Notes on the History of the Dàmíngzhòujīng

My article on the Fangshan Stele as the oldest dated Heart Sutra text is about to appear in the Journal of Chinese Buddhism. And it got me thinking about one of the other Heart Sutra texts. I've already written about the Sanskrit text transcribed in Chinese characters and accompanied by a modified version of the standard text (T 256). It's now attributed to Amoghavajra, but as with the others we don't really know who composed it. I have yet to write much about the Dàmíngzhòujīng, i.e. the 摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪經 Móhēbōrěbōluómì-dàmíngzhòu-jīng (T 250). This is the text that is traditionally attributed as a translation by Kumārajīva. So what do we know about this text?

Dàmíngzhòujīng: Provenance

Like the Xīnjīng, the Dàmíngzhòujīng reuses several passages from Kumārajīva's Large Sutra translation but, unlike the Xīnjīng, it has not been modified with terms drawn from Xuánzàng's lexicon. Also in the Xīnjīng version of the so-called "core passage", the copied passage starts a line later and a line has been removed from the middle. Dàmíngzhòujīng restores the line in the middle and starts one line earlier. The resulting text is much closer to Large Sutra translation completed by Kumārajīva in 404 CE than the Xīnjīng is. This led to the idea that the Dàmíngzhòujīng came first and the Xīnjīng is a modified version of it (something that is still part of the popular mythology of the Heart Sutra).

It is now widely believed by scholars that the Dàmíngzhòujīng was created relatively late. Watanabe Shōgo (1991) first drew the conclusion and later said in an (undated) interview:

鳩摩羅什訳の『般若心経』は偽経であるという説が提示され、現在、学界で定説となっています。

"The theory that Kumarajiva's Heart Sutra is a spurious scripture [偽経] was suggested and it has become an established theory in the academic world at present." (translation by Jeffrey Kotyk)

The phrase 偽経 (gikyō) is the same one that is used by medieval Chinese bibliographers (i.e. 偽經 wěi jīng) for texts that they did not consider to be authentically Buddhist. I would probably adopt a more brusque tone and translate it as "fake text". Other modern authors have tended to adopt the more euphemistic term "apocryphal" (in various conjugations).

I can't read Japanese, but the arguments that the Dàmíngzhòujīng was not produced by Kumārajīva are not too difficult to tease out. It's not recorded amongst the works Kumārajīva is known to have translated. That said, a number of texts were falsely attributed to him for a time and have since been deprecated. Kumārajīva's translation process was very public. He would translate and comment on the texts during lectures, with the audience numbering in the hundreds. A lost Kumārajīva translation is very unlikely, whereas a spurious attribution is very likely. In addition, he is not known to have produced any digest texts (抄經), i.e. collections of reused passages that are supposed to convey the meaning of a larger text. And the Heart Sutra is certainly in that genre. Nor is the Dàmíngzhòujīng recorded in any of the dozen or so surviving bibliographies of Buddhist texts until the Kaiyuan Catalogue of 730 CE, i.e. the Dà táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù 《大唐開元釋教錄》 (Catalogue of Śākyamuṇi’s Teachings of the Kaiyuan Era of the Great Tang), compiled by Zhìshēng智昇  (T 2154). In order to fit these facts into the traditional myth of the Heart Sutra, some scholars conjectured that the Dàmíngzhòujīng was produced by one of Kumārajīva's students after his death. Perhaps his student Sēngzhào 僧肇 who was one of his principal collaborators (Liebenthal 1968). Sēngzhào's role was to listen to Kumārajīva's explanation of the text and write it down in elegant Chinese. He is one of the people responsible for the enduring appeal of Kumārajīva's translations. 

Everyone who ever wrote about the Xīnjīng (the standard Chinese Heart Sutra) in English tells us at the outset that this is probably the most beloved text in Mahāyāna Buddhism and that it is chanted daily in temples around the world. This popularity has never extended to the Dàmíngzhòujīng or, if it comes to it, to the Sanskrit fake produced in Tang Dynasty China.

I have conjectured that Dàmíngzhòujīng was only created to shore up support for the emerging myth of the Heart Sutra as a classic of Indian Prajñāpāramitā literature. It helps to fill out the back story. But the focus was always on the Xīnjīng (T 251)

I know the English language literature on the Heart Sutra quite well and the only serious discussion of the history of the Dàmíngzhòujīng that I know of occurs in Jan Nattier's 1992 article. And even that is quite sketchy. We know that the Dàmíngzhòujīng first appears in literary record in the Kaiyuan Catalogue in 730 but where are the physical examples of the Dàmíngzhòujīng and what is the oldest one? Why are there no images of the Dàmíngzhòujīng on the internet for example? (Search for "Dàmíngzhòujīng" or "Dàmíngzhòu jīng" and it's mainly my own work, such as it is). After attempting to search for information specific to this text and not finding anything, I began to try randomly asking the question online and sending emails to likely informants. And this led to some insights that I might never have got to on my own.


Ji Yun

Responding to my email, Ji Yun pointed out that the Dàmíngzhòujīng does not occur amongst the 100,000 or so Dunhuang manuscripts. This in itself is quite telling. Most of the texts there are from the 8th Century onwards. There were many Heart Sutra manuscripts at Dunhuang covering a variety of versions of the text in Chinese and Tibetan but the Dàmíngzhòujīng was not one of them. It did not travel beyond China.

Ji also consulted Huìlín’s (慧琳, 736－820)  一切經音義 Yīqièjīng yīnyì "Pronunciation and Meaning of All the Sūtras". This early dictionary of Chinese was begun in 649 by Xuanying 玄應 but completed by Huìlín in 807. Xuanying completed 25 chapters but the final version has 100. Xuanying was a contemporary of Xuanzang and worked with him.

The Yīqièjīng yīnyì lists two versions of the Heart Sutra one of which is attributed to Kumārajīva. However, Huìlín appears to be confused. The two texts he mentions are labelled:

1. 《大明呪經》(前譯般若心經　慧琳音). Dàmíngzhòujīng (A previous translation of the Prajñāhṛdaya Sūtra. Entry by Huìlín)
2. 《般若波羅多心經》(羅什譯　慧琳音). Bōrěbōluó[mi]duō xīnjīng (sic). (Translated by Kumārajīva. Entry by Huìlín). 

The tripiṭaka attributes Dàmíngzhòujīng to Kumārajīva and convention treats it as a "previous translation"; whereas the Xīnjīng is attributed to Xuanzang. Clearly, Huìlín is somewhat confused in his attributions. Along with each title are some associated words with guides to pronunciation and definitions. Just three terms are discussed and they don't add much to the picture. Thanks to my old friend Maitiu O'Ceileachair for advice on how to understand the dictionary entries.


Jason Protass

Jason Protass (Brown University), responding via Twitter, was also most helpful. He responded by looking through the older editions of the Chinese Tripiṭaka:

"an extant printed Damingzhoujing appears in the N. Song canon, and the sponsors colophon is dated 1085."

"The Damingzhoujing is in the catalog for the Kaibao canon 開寶藏, the first printed canon completed in 983, but is not among the surviving fascicles." (tweet)

Ji Yun also consulted a Chinese reference work that shows the Damingzhoujing occurs in all of the editions of the Tripiṭaka following the Kaibo Canon.

From the collection of Kunaichō shoryōbu, the Japanese Imperial Household Agency, we get some images from the Chongning Canon 崇寧藏, sometimes also referred to by the place of production, i.e. the Dongchan Temple (東禪寺) edition. Jason says it is dated between 1080 and 1112 CE (tweet). However, the date on this specific text is 元豐八年, i.e. the 8th year of the Yuanfeng era in the Song Dynasty or 1085 CE. The Dàmíngzhòujīng covers two pages, but in the accompanying image I have stitched them together using Photoshop.

Dàmíngzhòujīng as it occurs in the Chongning Canon 崇寧藏 (p. 17-18)

There is also a Stele from Fangshan (another one) from the Liao Dynasty (916–1125) which contains a copy of the Dàmíngzhòujīng along with the Xīnjīng. Several related pieces in the catalog are dated 1081 so it's probably from a similar period. I haven't yet had an opportunity to study the inscription, but it looks like this:

Buddhist Association of China (2000 VII: 399)

Conclusion

These may well be the earliest examples of the Dàmíngzhòujīng in existence. Both from about 300 years after the first literary reference and 400 years after the first physical evidence of the Xīnjīng. Please email me if you know of any earlier evidence (full credit will be given in any future publications on this subject).

Even given how periferal the Dàmíngzhòujīng was and is in Chinese Buddhism, the resources for this text are quite thin on the ground. No one has studied this text. I think maybe there is more information available in Chinese or Japanese sources, but my medieval Buddhist Chinese is not much help in reading modern Chinese and I don't know any Japanese. And here lies one of the problems in this field: information gets trapped in silos and those who could span the divide seem not to have much interest in doing so.

It would be very interesting to try to dig out all the Heart Sutras from all the extant canons and look at the variations!

~~oOo~~

As a footnote to my essay on svāhā, note that the Yīqièjīng yīnyì (807 CE) lists the spelling in T 250 as 僧婆訶 whereas Taishō has 僧莎呵 with no notes. However Chongning Canon 崇寧藏  (1085 CE) gives svāhā as 莎訶.

Bibliography

Buddhist Association of China and Chinese Buddhist Library. 中国佛教协会 / 中国佛教图书文物馆 (2000). Fangshan shi jing 房山石經 (30 Vols). Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe 華夏出版社.

Liebenthal, Walter (1968). Chao lun; the treatises of Sengzhao. A translation with introduction, notes, and appendices (2nd Rev. Ed). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Watanabe, Shōgo. (1991) 「般若心経成立論序説」 『仏教学』 “An introduction to the Theory on the Formation of the Prajñā-hridaya-sūtra,” Journal of Buddhist Studies 31, (July): 41-86. [Japanese].

Inscription of the Prajñāpāramitā Epithets

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. On 17 July, 2019, I discovered by chance that the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Cambridge University) library had a copy of Buddhist Stone Sutras in China (Vol.1) edited by Wang Yongbo and Lothar Ledderose (2014). One of the inscriptions is a fragment of the Prajñāpāramitā epithets passage as a separate text, dated before 561. One can also see the information on the website Buddhist Stone Sutras in China.

This should interest anyone who studies the Heart Sutra because it shows that a version of the epithets was circulating separately by the mid 6th Century (about 100 years before the Heart Sutra was composed). 

The Epithets: Quick Recap

In my article ‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra (2017) I expanded on a footnote in Jan Nattier's landmark article (1992). Footnote 54a was inserted at the last minute after the article had been typeset, in the days when typesetting meant adding numbers to footnotes manually. Nattier stopped the presses because her colleague Nobuyoshi Yamabe had written to her pointing out that a number of passages in Chinese Prajñāpāramitā texts closely parallel the epithets in the Heart Sutra. Nattier cites these with transliterations and translations and adds two extra passages to those identified by Yamabe.

In Epithets I took up the task of systematically identifying and studying these passages in both Sanskrit and Chinese Prajñāpātamitā texts. Since the passage occurs in the Shorter and Longer texts, and we have multiple recensions and translations this amounts to a fair few references. In finding and tabulating all of the references, I found that there were, in fact, just two: Passage One and Passage Two that recurred across the whole literature, always in the same chapter, though different recensions and versions number the chapters differently). In Kumārajīva's Large Sutra  translation the passages occur in Chapter 34 (= Chp 28 of Conze's translation, p.236 ff.). Minor differences in the two passages suggested that Passage Two was the likely source of the epithets in the Heart Sutra.

I also noticed that mantra was a mistranslation of what had originally been vidyā. The mistranslation seemed to revolve are around the use of 明呪 and/or 呪  to translate vidyā. In standard Middle Chinese, 呪 means "incantation" and in Buddhist contexts was frequently employed to translate dhāraṇī and later, mantra. Even so, in the mid 7th Century, the most obvious translation back into Sanskrit ought to have been dhāraṇī. Mantra was a very new concept at the time, with the first Tantric trained Buddhist, Atikūṭa, arriving in Chang'an only in 651. That the (Sanskrit) translator opted for Mantra is a tantalising hint about them, though not enough to draw hard conclusions from. There is no mantra in connection with any of the Sanskrit source texts. 

In any case, I showed that the passage in the Heart Sutra was originally found in Kumārajīva's translations of the Large Sutra and that the version in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is a calque of the Chinese. The extant Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā texts phrase it very differently, as we can see when the key versions of the passage are placed alongside each other.And the Chinese texts are very similar. This is consistent with other passages copied from the Large Sutra and as predicted by Nattier's Chinese origins thesis. (You don't need to read these languages - just look at the patterns). 

Pañc:  mahavidyeyaṃ bhagavan yaduta prajñāpāramitā | anuttareyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā asamasameyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā | (Gilgit 146v)

KJ. T.223:  般若波羅蜜是大明呪、無上明呪、無等等明呪。(8.286b28-c7:)

Xz T.220:  如是般若波羅蜜多是大神呪、是大明呪，是無上呪，是無等等呪，是一切呪王 (7.156.a17-22)

T.250:  故知般若波羅蜜  是大明呪，無上明呪，無等等明呪， (8.847c24-25)

T.251:  故知般若波羅蜜多，是大神咒 ，是大明咒，是無上咒，是無等等咒， (8.848c18-19)

Hṛd:  tasmāj jñātavyaṃ prajñāpramitā mahāmantro mahāvidyāmantro 'nuttaramantro 'samasamamantraḥ | (Conze 1967)

Note again that 呪 and 咒 are simple graphical variants with no difference in meaning or pronunciation. From these passages alone we can deduce that the passage in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra can only be a calque of T.251, in which Kumārajīva's basic text has been altered in  number of ways to be more like, but not identical to Xuanzang's text, including the switch from 明呪 to 呪, reading 明呪 as two characters, and addition of the epithet 神呪. Note that the CBETA punctuation is inconsistent.

The Shandong Inscription

The inscription published in the book by Wang and Ledderose is partial, but it holds enough clues to allow us to reconstruct the full inscription. The inscription was identified by Nobuyuki Takuma (2003) as being from the Small Perfection of Insight Sutra translated by Kumārajīva et. al. ca. 408 CE, i.e. the 《小品般若經》Xiǎopǐn bōrě jīng (T.227). Incidentally, Matthew Orsborn recently published an annotated translation of the first juan (about 2½ chapters) of this text.

The whole site has since been studied from an art history perspective by Ha Jungmin, whose PhD dissertation on the subject is available online courtesy of Duke University.

Entry on the Buddhist Stone Sutras in China website.

Location

Mt. Sili 司里山 (Sīlì Shān) is one of many sites in Shandong Province (山東省) that feature Buddhist inscriptions and carving (Coordinates 36.011185, 116.124008)  The mountain was originally called Mt. Jiliang 脊梁山 (Mt. Backbone) or Mt. Liliang 立梁山 (Mt. Upright Ridge).

Mt. Sili is located between Lake Dongping (东平湖) 4km to the east and the Yellow River, which flows north about 6.3 km to the west. The peak is about 110 above the plain. On the peak is a large outcrop of rock in two parts (referred to as "boulders" in the art history literature).






The Inscription

The sutra texts are thought to have been engraved during the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577 CE) only to be destroyed when Buddhist figures were carved over them in the 11th Century. The south face of the eastern boulder is dominated by a seated Buddha that is 11 m in height (Ha 2016). 

After Wang and Ledderose (2014: 421)

A rubbing made of the remaining part of the inscription was taken in 1998. It gives us about 20 characters (with several partial characters).

Wang and Ledderose (2014: 424)

The rubbing now resides in the Shandong Stone Carving Art Museum in Jinan. The source text was identified by Takuma (2003) as being from Chapter 3 of the Xiǎopǐn by Kumārajīva. Below is the text laid out as it must have been (following Wang and Ledderose 2014: 422) with the surviving characters (some of which are partially obscured) in black and other characters in grey. Note the order here is standard Chinese: start at top right, work down.

明 三 呪 十 過 佛 羅 羅 羅 白
呪 菩 得 方 去 言 蜜 蜜 蜜 佛
十 提 阿 現 諸 如 是 是 是 言
善 憍 耨 在 佛 是 無 無 大 世
道 尸 多 諸 未 如 等 上 明 尊
出 迦 羅 佛 來 是 等 呪 呪 般
現 因 三 亦 諸 憍 呪 般 般 若
於 是 藐 因 佛 尸 

[Indra, Lord of the Gods,] said this to the Buddha: "world honoured, the perfection of insight is great spell (vidyā), the perfection of insight is unsurpassed spell, is unequalled spell." The Buddha replied, "excellent, excellent, Kauśika... all past Buddhas... all future Buddhas... all present Buddhas of the ten directions, because of this spell, attain supreme perfect awakening. Kauśika, because of this spell, the tens modes of good action are now in the world..." (My translation)

This corresponds to Passage Two in Attwood (2017) which reinforces the conclusion that it was this passage, rather than Passage One that was copied into the Heart Sutra. And note that it conforms to the pattern of referring to the Buddhas of the three times that I note in Attwood (2018).

The Vedic god Indra plays a major role in early Buddhist tests as well as in the Prajñāpāramitā. In Buddhist texts Indra is typically referred to as "Śakra" in the 3rd person and "Kauśika" in the 2nd person. The expression 釋提桓因 corresponds to Śakro devānām indraḥ "Śakra, lord of the devas".

The text as it appears in the CBETA version of Taishō (T.227, Vol. 8) follows with the inscription text highlighted. We can see that the restored text is an abbreviation of the canonical text, where the redactor has mainly removed unnecessary repetition. However, leaving off the speaker at the beginning was a bit of a blunder.

543b25：羅惡心即滅。」釋提桓因白佛言：「世尊！般若波
543b26：羅蜜是大明呪，般若波羅蜜是無上呪，般若
543b27：波羅蜜是無等等呪。」佛言：「如是，如是！憍尸迦！
543b28：般若波羅蜜是大明呪，般若波羅蜜是無上
543b29：呪，般若波羅蜜是無等等呪。何以故？憍尸迦！
543c01：過去諸佛，因是明呪，得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。
543c02：未來諸佛，亦因是呪，當得阿耨多羅三藐三菩
543c03：提。今十方現在諸佛，亦因是呪，得阿耨多羅
543c04：三藐三菩提。 「憍尸迦！因是明呪，十善道出現於
543c05：世，四禪、四無量心、四無色定、五神通出現於

We know that this is from the Xiǎopǐn because of the way the epithets are written.

T 224: 般若波羅蜜是大明呪、無上明呪、無等等明呪
T 227: 般若波羅蜜是大明呪，般若波羅蜜是無上呪，般若波羅蜜是無等等呪

This configuration only appears in Passage Two of T 227. Note that 明呪 is abbreviated in the 2nd and 3rd epithets in the Xiǎopǐn. Kumārajīva was inconsistent in how he treated this passage in different places (unlike Xuanzang, who standardised it). In Passage One Kumārajīva translated 般若波羅蜜是大呪術、無上呪術。(Just two epithets and vidyā = 呪術). 

The different numbers of epithets may reflect differences in the source texts; however, three appears to be the standard configuration:

大明呪 = mahāvidyā

   無上明呪 = anuttarā vidyā 

   無等等明呪 = asamasamā vidyā

The Date

The sutra text is thought to date from the Northern Qi (550-577 CE) along with other carvings from that period at this site. There is no actual date on the epithets inscription. However, a votive carving of  Maitreya in a niche, about 20 cm in height, covers part of a nearby text and is clearly dated 561 CE. Thus the sutra carving here predates this and it is assumed that the sutra engravings are from the same period.

The right top corner of Figure 5. Votive
image and its inscription dated 561 CE

The Northern Qi were one of several Chinese kingdoms at the time. The Qi were very open to Buddhism, but in 577 were conquered by the Northern Zhou who were hostile to Buddhism and persecuted Buddhists. A few years later the Zhou conquered South China and this led to the founding of a new pan-Chinese Sui Dynasty in 581. The Sui lasted only until 618, when the Tang Dynasty was founded by the Li family. The Tang continued till 907. The Heart Sutra was composed during the early Tang, between 656 and 661.

Conclusions

Inscriptions of this kind are very common in China and, although there are some studies in Chinese, precious little of it has been available in English since Sinologists tend to be fluent in Chinese. Additionally, as with studies of the Fangchang inscriptions, the work is being done within the field of art history and not many Buddhists routinely keep up with this field. The silo mentality creates barriers to progress. Still the documentation in this series of books by Harrassowitz is welcome (other titles). The outsized format allows for large photographs. I'd be even more stoked if Buddhism Studies had not died out in Cambridge and there was some hope of seeing the other books in the series.

The key thing about this inscription for scholars of the Heart Sutra, is that it shows that the epithets passage was circulating as an independent text by the middle of the 6th Century. Which helps to make sense of the incorporation of the passage in the Heart Sutra. That the inscription is taken from T.227 rather than T.223 (or T1509) does weaken the connection a little, but the differences are minor. The areas seems to have been associated with Prajñāpāramitā studies. 

Despite the recent thesis by Ha Jungmin, we still don't really know much about the context of this site, since her focus is on other sites nearby. We do know that texts were carved and then later carved over with images. This suggests a change of emphasis, perhaps.

Citing Robert F. Campany (1991: 28-72),  Ha (2016) explains,

"the Perfection of Wisdom carvings at the Mt. Hongding and Mt. Sili sites were most likely regarded as talismans with magical powers that would ensure the enlightenment of Buddhahood to its creators."

Vajrasamādhi Sūtra

The other note that is contained in the commentary of Wang and Ledderose is that this same passage occurs in the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra 《金剛三昧經》(T 273), a text that was composed in Chinese language, in Korea in about 685 CE. The history of it is outlined by Robert Buswell (1989).

The epithets in the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra go

當知是法即是摩訶般若波羅蜜，是大神呪、是大明呪、是無上呪、是無等等呪。(T 9.371b12-14)

"It should be known that this Dharma is only the great perfection of great insight, which is a great spell, an unsurpassed spell, an unequalled spell." 

This is the version from the Heart Sutra (T.251) with the extra epithet, 大神呪. We know that the Heart Sutra was in existence by 661 CE. Although this does not tell us about the formation of the Heart Sutra, it does tell us that re-using sections of Buddhists texts was an ongoing process.

We should never discount the role that serendipity plays in research nor that of physically browsing through libraries. I have unparalleled access to information from my desktop but there is no substitute for just walking around and picking up interesting books.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Attwood, Jayarava. (2017). "‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 12, 26–57. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/155/180

Attwood, Jayarava. (2018). "The Buddhas of the Three Times and the Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 15: 9-27.

Buswell, Robert E. (1989), The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The 'Vajrasamadhi-Sutra', a Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton University Press.

Campany, Robert F. (1991) "Notes on the Devotional Uses and Symbolic Functions of Sutra Texts as Depicted in Early Chinese Buddhist Miracle Tales and Hagiographies." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14/1: 28–72.

Ha, Jungmin (2016) Shaping Religious and Cultural Aspiration: Engraved Sutras in Southwestern Shandong Province from the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577 CE), China. PhD. Dissertation. Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke University. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/12216/Ha_duke_0066D_13425.pdf

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

Takuma, Nobuyuki 田熊信之 (2003). “Hokuchō Magai Kokukyō to Andōichi” 北朝摩崖刻經と安道壹, Gakuen 學苑 749: 131-158.

Wang, Yongbo and Ledderose, Lothar. (2014) Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. (Vol.1) Shandong Sheng  = Shandong Province. edited by Wang Yongbo and Lothar Ledderose.Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Hangzhou : China Academy of Art Press, 2014.

Notes: 17 Aug 2019

"The epithets are also found in the (Fó shuō) Guānfó sānmèi hǎi jīng 佛說觀佛三昧海經 (T 643). . According to my own research, the Guanfo sanmei hai jing (GSHJ) is very likely a Chinese apocryphal text. The GSHJ must have existed in the Chinese cultural area by the first half of the 5th century (see p. 425 of the attached paper)." (Yamabe email 17 Aug 2019)

Yamabe, N. (2006). "Could Turfan be the Birthplace of Visualization Sūtras?" In Tulufanxueyanjiu yanjiu, Dierjie Tulufanxue Guoji Xueshu Yantaohui lunwenji, ed. Xinjiang Tulufan Diqu Wenwuju, (419-430), Shangai: Shangai Cishu Chubanshe. 

Beginning and End Marker in Buddhist Texts

Rañjana yig gmo + extension
and double daṇḍa

I have often wondered about the symbols one sees at the beginning and end of texts and mantras. I've been researching them for my forthcoming book. It possible to consider these as simple decoration, but scholars of Buddhist texts and inscriptions have often interpreted them as something more. The Tibetans seem to have the most developed and elaborate forms of these, and they have a clear name for the symbol, so let's start there.

Beginning Markers

Here are the Tibetan variations from the Tibetan Unicode block.

The general term seems to be yimgo (i.e. yig mgo) meaning 'head' or perhaps 'header'. The first symbol is bdra rnying yig mgo mdun ma which seems to mean 'old orthography header', so-called since it is used in early texts, while the more ornate version (no.3) is used currently. [West 2005, 2006] The second is the yimgo combined with the 'following yimgo' (yig mgo sgab ma) and a shad (see below). The 3rd and fourth are the standard yimgo these days (yig mgo mdun ma). The 5th and 6th are the yimgo decorated with a shad (yig mgo phur shad ma; the shad is used as a punctuation mark and equivalent to the Indic daṇḍa); and the old style yimgo with both shad and tsheg (yig mgo tsheg shad ma), the tsheg or syllable marker is usually a simply dot between syllables, but sometimes is more elaborate.

The modern Japanese Siddhaṃ has a yimgo with the same form as the archaic Tibetan yimgo.

The same kind of mark is seen (right) in the Lantsa and Rañjana scripts. The proposed Unicode block for Rañjana calls this the Rañjana yig mgo which suggests there is no indigenous explanation for it in Nepal. In fact I haven't found a definite Indic name for the symbol.

In older manuscripts the symbol is cruder an much more variable, but always a variation on the spiralling curve. As you can see below in the partial chart from Roth (1986) there was considerable variation. Virtually all of the possible orientations are seen in practice, including the one used in Tibetan and it's mirror image.

The symbol numbered 11 is found in the Patna Dharmapada (a famous manuscript with the Dharmapada in Sanskrit); 8 at the beginning of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa. Tibetan Scholars have usually interpreted this symbol as oṃ, and modern scholars seem to have followed their lead. Notice no.17 from a Pala era inscription (ca 1174 AD) which shows the two together. They are obviously quite distinct, and the two wouldn't occur together if one was an abbreviated form of the other.

Others have sought to explain this symbol as an abbreviated form of the word siddhiḥ or even siddhir astu (Roth p.240). Margaret Cone for instance transcribes sign 11 as siddhaṃ in her Patna Dharmapada (p.35). Roth cites an example of the symbol and the word found together (right) in an unpublished manuscript of the Pañcakrama (a tantric text attributed to Nāgārjuna). Roth interprets the word as explaining the symbol preceding it, but I don't see why unless we presume that the symbol means siddhiḥ in the first place. In any case this one example shows that at the time the symbol was not graphically similar in any way to how the word was written.

The identification as oṃ may explain why we find so many texts transcribed as beginning with oṃ. When for instance the bhaiṣajyaguru-vaidūrya-prabharāja Sūtra is transcribed as beginning with the maṅgala-gāthā:

oṁ namaḥ sarvajñāya | namo bhagavate bhaiṣajyaguruvaidūryaprabharājāya tathāgatāya ||

The oṃ was in fact most likely a yimgo. Judging by the remarks by Roth and by Sander, many of the times we find oṃ in a Buddhist text which is not simply a mantra or dhāraṇī, we might really be seeing yimgo. The scribe was most likely concerned to begin with an auspicious symbol, but they did not have oṃ in mind.

The scholarly consensus seems to be that the curve represents siddhaṃ c.f. Salomon (1998, p.66-68). Certainly we know that many scribes did begin copying with the word siddhaṃ or siddhiḥ, hence the name of the script, but if they abbreviated it to the symbol the proof has yet to be found. So although in many editions of Buddhist texts we find oṃ, it's prevalence might have been greatly exaggerated. Personally, I doubt oṃ was used by Buddhists before the 7th or 8th century because it doesn't occur in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra.

Another possibility not previously considered is that it represents a snake. Symbols representing cobras appear on ancient Indian coins. To the right is a sketch of a coin from the Kuninda era (ca. 2nd century BCE - 1st CE) borrowed from the Resources for Collectors coin website. Between the horns of the deer is a sign which is described as "two cobras". You can see that they are very similar to the ancient Indian yimgo symbol, although apparently they always appear in between the deer horns. On the other side of the coin are other common symbols including the svastika, and the three jewels sign (see my post on the svastika). I wonder if the yimgo is actually a nāga?


End Markers

End of line or text markers are usually based on the Indic daṇḍa. The word daṇḍa means 'stick or stroke' and in Devanāgarī it is a simple vertical stroke |. In prose it is used rather variably to represent any kind of hiatus - where we might have a comma, a semi-colon, a colon, a dash, or a full-stop, in Deanāgarī one finds a daṇḍa. In Poetry the end of a pada (or line) is marked with a daṇḍa while the end of a gāthā (or stanza) is marked with a double daṇḍa ||. The earliest Indian inscriptions use no punctuation, and it took many centuries for the use of the daṇḍa to be standardised. I note that most examples of Japanese Siddhaṃ do not use any internal punctuation, but only mark the beginning and end of the text.

Rañjana also has a daṇḍa and double daṇḍa (right). One has to be careful not to mistake the daṇḍa for a diacritic mark, or double daṇḍa for a ta. Mantras will sometimes, as in the Tibetan scripts, combine a yimgo with a daṇḍa or double daṇḍa. You can see how this is used in the this woodblock print.

The Tibetan equivalent of the daṇḍa is called a shad (pronounced shé) meaning more or less the same thing. The Tibetans also use a dot at the end of syllables called a tsheg - the ornate forms of which occasionally replace the shad. There are a great number of elaborate shad and tsheg markers in Tibetan. Here are the shads from the Tibetan Unicode block:


These are: 1. shad; 2. nyis or double shad; 3. tsheg shad; 4; nyis tsheg shad; 5 rin chen spungs (mound of jewels) shad; 6. sbrul (snake stroke) shad*; 7. rgya gram (cross) shad*; 8. gter (treasure) tsheg - sometimes used in place of a shad. [* displayed with Tibetan Machine Uni font]. Some of these signs have specific uses in manuscripts, and others are simply decorative. The Tibetan texts I've seen mainly use the shad, double shad and gter tsheg.

The ends of chapters or texts received extra elaborate marks, but I must stop here. I will be including a longer version of this essay my forthcoming book.

References

• Cone, Margaret. (1989) Patna Dharmapada [transcription]. Pali Text Society. Reproduced online with Pāli Parallels, Metrical Commentary, Notes, and Indexes compiled by Ānandajoti Bhikkhu (2007): http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Buddhist-Texts/C5-Patna/Patna.pdf
  
• Everson, Michael. (2009) Preliminary proposal for encoding the Rañjana script in the SMP of the UCS. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3649.pdf
• Jayarava. Siddhir astu. Visible Mantra Blog. http://visiblemantra.blogspot.com/2011/05/siddhir-astu.html
  
• Roth, Gustav. (1986) 'Mangala-symbols in Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts and Inscriptions' in Bhattacharya, G (ed.) Deyadharma : Studies in Memory of Dr D. C. Sircar. Sri Satguru Pubs. Delhi, p. 239-250.
• Salomon, Richard. (1998) Indian Epigraphy: a Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit and the other Indo-Aryan languages. Oxford University Press.
  
• Sander, Lore. (1986) 'Oṃ or Siddhaṃ: Remarks on Openings of Buddhist Manuscripts and Inscriptions from Gilgit and Central Asia' in Bhattacharya, G (ed.) Deyadharma : Studies in Memory of Dr D. C. Sircar. Sri Satguru Pubs. Delhi, p. 251-262.
• Unicode Consortium (2010) Tibetan Unicode specification. http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0F00.pdf
• West, Andrew. (2005) Proposal to encode two archaic Tibetan punctuation marks. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3033.pdf
• West, Andrew. (2006) Proposal to encode three archaic Tibetan characters. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3012.pdf [accompanied by some excellent images!]
  

Tibetan examples are illustrated using the attractive Jomolhari font, with some help from Tibetan Machine Uni where noted. Both are free and take quite different approaches to dbu can, giving plenty of variation. As far as I know there are no fonts for Tibetan scripts other than dbu can.

For another introduction to this subject see this blog post by Tashi Mannox: The heading character and Script construction.