The
Gospel of the Buddha into Japanese. According to Judith Snodgrass, this
was not because Japanese Buddhists thought much of Carus’s eclectic
mixing of Buddhist texts, but rather because the book was proof of
‘‘Western approval of Buddhism as the most appropriate religion for the
modern, scientific world’’.58 Indeed, Suzuki worked hard both to restore
Western views of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and to help convince people at
home that Buddhism was useful to the modern Japanese nation. In his
elegant, if at times misleading, translation of T. 1667, the Japanese scholar
utilizes a sophisticated philosophical idiom, and appropriates many of the
philological and historicist weapons of the Western buddhologist’s arsenal.
Interestingly, one of his main concerns is to prove Aśvaghosa’s historical
existence, and his work is thus emphatically concerned with ˙discourses of
chronology, history, and rationality, which were certainly not central to the
language or practices of pre-modern readers of the Treatise.
Conclusions
For the past one hundred or so years, a medieval Buddhist text has been
adapted to serve very different projects, ranging from those of Buddhist
modernizers, to those of Asian nationalists, to those of Christian
missionaries. All have produced conflicting interpretations of the original
Buddhist text. Ironically, some of these radically different translations and
representations now coexist in the vast uncritical repository of human
textual production that is the World Wide Web.59 In 2006, Columbia
University Press published a new edition of what is now regarded as the
standard English translation of the Treatise, that by Y. Hakeda, originally
published in 1967, which is based on a reading partly influenced by
sectarian Japanese developments. Intriguingly, the publicity material
describes the Treatise as ‘‘attractive’’, ‘‘profound’’, and even ‘‘mysterious’’.60
Nationalist and Orientalist readings of the Treatise may be a thing of the
past but the search for its authors and its origins continues. Indeed, the
1980s witnessed a resurgence of the debate on the authenticity of the text.
Several articles by prominent scholars were published throughout the
decade in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies,
perhaps the most influential journal in the field of Buddhist Studies.61 One
reason for this may be that the East Asian Buddhist canon contains a very
large number of so-called ‘‘apocryphal texts’’, which claim to be
translations of Indian originals but are East Asian compositions. Some
of these texts have recently been rediscovered in Japan and previously were
58 See Snodgrass (1998: 341 and 320).
59 See for example http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/aof/index.htm and http://www.
sacred-texts.com/bud/taf/index.htm (accessed November 2007).
60 See http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13156-8/the-awakening-of-faith
(accessed November 2007). See also Hakeda (1967) and Tarocco (1996).
61 For Japanese debates of the 1920s, 30s and 40s see Liebenthal (1958: 155 and
passim). See also passim Demiéville (1929). For more recent studies see Lai (1980)
and Grosnick (1989).
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found in the extraordinary medieval Buddhist library found in 1900 in
Central Asian Dunhuang. Before the modern period only a small minority
of Chinese, Japanese and Korean Buddhists were conversant with Sanskrit
or other Indic languages. But this fact has not in any way hampered the
development of East Asian Buddhism. In light of recent research,
moreover, it is clear that there is nothing intrinsically Indian, let alone
Sanskrit, about Mahāyāna Buddhism. The growing body of scholarship on
East Asian Buddhist apocrypha demonstrates that many East Asian
Buddhist traditions are based on these texts rather than on translations of
Indian materials. If medieval catalogues initially categorized some of these
texts as Chinese compositions rather than as translations, thus making their
entry into the canon difficult, some were eventually accepted as canonical,
thereby changing for ever the course of Buddhist history. This, alas, may
well be one of the most enduring legacies of the Treatise.62 Its status in
medieval times may have facilitated the production of other apocrypha and
their inclusion in the canon. In modern times, on the other hand, its
contested origins have contributed to its appropriation by very different
interpreters, each with very different agendas.
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