Notes on Zhishen's Heart Sutra Commentary

Zhìshēn 智詵 (609 – 702 CE) is little known in the English-speaking world. A key source for his biography is the Lìdài fǎbǎo jì «歷代法寶記» "Records of the Dharma Treasures of Successive Generations" (T 2075; 51.184b18–c2), compiled ca. 780 by members of the Bao Tang school (保唐宗). The Lìdài fǎbǎo jì is translated in Adamek (2007: 333-334). Online sources tend to simply repeat what is in this short biography. 

Zhishen became a Buddhist monk at a young age. After Xuanzang returned from India in 645 CE, Zhishen spent a short time studying Yogācāra with him. Around 657 CE, Zhishen became a student of Hóngrěn 弘忍 (600 – 674 CE), considered the fifth patriarch of Chan Buddhism. Another student of Hongren was Huìnéng 惠能, who is regarded as the sixth patriarch.

Zhishen composed a commentary on the Heart Sutra, which takes a Chan approach. Although the commentary is undated, his dates mean that the commentary is one of the earliest we have. To the best of my knowledge, all the early commentaries are by men who had been students or associates of Xuanzang at some point. However, the views expressed in the commentaries are very diverse.

A pertinent story occurs in Lìdài fǎbǎo jì (T 2075; 51.184a6–b17) separate from (and immediately preceding) the general biography (Adamek 2007: 330-333; see also Rothschild 2008: 143). This story connects Zhishen with Emperor Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 (r. 690 – 705 CE). In this story, Zhishen received Bodhidharma's robe from Wu Zetian, via Huineng, who inherited the robe from Hongren. This suggests that Wu Zetian considered Zhishen the main successor of Bodhidharma's Chan lineage. 

One might ask what Wu Zetian had to do with it? We must remember that monastic-centered Buddhism in China was sponsored and controlled by the Chinese state. The state decided who could be ordained, where they lived, and whether or not they were involved in projects like translations. In Xuanzang's case, for example, Emperor Gaozong appointed a board of censors empowered to change his translations as they saw fit. So endorsement by the Emperor was a significant event.

The role of Wu Zetian in the composition and popularisation of the Heart Sutra is still a matter of speculation. Jeffrey Kotyk and I believe that it is significant that the first literary mention of the text, which predates any of the extant witnesses, tells us that Xuanzang presented Emperor Gāozōng 高宗 (15 July 649 – 27 December 683) and his Empress Consort with a copy of the Heart Sutra in gold ink on 26 Dec 656 CE. The occasion for this gift was the survival of their infant son—Lǐ Xiǎn 李顯 (656 – 710) later Emperor Zhōngzōng 中宗 (reigned: 3 Jan 684 – 26 Feb 684; and 23 Feb 705 – 3 Jul 710)—born a lunar month earlier after a difficult pregnancy. Wu Zetian had requested Xuanzang's help to get through the pregnancy. We also know that in her rise from daughter of a (non-aristocratic) mercantile family to China's only female Emperor, Wu Zetian leveraged her good relations with the Buddhist establishment in many ways. This is still merely suggestive. What we can say is that is the milieu into which the Heart Sutra emerged.

There are no English-language studies or translations of Zhishen's commentary and, as far as I can see, it is only mentioned in passing in one English-language article. McRae lists the commentary but does so in a somewhat ambiguous way. McRae refers to three commentaries in manuscript form as "a complex" and to Zhishen's as "the third version", but he does not say what connected these documents.  From McRae (1988: 91), we learn that there is:

A complex of three [Dunhuang] manuscripts, one anonymous, one bearing obviously fictitious or untraceable attribution... and one written by [Zhìshēn] (609-702), who is remembered in [Chan] as a student of [Hóngrěn] (600-674) and as the precursor of two important early [Chan] lineages from Sichuan.

NB I have amended Chinese Romanisation to Pinyin. Changed words are in square brackets.

This is supplemented with a longer note. McRae (1988: 109, n.23), which gives more information about each of the three. I cite the portion describing the Zhishen commentary:

The title of the third version is [Bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng shū «般若波羅蜜多心經疏»]; see Yanagida Seizan, 'Shishū Chisen zenji sen Hannya shingyō so ko". In Hana samazama (Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1972), pp. 145-77. On pp. 152-56, Yanagida indicates that there are five manuscripts of this commentary: Pelliot 2178 and 4940, Peking Wei-52 and ch'üeh-9, and Stein 839.

The beginning of Zhishen's commentary in
Pelliot 4940, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

There is an unanswered question at this point: Is Zhishen's commentary one of "a complex of three manuscripts" or are there "five manuscripts" of Zhishen's commentary? It's possible that this information is to be found in the articles by Yanagida (1999) or Cheng (2006a etc).

I was able to locate a reference which clarified the Japanese bibliographic information for Yanagida:

This was reprinted as Yanagida (1999). In the process, I discovered that Yanagida's edition is reproduced in part two of the three-part study by Cheng Zheng 程正 (2006, 2007, 2008). I extracted the Chinese text of the commentary from Cheng (2007) along with their glosses in Japanese (posted on Academia.edu).

My main interest in the commentaries is as leverage on the issue of provenance. Almost all the ancient commentaries comment on this issue. Perhaps the most revealing comment is from Kuījī, who says:

The Large Sutra is adapted to the audience, it is voluminous and extensive in meaning, and those who receive, uphold, transmit, or study it may easily become discouraged. Therefore, the sages who transmitted the Dharma, captured the intrinsic supreme essence by separately producing this sutra. Consequently, the three divisions and the two prefaces were left out. The most subtle and essential elements [of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā sūtra] were selected as the main points to be mentioned (Adapted from Shih and Lusthaus 2001: 12).

Translating:《大經》隨機，義、文俱廣，受、持、傳、習，或生怯退，傳法聖者錄其堅實妙最之旨，別出此經。三分、二序故皆遺闕，甄綜精微，纂提綱蹟 (T 1710. 33.524a25-28).

Note that Shih and Lusthaus (2001) translated 傳法聖者 as “the sages, for the purposes of propagating the Dharma”. Michael Radich (personal communication) notes that “this is not a possible interpretation” of the phrase. Shih and Lusthaus also omit the phrases suíjī 隨機 and lù qí jiānshí 錄其堅實.

The "three divisions" (sān fēn 三分), is a reference to sānfēn kē jīng 三分科經 "three divisions of a sutra": (1) xù fēn 序分 "introduction" (Skt: nidāna), (2) Zhèngzōng fēn 正宗分 "main text", and (3) Liútōng fēn 流通分, an explanation of the textʼs "dissemination". In Mahāyāna sutras, the dissemination is "characterized by praise of the sutra and a detailed description of the merit to be gained by studying and transmitting its teachings" (Adapted from DDB). Jingmai uses different words: shǐ 始 "beginning" and zhōng 終  "end".

The "two prefaces" (Èr xù 二序) refers to the two components of a sutra introduction: "Thus have I heard" (Rúshì wǒ wén 如是我聞; Skt. evaṃ mayā śrutam), and the declaration of the circumstances in  which (ostensibly) the Buddha spoke the words, which takes the form: "...at one time, the Buddha was dwelling in such and such a place, talking with this or that audience."

These features were considered diagnostic of the category "sutra" in the sense that all sutra texts were expected to have these features. However, it's also true that Buddhists routinely supplied this information when it was missing, with the Mūlasarvāstivāda encoding rules for doing this in their Vinaya (Schopen 2004). 

It is precisely the introduction and dissemination that are absent from the standard Heart Sutra. The two recensions of the extended Heart Sutra text—whose redactors were perhaps unaware of, or unsatisfied by the rationalisations supplied by Chinese commentators—both add formulaic introduction and dissemination sections to make a complete sutra.

Nattier (1992: 206 n. 33) long ago noted:

The most striking feature of [Kuiji's] description of the Heart Sutra, for our purposes, is the statement that the Heart Sutra was "published separately" (bié chū 別出) by 'the sages' who transmitted the Dharma--not preached separately by the Buddha.

This was based on the passage cited above and suggests that Kuiji understood this text was not Buddhavacana, but rather something "transmitted by the sages [shèng zhě 聖者]". Here, "the sages" connotes the awakened or ārya Sangha. Woncheuk is also aware of the anomaly:

The reason there is no introduction or conclusion is that [this text] selects the essential outlines from all the Prajñā texts. It has only the main chapter, without an introduction and conclusion, just as the Guānyīn jīng is not composed of three sections (Adapted from Hyun Choo 2006: 138).

所以無序及流通者，於諸般若簡集綱要，故唯正宗，無序、流通。如《觀音經》，不具三分。(T 1711. 33.543b17-19)

Woncheuk compares the Heart Sutra to the well-known Guānyīn jīng «觀音經». This text circulated independently and is also referred to as a jīng 經 “sutra”, is in fact the twenty-fifth chapter of the Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng «妙法蓮華經» (T 262; Skt. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra), where it is titled Guānshìyīn púsà pǔmén pǐn 觀世音菩薩普門品 “Chapter of the Universal Gate of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva”. Since it is a chapter of a larger sutra, the Guānyīn jīng naturally lacks introductory and concluding passages, which are found in the first and last chapters respectively. It is precisely this kind of text that Chinese bibliographers referred to as bié chū 別出.

Fǎzàng’s comments on this issue are more ambiguous and the existing English translations are quite divergent.

The word “heart” is an analogy for what is expressed. In other words, it is the excellent meaning that condenses the content of the Prajñā[pāramitā] and integrates what is essential. It is just like the heart of a person, which is core and essential [to that person]. It is the integrated and ultimate root [of the Large Prajñāpāramitā text]. (Adapted from Dreitlein 2011: 7, n.18)

「心」之一字是所引之喻，即般若內統要衷之妙義，況人心藏為主、為要，統極之本。 (T 1712, 33.552b23-25)

In the subsequent section of his commentary, Fazang also comments on the missing introduction and conclusion:

Since this is a heart text [xīn jīng 心經], the introduction is lacking, as well as a conclusion concerning the dissemination (Adapted from Cook 1978: 187).

此既心經，是以無序及流通也。 (T 1712. 8.552c2-3).  

Note that what Fazang meant by "heart text" [xīn jīng 心經] is not clear, but in this case it does not seem to be a reference to "the Heart Sutra". Jìngmài (X 522; 26.598b12-24) also appears to comment on the source of the text and lack of an introduction and conclusion:

This sutra originates from a specific section of the Mahāprajñā [Text]. Therefore, it has neither an introduction nor a concluding section

今此經者。從摩訶般若一會所流。是以始無如是。終闕奉行矣。 (X 522; 26.598b23)

Some Japanese scholars, notably Fukui Fumimasa, believe that the undated commentary by Huìjìng 慧淨 (X 521) is the oldest. I don't know why. The claim is repeated by Tanahashi (2014) without providing any reasoning. Huijing also comments on this issue:

“This sutra contains only the main section: the introduction and dissemination sections are found at the beginning and end of the Great [Prajñāpāramitā Sutra].” 此經唯有正宗。序分流通在大品經首末。(X26n0521_p0591b03; punctuation amended)

This is the most explicit statement of the Heart Sutra being an extract from the Dàpǐn jīng «大品經»; i.e. the Dàpǐn bānrě jīng «大品般若經» "Large Prajñāpāramitā Text" (Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā). It is consistent with Woncheuk's view that the Heart Sutra is something like the Guānyīn jīng (a chapter circulating independently).

So this is the backdrop against which I wish to view Zhishen. He's one of a handful of early Tang commentators, all of whom were acquainted with Xuanzang. However, no two of them have the same approach to the text. By the beginning of the eighth century, we have Heart Sutra commentaries that reflect Madhyamka, Yogācāra, Huayan, Tiantai, and Chan. The first Tantric commentary I know of is by Kūkai (See Dreitlein 2011) and dated ca. 834 CE. 

Zhishen's Commentary

So what then does Zhishen have to say on this topic? I cite the beginning of his commentary accompanied by a translation by ChatGPT 4o (edited by me).

Bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng shū «般若波羅蜜多心經疏» “Commentary on the Sutra of the Essence of Prajñāpāramitā” by Zhìshēn 智詵.

撰夫以眞宗沖寂、妙絶名詮之表、正覺幽凝、高栖像累之外。将求性・相、二有不能照其機、跡被淺深、三獸無以臻其極。即色非色、寄無色以爲源、即空非空、要假空而遣色。故知、萬11靈無像、而爲衆像之宗、妙理無言、抑乃群言之本。蓋像出於無像、言出於無言。無言言者、或感物以言生、無像像者、或因心而著像。無言言者、故四辯所以宣揚、無像像者、故丈六所以垂跡。然『多心經』者、乃五乘之寶運、嚴萬法以爲尊、超八藏之妙高、飾四珍而獨秀。然首稱〈般若〉、古釋有三、今解有五。一實相、謂眞理。二觀照、謂眞惠。三文字、謂眞教。四境界、謂諸法。五眷屬、謂萬行。要須福智倶修、有無齊照。尋經究旨、合理解生。惠性、惠資（糧）倶稱般若。〈波羅者〉、彼岸義。亦言離義。〈蜜〉者、到義。由行般若波羅蜜、離諸障染、境（地）盡有無、義洞眞如、覺圓智滿。〈多〉者大乘總名。〈心〉者此經之別稱。〈經〉者、爲常、爲法。是攝、是觀。常即道冠百王、法乃楷模千葉、攝則集斯妙理、觀則悟彼群生。庶令必離苦津、終登彼岸。〈一卷〉者、首軸無二、名之爲一、開合卷舒、目之爲卷。故言〈般若波羅蜜多心經一卷〉。

The author, with the true essence as profound and tranquil, transcends the expressions of names, realizing the ultimate truth and dwelling beyond the limitations of appearances. In seeking the nature of things, neither existence nor non-existence can fully illuminate their true function. The depth and superficiality of appearances cannot reach the ultimate essence. Thus, even though form is not form, it relies on the formless as its origin; even though emptiness is not emptiness, it depends on emptiness to negate form.

Therefore, it is understood that all beings (wàn líng 萬靈) have no form, yet they are the source of all forms; the wondrous principle is without words, yet it is the foundation of all speech. Indeed, forms arise from the formless, and words emerge from the wordless. When words arise from the wordless, they sometimes respond to things, bringing forth speech; when forms arise from the formless, they sometimes originate in the mind, manifesting as forms. Words arising from the wordless lead to the eloquent exposition; forms arising from the formless manifest in the statue of six zhàng 丈 (~ 18 metres).

However, the Duō xīn jīng «多心經» is the precious vehicle of the five paths, adorned as the highest of all teachings, surpassing the subtle heights of the eight treasuries, and uniquely flourishing among the four treasures. The opening word bānrě 般若 was explained in three ways by ancient interpretations, and in five ways by contemporary explanations:

1. shíxiàng 實相 "original nature; dharmatā/dharmasvabhāva", which refers to the true principle
2. guānzhào 觀照 "careful consideration", which refers to true wisdom (huì 惠*);
3. wénzì 文字 "Literal†", which refers to true teachings (jiào 教);
4. jìngjiè 境界 "perceptual objects; viṣaya", which refers to all phenomena (法); and
5. juànshǔ 眷屬 "retinue", which refers to all practices (行).

* 惠 is synonymous with huì 慧 "insight"; prajñā.
† 文字 means "written words" but here refers to scriptures

It is necessary to cultivate both merit (fú 福) and insight zhì (智), illuminating both existence (yǒu 有) and non-existence (wú 無) equally. By examining the sutra and investigating its profound meaning, one can generate understanding in accordance with reason. The nature (xìng 性) of insight (huì 惠) and the resources (zī 資) (or sustenance; liáng 糧) of insight are both called bānrě 般若. The term bōluó 波羅 means bǐ'àn 彼岸 "the other shore", and it also signifies lí 離 "transcendence". Mì 蜜 means dào 到 "arrival". By practising bānrě bōluó mì 般若波羅蜜, one transcends all defilements and obstacles, exhausts the realms (jìng 境) [or states dì 地] of existence and non-existence, penetrates the true suchness, and achieves perfect enlightenment and full wisdom. Duō 多 refers to the general name of the Mahāyāna*; xīn 心 "Heart" is the specific name of this sutra.

* The character duō 多 typically means "many" or "much"; and thus it is sometimes used to represent the concept of "great" or "vast" i.e. Sanskrit mahā "great".

Jīng 經 "sutra" signifies permanence (cháng 常) and the Dharma. It encompasses both retention and contemplation. Permanence crowns the Way over a hundred kings, and Dharma serves as a model for a thousand generations. Retention gathers this profound principle, and contemplation enlightens the multitude of beings, ensuring that they will ultimately leave the harbour of suffering and finally reach the other shore.

Yī juàn 一卷 (One scroll) means that the beginning is without a second, hence it is named ‘one.’ The opening and closing of the scroll, as well as its unrolling and rolling up, are referred to as a ‘scroll.’ Therefore, it is called Bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng yī juàn 般若波羅蜜多心經一卷.

The commentary carries on to explain what Zhishen thinks the text means, but we can stop at this point because it's clear that he's not going to address the issue of the missing introduction and conclusion, i.e. the fact that the text is not a sutra.

Sometimes lines of research don't pan out. However, in this case, I have been made aware of and drawn to look at a wider range of Tang commentaries on the Heart Sutra (and for the first time I have the tools to make searching Chinese texts for concepts much easier). So it was not entirely fruitless, despite Zhishen's lack of comment on the issue that interests me.

Some Things to Note.

McRae (1988: 93) describes Zhishen's commentary as "proto-Chan" and notes that the three manuscripts in this "complex", as he calls it, "reveals usages that are characteristic of or even unique to early Chan texts". He gives an example of this from "the anonymous manuscript". Of the actual Zhishen commentary: "[it] uses several phrases and terms characteristic of certain later texts, but it is also unaware of a number of early Chan concepts." (1988: 94)

Zhishen doesn't seem to be au fait with Sanskrit, or the Sanskrit underpinnings of the terminology. For example, his grammatical analysis of bānrě bōluómìduō 般若波羅蜜多 treats prajñāpāramitā as four words: bānrě 般若, bōluó 波羅, mì 蜜, and duō 多. In Sanskrit, the compound is two words prajñā and pāramitā. And note that mì 蜜 usually means "honey; sweet". 

Zhishen seems to take "form" to mean substance, ie. "forms arising from the formless manifest in the statue of six zhàng" (無像像者、故丈六所以垂跡). I think this is in error since rūpa is that which connects the visual object to the visual organ, analogous to the relationship between conch, sound, and ear. It is not the conch that enters the ear to produce perception, it is the sound. Rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear. The conflation of the visual object and rūpa is de rigueur in modern Buddhist exegesis, but it's clearly incorrect.

I think we also see here the first hints of what I call "revelling in contradiction". Zhishen repeatedly references pairs of opposites like "existence and nonexistence", or "form and formlessness". This becomes a central feature of modern commentaries on the Heart Sutra though it doesn't seem to feature in any of the other Tang commentaries. Indeed Kuiji appears to resist such a reading (see for example Heng-Ching & Lusthaus 2001: 90-91). Huifeng (2014) shows that there are no contradictions in the Heart Sutra; while Harrison (2006) has shown that there are none in the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā also. Stating contradictions is not a Prajñāpāramitā method at all.

I make use of these commentaries as leverage in my revisionist history and philosophy of the Heart Sutra. But I have never been much interested in the content more generally. The early commentaries reflect a broad range of Chinese Buddhist thinking: taking in Madhyāmaka, Yogācāra, Huanyan, Tiantai, and Chan. Given the revised histories, we now know that these commentaries were composed within a few decades of Xuanzang compiling the Xīn jīng. All of the early commentators had met and worked with Xuanzang at some point after his return from India (645 CE). Through these commentaries, therefore, we get a snapshot of Tang Dynasty Buddhism.

We have translations of commentaries by Kuiji, Woncheuk, and Fazang, but very little comparative work has been done and what has been done does not seem wholly reliable. There is at least one PhD and a book here for anyone who wants to do the work. And there is quite a bit of secondary literature in Japanese. But it needs sustained scholarly attention, not the usual dilettantism marked by a consistent failure to review the literature, combined with promoting religious apologetics.

Alternatively, imagine a conference at which each presenter talked about one of the early commentaries in detail on day one, and then on day two presenters took a comparative or contextual view. And this resulted in a published book with a translation and commentary of each commentary, along with more general comparative studies to put them all in context.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Adamek, Wendi L. (2007). The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and Its Contexts. Columbia University Press.

CHENG Zheng. 程, 正 [テイ, セイ].

——. (2006a). “智詵撰『般若波羅蜜多心經疏』の譯注研究 (1)”. 駒澤大学大学院仏教学研究会 年報39: 85-96. http://repo.komazawa-u.ac.jp/opac/repository/all/31124/

——. (2006b). 『般若心經』と初期禪宗: 禪僧による注疏を中心にして駒澤大學佛教學部論集第三十七號 平成十八年十月 ["The Heart Sutra and Early Zen Buddhism: Focusing on Commentaries by Zen Monks". Journal of the Department of Buddhist Studies, Komazawa University, No. 37, October 2006"

——. (2007). “智詵撰『般若波羅蜜多心經疏』の譯注研究 (2)”. 駒澤大学仏教学部研究紀要65: 139-156.

——. (2008). “智詵撰『般若波羅蜜多心經疏』の譯注研究 (3)”. 駒澤大学仏教学部研究紀要66: 269-297.

Cook, F. H. (1978). “Fa-tsang’s Brief Commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra.” In Mahayana Buddhist Meditation: Theory and Practice, edited by Minoru Kiyota, 167-206. University of Hawai’i Press.

Dreitlein, Thomas Eijō. (2011). “An Annotated Translation of Kūkai’s Secret Key to the Heart Sutra.”  高野山大学密教文化研究所紀要 [Bulletin of the Research Institute of Esoteric Buddhist Culture] 24: 170-216.

Heng-Ching, Shih and Lusthaus, Dan. (2001). A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra Prajnaparamita-hyrdaya-sutra. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.

Rothschild, N. Harry. (2008). Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor. (The Library of World Biography). New York etc.: Pearson Education.

Schopen, Gregory. 2004. "If you can’t Remember, How to Make it up, Some Monastic Rules for Redacting Canonical Texts." In Buddhist Monks and Business Matters, Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India, 395-407. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Shih, Heng-Ching and Lusthaus, Dan. (2001) A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita-hyrdaya-sutra). Berkeley, CA. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research.

Yanagida, Seizan. 柳田聖山. (1999). 「『資州禪師撰・般若心經疏』考」『禪佛教の研究』〈柳田聖山集　第一卷〉法藏館、一九九九年、三二七〜三四九頁。["Considerations on the 'Commentary on the Heart Sutra' Written by the Zen Master Zishu," Studies in Zen Buddhism, Yanagita Seizan Collection, Volume 1, Hozokan, 1999, pp. 327-349].

On the Indo-Tibetan Commentaries and Methods in Buddhist Studies

I have almost no interest in popular translations, or commentaries, since these all repeat the same mistakes and result in cliches that I know to be untrue. I do try to be completist when it comes to academic publications on the Heart Sutra (at least in English). Being completist in this sense is seldom rewarding because the standard of work coming out in this field is typically quite poor. I've published a couple of critical reviews now (2020, 2022) as well as posting quite a few more on my blog (e.g. here, here, here, here, and here). 

The eight Indo-Tibetan commentaries on the Heart Sutra have received a relatively huge amount of attention in the form of two books by Donald Lopez; one a study and the other a complete translation with reflections on themes in the commentaries. Other commentaries, such as those by Kuījī and Woncheuk, have also been translated but, at least in English, they have not been studied with anything like the same level of attention. And what have we learned? This is summed up in the conclusion of recent article by, long-established scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Klaus-Dieter Mathes:

We have seen how the quintessence of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtras, the formula “form is emptiness; emptiness is form” has been interpreted in eight Indian commentaries from nearly all possible Mahāyāna views and approaches. (Emphasis added)

This is no more that what Alex Wayman had observed in 1984, i.e.

“The writers seemed to be experiencing some difficulty in exposition, as though they were not writing through having inherited a tradition about the scripture going back to its original composition, but rather were simply arranging their particular learning in Buddhism to the terminology of the sūtra.” (1984: 309)

Or Malcolm David Eckel in the same decade:

“... to approach the Indian commentaries in the hope that they will somehow yield the ‘original’ meaning of the text is to invite disappointment... what they thought it meant was shaped as much by the preoccupations of their own time as it was by the words of the sūtra itself. (1987: 69-70)

Mathes cites neither Wayman nor Eckel. Nor does he cite my (2017) article: "Form is (Not) Emptiness" which was directly relevant to his topic. Nor does he cite Huifeng (2014) which is also relevant. Mathes does cite Jan Nattier, but it is the most bizarre reference to her work that I have ever seen:

"The Heart Sūtra lends support to a simultaneist realization of emptiness, and for that reason Jan Nattier has even argued that it was a Chinese composition and brought to India by Xuanzang."

Leaving aside the fact that I don't know what "a simultaneist realization of emptiness" means, the logic here is not valid. The reason we—Nattier, Huifeng/Matthew Orsborn, Jeffrey Kotyk, and I—conclude that the Heart Sutra was composed in Chinese has nothing to do with "a simultaneist realization of emptiness" (to my knowledge none of us has ever used such terminology). Our argument is philological. Nattier (1992) showed that the core passage in Hṛd was too different from that in Pañc for Hṛd to have copied directly from Pañc. On the other hand Xīn and Mōhè are more or less identical, with a few tweaks to include some of Xuanzang's preferred translations. Clearly, Xīn copied from Mōhè. In addition, it's apparent that the differences in Hṛd are the result of some kind of paraphrase that is consistent with being back-translated into Sanskrit from Chinese. Huifeng (2014) and I (in various papers) have extended this observation to other parts of the text and shown that the patterns Nattier observed in the core section generalise to the other half of the text also. Moreover, I (Attwood 2018b: 19-22) showed that tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ is a calque of sānshì zhū fú 三世諸佛 “buddhas of the three times”, while Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā literature has a strong preference for the unabbreviated “buddhas of the past, future, and present” (atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ).

I wouldn't mind so much but, outside of our circle, Buddhist Studies scholars seem loath to give Nattier the basic respect of accurately describing her evidence, methods, and conclusions. The recent notable exception is Sarah Mattice's (2021) book which devotes fully 19 pages to this task. Mattice has devoted more space to this issue than all the naysayers and fence-sitters combined. Compared to this, Mathes' distorted account may be the worst example of this I have seen by an academic. Of course, his article was published too late to take into account my recent overview of this issue in JIABS (Attwood 2021), but most of the earlier works on this topic were available. And Nattier's article is thirty years old this year (2022). 

In a couple of polemical reviews (2020 and 2022 forthcoming) I take academics to task for not doing a proper literature review before conducting their research. This is not simply because they don't cite me, though of course this is an issue for me. I've published fourteen articles on this topic and they are all widely available. In Mathes case, half a dozen of my articles could have been cited. 

For example, Mathes, unlike the vast majority of Buddhist Studies scholars, has noticed a problem in Conze's 1967 revised edition of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya. In the first sentence, pañca skandhās (nominative plural) is impossible to relate to the rest of the sentence and the transitive verb, vyavalokayati sma, has no object. In 2015, I published this observation along with the solution which was inspired by two variant manuscripts, i.e. we add an anusvāra to the dhā-akṣara to give us pañca skandhāṃs (accusative plural). With this slight change we solve both problems at once: pañca skandhāṃs is the missing object of vyavalokayati sma. Now, I don't expect a Nobel Prize for this observation but I do expect to be credited as the first scholar to publish it. This is the tacit agreement that we all make; if you get there first, other scholars will acknowledge this and give credit where it is due. Mathes doesn't do this and it's bad form. 

Mathes does not notice the other big mistake in Conze's text, though one can see from his translation that he struggled to know what to do with it. Conze's misplaced full stop after acittāvaraṇa leaves the end of the sentence hanging; it is a "sentence" with no verb and no subject, i.e. not a valid sentence. Simply removing the full stop allows one to parse the now combined passages as one sentence. Mathes' approach is to break the text apart until the garbled grammar ceases to be an issue: 

Therefore, Śāriputra, because bodhisattvas have no attainment, they rely on, and abide in, the perfection of insight. They have no mental hindrances. Because their minds are without hindrance, they have no fear. They pass completely beyond error and go to the fulfillment of nirvāna.

Mathes has curiously misconstrued the Sanskrit here. The absolutive in the first clause, āśritya is generally translated as a gerund "having relied on" or a present participle "relying on". The text clearly says something like "having relied on prajñāpāramitām", but viharati "he dwells" cannot also relate back to prajñāpāramitā in this sentence; whatever "dwelling" is being dwelled, it is subsequent to "relying on prajñāpāramitā". Contra Mathes, one thing this passage cannot say is, "[they] abide in the perfection of insight.". The bodhisatva is the agent of both verbs, but prajñāpāramitām only goes with āśritya here. It might have said something like that if āśritya were in the form of a finite verb such as āśrayati.

Most translators, Conze included, take acittāvaraṇaḥ to be the state in which the bodhisatva dwells, though I admit this has never made sense to me. The case is masculine nominative singular, meaning that acittāvaraṇaḥ ought to be an adjective of some other noun in the masculine nominative singular and there is only one in this sentence, i.e. bodhisatvaḥ. Note that this relation was obscured in Conze's (1948) original edition and in the popular (1958, 1975) edition (Buddhist Wisdom Books) because his text has bodhisattvasya (genitive singular). In the revised  (1967) edition, he repairs this blunder. 

In Conze's editions, what follows, after the erroneous full stop, is a conjunction and a series of adjectives of the bodhisatva who relies on Prajñāpāramitā. There is absolutely no need to make these into separate sentences, let alone into four separate sentences. The revised text and my translation read

tasmāc chāriputra aprāptitvād bodhisatvaḥ prajñāpāramitām āśritya viharaty acittāvaraṇaś cittāvaraṇanāstitvād atrasto viparyāsātikrānto niṣṭhānirvāṇaḥ | 

Therefore, Śāriputra, because of being in a state of non-attainment, the bodhisatva who is without mental hindrance dwells having relied on perfect paragnosis; because of the nonexistence of mental hindrance he is not afraid, transcends delusions, and his extinction is complete. 

This is not beautiful prose by any means, but it does at least translate the text as given. It's not until we dig into the Chinese text and the relations between the two that the Sanskrit emerges as a garbled version of a much more straightforward Chinese text:

菩提薩埵依般若波羅蜜多故心無罣礙，無罣礙故無有恐怖遠離顛倒夢想究竟涅槃。
Since the bodhisatva relies on perfect paragnosis their mind is not attached anywhere; being detached they are not afraid, transcend illusions and delusions, and attain final extinction.

Unfortunately the Chinese Buddhist monk who created the back-translation did a really terrible job of this part of the text; he got the verbs all wrong (and this much is clear from reading Huifeng 2014). Here is an alternative Sanskrit translation of the same Chinese passage showing how it might have been done better: 

yato bodhisatvaḥ prajñāpāramitām niśrayati tato 'sya cittaṃ na kvacit sajjati | tena ca atrasto viparyāsamāyāvivikto niṣṭhānirvāṇa || 

“Since the bodhisatva relies on perfect paragnosis, his mind does not adhere anywhere; and for this reason he is unafraid, isolated from delusions and illusions, and his extinction is complete.”

How many translators have looked at Conze's defective edition and rather than asking the obvious questions, simply fudged their translation? All of them. And this is an indictment of Buddhist Studies. If a Sanskrit sentence is not a properly formed sentence, then one can't simply fudge the translation so that it is a properly formed English sentence. At least not in an academic philological study.

Mathes apparently understands that everything in this weird sentence relates back to "the bodhisatva" (the subject of the correct sentence) and we can forgive his use of the plural here as translator's licence. Still, his text here is entirely in the singular, so why not translate it as given? This is a minor point compared to other faults and as a standalone fault might be overlooked. 

Mathes' literature review seems to have been perfunctory at best. I don't know how they teach research methods these days, but when I was learning about doing academic research I was taught that one could not skip this step. And yet I see this time and again: no proper literature review, and apparently no oversight of this failure from editors or reviewers, who are equally ignorant of the literature. At times it seems to me that no one in Buddhist Studies knows the literature of the Heart Sutra, but everyone recalls it as presented in some long distant undergraduate lecture and a handful of now dated sources. And it keeps happening, despite ten years of effort on my part to do better. Somehow Buddhist Studies scholars who are otherwise extremely competent, like Mathes obviously is, let all that go when they write about the Heart Sutra. I previously noted this phenomenon with Harimoto Kengo, for example, a highly competent Sanskritist who wrote yet another underwhelming article on the Heart Sutra.

Conclusion

Like the general public and novels, it seems that most Buddhist Studies academics have one Heart Sutra article in them. Some manage to write that article, but few if any ever return to the text. To be fair, Nattier intended to write more about the Heart Sutra, with her husband John McRae (who also wrote one article), but he died before that could be completed. Weirdly, when they tackle the Heart Sutra, many academics abandon doing research and write as theologians. This is a puzzling phenomenon and I hope one day an anthropologist might study it. 

One thing we can say is that the expectation of nonsense appears to be self-fulfilling, in that people don't expect the Heart Sutra to make sense and don't seem too bothered if writing about the text also doesn't make sense. 

I see two main conclusions emerging from reading Mathes' article that are not part of his fairly prosaic written conclusions about the lack of coherence in the Indo-Tibetan commentaries:

Firstly, there was no Indian tradition of commentary on the Heart Sutra. Hence Alex Wayman's point that the commentaries attributed to Indian pandits all take a different approach that is based on the religious professions and presuppositions of the day. There is no unified tradition of understanding the Heart Sutra anywhere in the Buddhist world. We can now safely say that the Heart Sutra was unknown in India. Certainly, apart from the Tibetan texts attributed to India pandits, there is zero evidence of the text in India. If anyone has such evidence then I would urgently like to hear from them.

We now know that at least two of the Indo-Tibetan commentaries were based on a Tibetan Heart Sutra text (via Horiuchi 2021). As far as I know, no one has really investigated the plausibility of these attributions. And some of them cannot be investigated because the putative author is otherwise unknown. The idea that a canonical attribution is prima facie plausible seems doubtful at best. We know that, in Chinese at least, many of these are apocryphal: not least for the Heart Sutra itself, the whole standard history of which is a fiction.

This means that these Indo-Tibetan commentaries can only tell us about Buddhism in and around medieval Tibet. That is to say, they reflect what medieval pandits—possibly Indian pandits or, more likely, their Tibetan followers—made of the Heart Sutra when they encountered it in Tibet, often in the form of a Tibetan translation of the Heart Sutra. However, the sectarian approaches they adopt are all different and thus these commentaries tell us little or nothing about the Heart Sutra, per se. Rather, the Heart Sutra is shoehorned into various sectarian religious systems.

As such, these commentaries are of interest mainly to Tibetologists and contribute nothing to understanding Prajñāpāramitā as a form of Buddhism in its own right. A corollary of this, which is evident in Chinese commentaries as well, is that while one can read the Heart Sutra as a Madhyamaka text, one is not bound to do so. Some of the Indo-Tibetan and Tibetan commentaries see the Heart Sutra as a statement of, or consistent with, Yogācāra Buddhism. The connection between Madhyamaka and Prajñāpāramitā was not at all obvious to some ancient commentators. Indeed, Kuījī's commentary acknowledges that one can use a Madhyamaka approach, but a Yogācāra approach is superior. 

None of this interests me as much as reading the Heart Sutra as a Prajñāpāramitā text.

Secondly, I think we come back to a point I have made here and in various articles: the methodologies that academics employ when studying the Heart Sutra leave a great deal to be desired. In particular, it seems that almost no one bothers to do a proper literature review before sitting down to compose an article on the Heart Sutra. It looks suspiciously like academics simply grab whatever is to hand rather than making an effort at comprehensive coverage. Having published fourteen articles on this topic in peer-reviewed journals since 2015, I am getting heartily sick of academics being completely unaware of my existence or simply ignoring me. If they do a literature review at all, they are somehow excluding all my published work from consideration, even when it is directly relevant. 

And it's not just me. Sadly, for Matthew Orsborn, his seminal article on the text, i.e. Huifeng 2014 is routinely overlooked. I would argue that no one can begin to understand the Heart Sutra without being au fait with this article. To be fair, it took me a long while to come to terms with it too. Still, in order to be informed on Heart Sutra research, one must read Nattier 1992 and Huifeng 2014 at a minimum. I'm pleased to say that I have just read a draft article by a friend who is attending Dharma Drum College, Taiwan, that does give Orsborn his due. This ought to be published sometime next year (presuming China does not invade before then). 

Nattier has a different problem. Thirty years after her brilliant and insightful article appeared, academics like Mathes are still casually misrepresenting her evidence, methods, and conclusions. Mathes may be the worst example of this I have seen amongst academics. However, it is still the case that most academics refuse to acknowledge Nattier's work on the Heart Sutra, except in Japan where Nattier's work is acknowledged in the context of a series of shoddy polemical articles by older male academics who are also high up in Japanese ecclesiastical hierarchies. 

The final conclusion of Mathes (2022) is more or less the same as what Wayman and Eckels wrote in  the 1980s. And one wonders whether this is an example of publish or perish, since it doesn't add much to what we already know. 

I don't particular enjoy writing these critical responses. I'd prefer to have something meaningful to engage in; I'd much prefer to be learning something. That said, most of the publications about the Heart Sutra emerging in English are very poorly researched and written. Most barely qualify as "scholarship" since the normal methods of research are seemingly in abeyance in most cases, as with Mathes (2022). The situation is so bad that to not comment at this point would amount to complicity in an ongoing intellectual fraud. I want it to be clear to academics that if they publish these kinds of poorly researched and badly argued articles on the Heart Sutra, they can expect me to dissect them in public without fear or favour. 

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Attwood, J. (2015). "Heart Murmurs: Some Problems with Conze’s Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 8, 28-48. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/104

Attwood,J. (2017). "Form is (Not) Emptiness: The Enigma at the Heart of the Heart Sutra." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 13,52–80. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/issue/view/15/showToc.

Attwood, J. (2020). "Studying The Heart Sutra: Basic Sources And Methods (A Response To Ng And Ānando)." Buddhist Studies Review, 37 (1-2), 199–217. http://www.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.41982.

Attwood, J. (2021) "The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 44: 13-52. DOI 10.2143/JIABS.44.0.3290289

Attwood, J. (2022 forthcoming) "The Heart Sūtra Revisited: The Frontier of Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Studies. Acta Asiatica [No. 121]. 2021." Buddhist Studies Review, 39(2).

Horiuchi, Toshio. (2021). “Revisiting the ‘Indian’ Commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya: Vimalamitra’s Interpretation of the ‘Eight Aspects’.” Acta Asiatica 121: 53-81.

Mathes, Klaus‑Dieter. (2021). "The Eight Indian Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra’s Famous Formula 'Form Is Emptiness; Emptiness Is Form'." In Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday. (2 vols. Indian and Tibetan Studies 12.1–2). Edited by Volker Caumanns, Jörg Heimbel, Kazuo Kano and Alexander Schiller, 659–84. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg.

Mattice, Sarah A. (2021). Exploring the Heart Sutra. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Wayman, A. (1984) Buddhist Insight: Essays. Motilal Banarsidass.

Eckel, M. D. (1987) "Indian Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: The Politics of Interpretation." The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 10(2): 69-79.

Yāmagaṇḍika: Telling the Time in Ancient India

Revision 2.0 - 3 May 2015

My Pāḷi reading group has been working through the commentary to the Kāraṇiya Metta Sutta which I translated for this blog some years ago (11 Jun 2010). In this text we come across an unusual term that has no counterpart in the suttas. In picturing some bhikkhus zealously meditating in the forest it describes them as yāmagaṇḍikaṃ koṭṭetvā. This is a curious expression and in this essay I'll attempt to elucidate what it means. The compound yāmagaṇḍika occurs only twice, both times in commentarial texts (Paramatthajotikā SnA 1.193; Papañcasūdaniyā, MNA 1.122) and these should be enough to allow us to gain some clarity. We'll see that the commentator does not see his own time in context, but wrongly assumes that his milieu reflects that of the Buddha some centuries earlier. 

The gerund koṭṭetvā must come from the verb koṭṭeti (from a rare root √kuṭ or kuṭṭ) 'to beat, crush, pound'. For example it is the action associated with a mortar (udukkhale koṭṭetvā DN ii.341) and with pounding grain (dhaññaṃ koṭṭenti Thī  117). It has other minor senses in PED, but these don't seem relevant here. The compound yāmagaṇḍika combines yāma and gaṇḍikā. We'll take these one at a time. 

According to PED gaṇḍikā derives from gaṇḍa 'a swelling; a stalk or shaft' + -ikā. The formation gaṇḍikā means 'a stalk or shaft', particularly 'the trunk of a tree' and by association 'a block of wood'. However there is a potential confusion here with ghaṇṭā 'bell' or ghaṭikā 'gong'. As we will see the CST edition of the text is quite unreliable and this means we must allow for errors. In the Digital Pāḷi Reader version of this text, we find yāmaghaṇḍikaṃ koṭṭetvā. The spelling -ghaṇḍikaṃ occurs in the Majjhima Ṭīkā  (the sub-commentary on MNA 1.121) "yāmaghaṇṭikaṃ paharati"  (MNṬ 1.196) though the Aṭṭhakāthā has -ga-. The Khuddaka Nikāya Commentary—which parallels the Suttanipata commentary—also has -gh-.

Pañjaranatha Mahākāla
with gaṇḍikā

DOP sv ghaṇṭī/ghaṇḍī, suggests a confusion with gaṇḍi and ghaṇṭā. If it does mean 'block' then it must refer to a resonant gong-like block that is 'pounded' (√koṭṭ) as a time signal. Buddhadatta's Concise Pali-English Dictionary defines gaṇḍikā as "(f.) a hollowed block of wood which is used to serve the purpose of a bell; a gong." A gaṇḍī or gaṇḍikā is the characteristic implement of a form of Mahākāla known as Pañjaranatha. In the image on the right he holds it across his body (thanks to Maitiu for pointing this out).

Yāma is complicated because it has homonyms that derive from different verbs. From √yam 'hold, hold back' + -a we get yāma 'restraint'; and from √yā 'go' + -ma we get yāma 'motion, going, progress'. The latter is used figurative to mean 'a watch of the night'. We frequently read in Pāḷi of the three watches of the night (tiyāmā): paṭhamayāma, majjhimayāma, and pacchimayāma (first, middle, and last watches). The practice of dividing the night in particular in watches was common in the ancient world. The Latin name for these periods was vigilia, whence English 'vigil'. Incidentally yāma can also be a collective noun for people or things related to the God of the afterlife, Yama, in this case his name means 'twin', from √yam 'combine'.

The compound, yāmagaṇḍika, can really only be a tatpuruṣa so it must mean something like 'the block of restraint', or 'the gong of the watches'. The context is that the monks are resolute night and day, devoted to wise attention, and sitting at the foot of trees meditating. It may be that 'beating the block of restraint' is a metaphor that we no longer understand, similar to the Buddha saying to Upaka the Ājīvaka in the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, āhañchaṃ amatadundubhiṃ 'I beat the drum of the deathless' (MN i.171). It's not entirely obvious what this means since drums are primarily for entertainment in our society.

However, I believe that here we must read yāma as 'watch of the night' and the phrase means 'beating the block or pounding the gong that marks the watches'. For confirmation we can look at the second of the two occurrences of yāmagaṇḍika at MNA 1.122 (already mentioned above):

Ajagaravihārepi kāḷadevatthero antovasse yāmagaṇḍikaṃ paharati, āciṇṇametaṃ therassa. Na ca yāmayantanāḷikaṃ payojeti, aññe bhikkhū payojenti. Atha nikkhante paṭhame yāme there muggaraṃ gahetvā ṭhitamatteyeva ekaṃ dve vāre paharanteyeva vā yāmayantaṃ patati,

We immediately strike a problem in that ajagara probably means 'python' or some other large snake and doesn't fit the context, and the spelling of the next word (with -tth-) is suspect. Consulting the Dictionary of Pāli Names we find an entry for a Thera named Kāḷadeva:

"...incumbent of Vajagaragiri-vihāra. He is mentioned as having known the exact passage of time without the help of an "hour-glass" (yāmayantanālika). MA.i.100f

This is in fact, a reference to the passage we are about to analyse. It's thus apparent that the CST (Burmese) edition is incorrect here and we must amend it to:

Vajagara[giri]vihārepi kāḷadevathero antovasse yāmagaṇḍikaṃ paharati, āciṇṇametaṃ therassa. Na ca yāmayantanāḷikaṃ payojeti, aññe bhikkhū payojenti. Atha nikkhante paṭhame yāme there muggaraṃ gahetvā ṭhitamatte yeva ekaṃ dve vāre paharante yeva ca* yāmayantaṃ patati. 

The Elder Kāḷadeva of Vajagaragiri Monastery, performs this striking of the block of the watches till the end of the rains. And he does not use a measuring device as other monks did. At the end of the first watch the Elder takes up the hammer (muggara) and strikes twice for every measure of time, just as the watch-mechanism falls. 

* The text has vā, but I think this must also be wrong, and have amended to ca. 

My translation of this passage is a little rough, but the main points are clear. For our purposes two things are important. It is entirely clear that yāma must refer to 'a watch of the night' rather than 'restraint'. Secondly we read that Kāḷadeva did not yāmayantanāḷikaṃ payojeti, that he used a hammer (muggara) to strike the block, and then yāmayantaṃ patati. And this helps to fill out what the author of the Metta Sutta commentary was thinking.

One of the problems of living a regular life is keeping time. The early forest monks had no way of telling the time apart from the sun, moon and stars. Pāḷi distinguishes day (diva) from night (ratti) and we read of monks doing things in the morning-time (pubbaṇhasamaya) or evening-time (sāyaṇhasamaya). We know that the phases of the moon—full moon (puṇṇacanda) and new moon (navacanda)—were important for organising the lives of monks. The moon takes on a magical significance for some Buddhists as a result of this. The watches of the night, however, are far more difficult to determine. How did monks, living in a forest, know when the watches began and end. Presumably the first watch started at dusk and the last ended at dawn, but what marked the other boundaries? Presumably one versed in astronomy would be able to keep track of when certain stars were due to rise and set, but the three month retreat is during the rain season when the skies are perpetually cloudy. 

The simple answer is that the first monks almost certainly did not keep accurate track of the time and that the watches were assessed subjectively. And we can point out that no references to time keeping apart from observing the sun and moon are referenced in the suttas. The texts we are dealing with here, however, are from 5th century Sri Lanka and from an environment of highly organised, large scale, urban monasteries.

If we now look at the phrase yāmayantanāḷikaṃ payojeti we can see that the DOPN glosses it is as "the help of an hour-glass". Now an hour-glass is anachronistic here, they did not exist in this time or place. But yanta does mean 'mechanism' and nāḷika 'a tube or measure'. So we know that Kāḷideva did not, as other monks did, employ (pa√yuj) a measure/tube device for the watches (yāma-yanta-nāḷika). This suggests some kind of clock, but is the idea plausible? I had a dig around in some horological books and apparently it is plausible to think that in first millennium India there were water-clocks.

Water-clocks come in two forms: a vessel with a hole that allows water to leak out slowly, and the slight more sophisticated sinking bowl, in which a bowl with a hole in it gradually sinks into a container of water. The books suggest that the sinking-bowl water-clock was common in India by medieval times and so accurate that it probably delayed the introduction of mechanical clocks. Importantly the attendant of water-clock announced the end of the time period by striking a 'gong'.  The Gujarati word  for which was ghaḍiyār. There's an outside possibility that this word is related to gaṇḍikā or ghaṭika.

Persian Water Clock.

We do know that the Achaemenid Persians possessed just such water clocks, from the records of Alexander's conquests in India by Callisthenes of Olynthus. We know that similar water-clocks were employed to mark the passage of time in monasteries in North India by the 7th century. This information comes from the records of Yijing (義淨 aka I-Tsing; ) a Chinese monk who lived 635–713 CE, and spend 25 years travelling, taking the southern sea route to India. Yijing's account (see translation by Takakusu 1896: 142-6) is widely recycled in a variety of other sources, for example Misra (1998) simply quotes Takakusu at length, while Sharfe (2002) paraphrases and the Wikipedia article on water-clocks cites Sharfe. Yijing records the use of sinking bowl water clocks in several monasteries, with each using slightly different measures and signalling conventions. The bowls were made of copper and were very expensive, generally being the gift of a king to a monastery. Such clocks were also used by the ancient Britons. 

Sri Lankan
water-clock bowl
McGill. 

So it seems at least plausible that urban monks in fifth century Sri Lanka measured the hours of the day using a water-clock and marked the increments by striking some kind of gong (probably wooden given how expensive metal was). And what our commentators have done is imagine that this is also what monks did in the Buddha's time. Thus when they tell the story of the Metta Sutta they project this technology backwards. And we know that they have done in this other ways as well. For example they projected South Indian kinship patterns familiar, to them in Sri Lanka, onto the family tree of the Buddha and his family, even though these patterns were out of place in North India (See Attwood 2012). But it is extremely unlikely that forest monks in the fifth century BC uses anything so elaborate to measure time.

One little loose end is that having struck the gong with the hammer, yeva ca yāmayantaṃ patati. Now, patati comes from √pat 'fall, fly' and it's not usually a transitive verb. Yanta being a neuter noun we can read this as 'and just as the watch-mechanism falls'. If the yāmayanta falls at the end of the time period, then this is consistent with a sinking bowl style water clock.

It is fascinating how a short phrase like this one can open a window into history. And while here we are not talking about the time of the Buddha, but of the period of the Sri Lankan commentators, it is still a glimpse of history. It reinforces the point that the commentaries reflect their own time rather than any earlier time. They are apt to project their own culture and technology backwards onto the past, making them unreliable guides to the past. Thus when we consult the Pāḷi commentaries for insights into the suttas we must be cautious in drawing historical conclusions. The commentators were no doubt sincere, but they had a vested interest in trying to establish that the past was reflected in the present because it was one way of establishing their legitimacy as bearers of the tradition. It shows how very tenuous lineage is as a guide to legitimacy or authenticity. 

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Attwood, Jayarava. (2012) 'Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism.' Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 3.

Misra B.N. (1998) Nālandā: Vol. 1. Sources and Background. B.R. Publishing Corporation.

Sharfe, Harmut. (2002) Education in Ancient India. Brill 2002. 

Takakusu, J. trans. (1896) I-Tsing, A Record of the Buddhist Religion : As Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (A.D. 671-695), Clarendon Press 1896. Reprint. New Delhi, AES, 2005.

Chinese Heart Sutra: Dates and Attributions

Xīnjīng

One of the important conclusions of Jan Nattier's 1992 article on the Heart Sutra was that the traditional dates ascribed to its composition could not be correct and that it is more likely that it was composed in the 7th century, a time period which coincides with the life of Xuánzàng (602 – 664 CE) and his activity as pilgrim and translator. This coincidence allows Nattier to speculate that it might even have been Xuánzàng who translated the text from Chinese into Sanskrit. The speculation is bolstered by the fact that Xuánzàng has form in this area. He is known to have translated the Chinese authored 《大乘起信論》 (Dàshéng qǐxìn lùn) or Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna into Sanskrit.

In this essay I will rehearse Nattier's arguments about chronology and attribution of the Chinese translations as a prelude to discussing the challenge to them published by Dan Lusthaus. Lusthaus (2003) draws attention to two Chinese commentaries on the Heart Sutra, one of which appears to refer to alternate versions of the Heart Sutra in a way that Lusthaus claims poses "serious problems" for Nattiers conclusions about the chronology of the Heart Sutra. As one of the few scholars to engage critically with Nattier's thesis in print, Lusthaus's article is interesting both for the new information it presents and for the test it provides for the Chinese Origin thesis.

Another reason to rehearse this aspect of Nattier's thesis, is that that the popular Zen inspired commentaries seem to struggle with it. Red Pine, Mu Seong, and Kazuaki Tanahashi all seem to be in denial about the evidence. As such, most modern readers are given the impression that Nattier's argument is weak or improbable. But this is not the case.

In this essay I favour the Pinyin Romanisation of Chinese characters. Lusthaus and Nattier both use the Wade-Giles system. Additionally, Lusthaus uses McCune–Reischauer for the name of the Korean monk 원측, and the Revised Romanisation of Korean proposed by the South Korean government is now standard. I silently emend their Romanisation to fit my own preference (and recent scholarly convention). In particular I change the names:

• 玄奘: Hsüan-tsang > Xuánzàng
• 원측: Wŏnch’ŭk > Woncheuk
• 窺基: K'uei-chi > Kuījī

Nattier's Comments on the Authorship and Dates of The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra exists in three short versions in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. This essays focusses on T250 and T251 attributed to Kumārajīva (334–413 CE) and Xuánzàng respectively. T256 is now thought to be attributable to Amoghavajra (705–774) and directly influenced by the Sanskrit text. The main argument for this is in Japanese, but a summary can be found in Tanahashi (2014: 68).

As Nattier points out, the attributions of T250 and T251 first appear in an 8th century catalogue of Buddhist texts called 《開元釋教錄》Kāiyuán shìjiào lù (T2154) long after both men were dead (1992:174). This raises the question of why this very popular text failed to be associated with either in their lifetime, especially when we consider the explicit links between Xuánzàng and the Heart Sutra in his biographies. The simplest answer is that neither was involved in the creation of these versions. As we will see this is also the most plausible answer.

The catalogue of Buddhist texts in China 《綜理衆經目錄》 Zōnglǐ zhòngjīng mùlù (compiled in 374), itself now lost but reproduced in 《出三藏集記》 Chū sānzàng jíjì, compiled around 515 by Seng-yu (僧祐; 445-518), records two texts considered to represent lost versions of the Hṛdaya in Chinese. The two titles mentioned are:

《摩訶般若波羅蜜神咒一巻》
Móhēbōrěbōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn
Great Perfection of Wisdom Vidyā in one scroll

《般若波羅蜜神咒一巻》
bōrěbōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn
Perfection of Wisdom Vidyā in one scroll

These titles are certainly similar to the Chinese sutra titles:

T250 《摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪經》
Móhēbōrěbōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng
Mahāprajñāpārami[tā]-mahāvidyā-sūtra.

T251 《般若波羅蜜多心經》
Bōrěbōluómìduō xīn jīng
Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra.

T256 《唐梵翻對字音般若波羅蜜多心經》
Táng fàn fān duì zì yīn bōrěbōluómìduō xīn jīng
Tang [i.e. Chinese] Transcription of the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra.

However the similarity itself is suspicious, because it was Kumārajīva who introduced the transcription 般若波羅蜜 bōrěbōluómì for prajñāpāramitā. Nattier points out that earlier translations of the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sutra do not use this terminology. For example:

T221 《放光般若經》Fàngguāng-bōrě-jīng, by Mokṣala (291 CE)

T222 《光讚經》 Guāng zàn jīng, by Dharmarakṣa in 286 CE

However early translations of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra use 般若bōrě for Sanskrit prajñā, and one uses 摩訶 Móhē for Sanskrit mahā. Eg.

T224 《道行般若經》Dàohéng-bōrě-jīng, by Lokakṣema (179 CE).

T226 《摩訶般若鈔經》Móhēbōrěchāo-jīng, by 竺佛念 Zhúfóniàn (382 CE).

I think this undermines the argument that the title is anachronistic. Nattier's dismissal on the grounds that the two supposed early texts containing the term 神咒 shénzhòu because "both are clearly intended to be construed as mantras based on - or at least associated with - the Prajñāpāramitā corpus." (1992: 183) is less convincing because mantras did not come into Chinese Buddhism for some centuries after the supposedly early period of the texts. On the other hand the use of the phrase 神咒 may itself be anachronistic. Mantras were non-Buddhist until after this period, but dhāraṇī and vidyā (along with Pāḷi parittas) were not. The idea that the Heart Sūtra is itself intended as a dhāraṇī is one that Nattier herself discusses (1992: 175-6). On the other hand, another early translation of Aṣṭa, 《大明度經》Dàmíngdù-jīng (T225) by 支謙 Zhīqiān (225 CE), uses the character combination 神呪 (or possibly 神祝, the editions disagree) to represent Sanskrit vidyā, and Xuánzàng apparently employs 神咒 for the same word. So the titles of the two "lost translations" are not so unusual after all. But it is possible that the catalogue was edited at a later date to include texts that could not have existed at the time, and it's also plausible that a no-longer extant text predates both T250 and T251 because of their variations (and differences between them and the Sanskrit mss.). I do not think that T250 or T251 are a plausible ur-text.

If they did exist, the two texts are now lost and we cannot draw any hard and fast conclusions about them, however ambiguous the evidence. We certainly ought not to join Red Pine in taking their existence on face value.


Kumārajīva & T250

Having decided that we must set aside non-existent texts, Nattier then turns to the ascription of T250 to Kumārajīva. This was already in doubt as Conze attributed it to Kumārajīva’s pupils (1978: 20). Nattier summarises the consensus view:

"...it seems clear that the students of Kumārajīva (in particular, Sēngzhào) read and commented on the core passage of the Heart Sūtra found in Kumārajīva's version of the Large Sūtra [ie. T223]. There is no evidence, however, that they were aware of the existence of the Heart Sūtra as a separate text, nor is there any evidence that Kumārajīva himself had any role in the production of the 'translation' associated with his name." (1992: 184)

It is precisely this consensus of informed opinion that Tanahashi (2014) rejects when he refers to T250 as the "α-version", doing his readers a disservice. There is simply no way that T250 is the ur-text for the Heart Sutra. It clearly dates from after Kumārajīva's death and has been edited by third parties unknown. It's interesting to note also that Sēngzhào (ca. 378—413 CE) is associated with the establishment of Madhyamaka, whereas Xuánzàng and his students were instrumental in establishing Yogācāra thought in China.

That the Heart Sūtra is based on Kumārajīva's translation T223, or perhaps on the version found embedded in 《大智度論》Dà zhì dù lùn (= *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa; T1509), is not in doubt. The similarity between the two is too great to be a coincidence. That the Heart Sutra is based on the large Perfection of Wisdom text is also evident in some of the Nepalese Manuscript titles. For example the new Hṛdaya manuscript (EAP676/2/5) I described in 2014: is titled Ārya-pañcaviṁśatikā-pajñāpāramitā-mantra-nāma-dhāraṇī which translates as The Dhāraṇī named The Mantra of the Noble 25,000 Perfection of Wisdom.

The argument against attributing T250 to Kumārajīva is complex (Nattier 1992: 184-189). Where T250 has two passages of extra characters, these can be traced to T223. Nattier asserts, not entirely convincingly I think, that it is unlikely that the parallels would have been translated identically by Kumārajīva and that the exact correspondence argues for a plagiarism. The argument would be stronger if we had some concrete examples of this actually happening. I can supply an example of Kumārajīva's inconsistency from his translation of the Aṣṭasahāsrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, i.e. 《小品般若經》 T227. At 8.542.b5-6 Kumārajīva translates vidyā as 呪術 zhòu shù, while a little later at 8.543b25-29 he translates first as 明呪 míng zhòu, and then simply as 呪 zhòu. More examples would be needed to establish a pattern, but it lends plausibility to Nattier's assertion.

Nattier further points out that the initial equation of form and emptiness conforms not to T223, but to T1509 《大智度論》. The combination of observations leads Nattier to propose that T250 is based on, or has been made to conform to, T1509, rather than T223. Thus, the earliest possible date (terminus post quem) for T250 is the date of the translation of T1509, ca. 406 CE (1992:188).

Nattier's next step is to point out that, unlike Kumārajīva's other translations, which eclipse Xuánzàng's in popularity even to this day, T250 was never popular in China. Unlike T251, T250 is not craved into stone, copied, or printed. Not only are all the Chinese commentaries on the Heart Sutra on Xuánzàng's version, T251, but they do not date from earlier than Xuánzàng's lifetime, whereas Kumārajīva was active 250 years earlier. Thus the attribution of authorship of the Heart Sutra to Kumārajīva rings hollow. And in fact Kumārajīva is frequently apocryphally given as author or translator when it is clear that he is not.


Xuánzàng & T251

However the attribution of T251 to Xuánzàng is also problematic. Xuánzàng was a prolific translator. His compendium of Prajñāpāramitā texts (T220) takes up vols. 5-7 of the Taishō edition of the canon, each of which is thicker than Vol. 8 containing all the other Prajñāpāramitā texts translated by all the other translators. If Xuánzàng translated the Heart Sutra why was it not attributed to him in his lifetime, and why was his translation not included in T220? Why does the legend of his association with the text speak of him receiving the text from a sick man if he composed it or translated it from Sanskrit?

Curiously T251 largely sticks to the terminology found in T250 (and thus in T223/1509). But three key terms: the names Avalokiteśvara and Śāriputra, and the Sanskrit word skandha, are written in a way that is distinctive to Xuánzàng. A text containing 觀自在, 舍利子, and 蘊 can only have been completed during or after the work of Xuánzàng. Nattier concludes that Xuánzàng did indeed receive a text and made minor amendments. T250 seems also to be an amended text, which suggests to me an ur-text of which both T250 and T251 are revisions. This is supported by the Sanskrit text which is significantly different in places from either of the two Chinese versions, in particular it has no equivalent of 度一切苦厄 in the first sentence. That the Sanskrit translator would drop this phrase is less plausible than that at some later date it was added to the Chinese text. This is because everywhere we look, Buddhists add words, phrases, and chapters to their texts, but we very seldom see them subtracting. Indeed in light of recent scholarship, Conze's view that the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya and Vajracchedikāprajñāpāramitā represent 3rd or 4th Century condensations of the Prajñāpāramitā texts seems unlikely. Vaj is now thought to be contemporary with Aṣṭa and the character of Hṛdaya is not a condensation, but simply a quote or two.

Either way the Heart Sutra as we know it can be no older than the early 5th century, i.e. after Kumārajiva's translations of the Pañcaviṃśatisahāsrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra and/or Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa because it is an extract of one or both of them. Another part of the text that is cited word for word from the same source is the passage with epithets of prajñāpāramitā, found at T223, 8.286b28-c7 and many other locations: see Nattier (1992 footnote 54a) and my forthcoming article for JOCBS.

So the catalogues which list earlier texts are most likely forgeries. And on this basis Nattier proposes that the Heart Sutra was composed in or near the 7th Century in China. The close association with Xuánzàng suggests that he may have been involved in the translation of it into Sanskrit, though given how botched the translation is, it was presumably well before his work on 《大般若波羅蜜多經》(T220). My view is that the translator from Chinese to Sanskrit was more at home in Chinese than in Sanskrit, and not very familiar with the Prajñāpāramitā literature in Sanskrit.

Woncheuk's Commentary.

Xuánzàng’s students 窺基 Kuījī (632–682) and 圓測 Woncheuk (613-696) produced commentaries on the Heart Sutra in the late 7th century (Nattier 1992: 173). These have both been translated into English: see Shih & Lusthaus (2006) and Hyun Choo (2006) respectively.

Lusthaus (2003) cites four passages from Woncheuk's commentary 《般若波羅蜜多心經贊》 (T1711), which he says lead us to two main conclusions: 1. that versions of the text once existed that were different from the extant versions; and 2. that these versions were older than the extant versions. And thus Nattier's preference for a later composition date is seriously challenged.

The first passage comments on Xuánzàng’s use of the form 觀自在 Guānzìzài for the name of Avalokiteśvara Woncheuk comments:

若依舊本名觀世音 (T1711, 33.543b.21)

"This is what the old text(s) named Guānshìyīn" (Lusthaus 2003: 82)

Quite a lot of Lusthaus's argument rests on his conclusion that it is "natural in this context to understand this as a reference to older versions of the Heart Sutra" (82). Hyun Choo (2006) concurs, he translates the passage "According to the old version of the translation [of the Prajñāpāramita-sūtras]" (138). However, as is well known Avaoliketśvara does not appear in any other Prajñāpāramita sūtras, so this is an unlikely interpretation. In fact, Woncheuk's commentary immediately proceeds to a discussion of the deity and the name 觀音in Buddhist literature, a discussion that does not include any Prajñāpāramitā sūtras or mention of the

Heart Sutra, but does include the Avalokiteśvara-sūtra (觀音三昧經), Avalokiteśvara-bodhisattva-mahāsthamaprapta-bodhisattva-sūtra(觀音授記經), and the Larger Sukhāvatīvyuha-sūtra (無量壽經). If we are talking about "natural" conclusions then Woncheuk's reference to 舊本 'old texts' appears to reference these other named texts.

The next passage concerns the first sentence of the Heart Sutra:

或有本曰 「照見五蘊等皆空」 雖有兩本。後本為正。撿勘梵本有等言故後所說等準此應知。(added punctuation for clarity)

There is another version of the text 或有本 which says "illuminatingly, he saw the five skandhas, and so on (等), are all empty." Although there are two versions of the text 有兩本, the latter text is correct. An examination of the Sanskrit text [梵本] shows that is has the word "and so on" (等). Hence the 'and so on' stated by the latter (text) should be understood to be the standard." (Lusthaus 2003:83, emphasis added)

By 'and so on' we can probably interpret Sanskrit ādi. T251 here simply has 照見五蘊皆空 without the extra character 等. Given that the text does list the skandhas and other lists such as the dhātus and āyatanas this interpolation is not wrong. However, as Lusthaus concedes, ādi doesn't appear in any known Sanskrit text. Nor does any extant Chinese text have 等 here. The mention of a Sanskrit text with a different wording here is interesting of course, but the manuscript tradition of the Heart Sutra is widely variable - so much so that editing it proved very difficult for Conze and led him to make several errors (See my forthcoming article in the JOCBS 7). No two manuscripts of the Sanskrit Hṛdaya are identical, even the oldest manuscript (the Hōryūji Manuscript; probably from the 8th century) is obviously corrupt in many places.

Next, Lusthaus cites this passage:

又解此經自有兩本 一本如上。一本經曰受想行識等亦復如是。所言等者準下經文有六善巧。謂蘊處界緣生四諦菩提涅槃。(T1711, 33.546.13-15)

"Further, for interpreting this sutra we have two texts (自有兩本). One text is as above 如上 (i.e. Xuánzàng's version, which says 'vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāras, and vijñāna are also like this'). The other text of the sutra says: 'vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāras, vijñāna, and so on 等, also like this.' The word 'and so on' [deng] indicates what is [discussed] below in the text of the sutra, i.e. the six skill in means, the aggregates, āyatanas, dhātus, pratītysamutpāda, the four truths, Bodhi, and Nirvāṇa." (Lusthaus 2003: 84).

From this we infer that Woncheuk has at least two texts in front of him. Possibly two Chinese texts and at least one Sanskrit text. And one of the Chinese texts again has 等 (= Sanskrit ādi) at the end of a list of skandhas, seeming to indicate the other lists that follow in the sutra. Again no extant Chinese or Sanskrit text has this additional feature, but it is not inconceivable, in the light of the manuscript tradition, that it could have been added by a scribe or editor.

Woncheuk's contemporary and rival, Kuījī, also wrote a commentary on the Heart Sutra and also seems to have a text with 等, and does not problematise it in the way that Woncheuk does, suggest that he only had the one text and it included 等. And this raises the question of why we do not find it in the text attributed to their teacher Xuánzàng. Lusthaus avoids the conclusion from Nattier's study, that the text of T251 was at best edited by Xuánzàng, or more likely by his later students, rather than being a translation he produced.

Finally in relation to Chinese versions corresponding to the Sanskrit passage "cittāvaraṇanāstitvād atrastro viparyāsātikrānto nirvāṇaparyavasānam", which in Chinese becomes:

心無罣礙；無罣礙故，無有恐怖，遠離顛倒夢想 ，究竟涅槃。(T251)

His mind is not obscured, since it is not obscured he is not afraid, far from upside-down dreamlike thinking, he finally attains nirvāṇa. (My translation).

Lusthaus observes that Woncheuk's two texts differ and that Woncheuk favours the one that says 遠離一切顛倒夢想 "far from all upside-down dreamlike thinking." And in this case the T250 has 離一切顛倒夢想苦惱. Lusthaus says "Unfortunately for Nattier's thesis, the alternate version this time is recognisable. It is Kumārajīva's version". Except that it is not. T250 does not include the character 遠 and adds two characters 苦惱. The difference Lusthaus is highlighting involves the interpolation of just two characters, 一切 (literally 'one cut'; figuratively 'all'), so having three other differences is significant. Certainly the two are similar, but then all of these Chinese texts derive have similarities. In fact we have reference to yet another version of the text here which is not the same as either T250 or T251.

One possible good to come out of this is that in looking for parallels in the wider Canon for the last passage, which to my knowledge has not previously been identified with any existing text, we now know to look for alternate readings, though a preliminary search did not turn up any parallels for any of the variants.

Conclusion

On the point about the dating of versions of the Heart Sutra referred to in Woncheuk's commentary we need first to address the issue of "older texts". Crucially, Lusthaus says earlier in his article,

"We have no dates of other background information on when or where the two commentaries were written... We don't know for certain even if these commentaries were written before or after [Xuanzang's] death, though my sense is that they were written after." (2003: 66: emphasis added)

The conjecture by Lusthaus that the commentaries he is discussing were written (i.e. composed) after the death of Xuánzàng is important in assessing his claim that the alternate readings found in them amount to a text from a much earlier period, particularly contemporary with Kumārajīva in the early fifth century.

We've seen that when Woncheuk mentioned old texts" (舊本) he was in fact directly referring to a number of other sutras in which Avalokiteśvara plays a prominent role. So Lusthaus's conclusion that it would be "natural" in this context to conclude that this referred to the Heart Sutra looks wrong. We've also seen that his attempt to connect Woncheuk's text with Kumārajīva fails. Lusthaus's challenge to Nattier's theory falls well short of its mark.

What we're left with is evidence of multiple versions of the Heart Sutra, probably around the time of, or not long after, the death of Xuánzàng. No texts with the readings evinced by Woncheuk, in either Chinese or Sanskrit are extant. Thus there is no good case for pushing back the date of composition of the Heart Sutra before Xuánzàng. On the other hand, the evidence for multiple versions at this time is intrinsically interesting in terms of the history of the text. And in drawing attention to these early commentaries. Lusthaus has made an valuable contribution.

Nattier's thesis on the origins of the Heart Sutra certainly has stronger and weaker points. However, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the Heart Sutra per se began life in China as a compilation of extracts from Kumārajīva's《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》(T233) or possible the commentary on it 《大智度論》and probably other texts including the Mahāmegha Sūtra (possible source of the dhāraṇī). And her arguments about the attribution and dates of T250 and T251 largely stand. Neither seem to be the product of authors to which they were attributed in the 8th Century.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Conze, Edward. (1978). The Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Tokyo, The Reiyukai.

Hyun Choo, B. (2006) 'An English Translation of the Banya paramilda simgyeong chan: Wonch'uk's Commentary on the Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra)' International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture. February 2006, Vol.6, pp.121-205.

Lusthaus, Dan. (2003) 'The Heart Sūtra in Chinese Yogācāra: Some Comparative Comments on the Heart Sūtra Commentaries of Wŏnch’ŭk and K’uei-chi.' International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture. September, Vol. 3: 59-103.

Nattier, Jan (1992). 'The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?' Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. 15 (2) 153-223. Online: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/jiabs/article/view/8800/2707

Shih, Heng-Ching & Lusthaus, Dan. (2006) A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita-hyrdaya-sutra). Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research.

Tanahashi, Kazuaki. (2014) The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism. Shambhala.