The Oldest Dated Heart Sutra

This essay is in the form of a minor mystery. I started off trying find some basic information about an image in a recent book on the Heart Sutra (below) and ended up investigating all kinds of things and finally discovering that the image is not quite what it appears to be. I hope that presenting the information in roughly the order I discovered it will make for better reading than just presenting the end point. The final picture came together slowly over a period of a couple of weeks of intensive exploration of the Chinese Heart Sutra. So to begin at the beginning...

In Tanahashi (2014: 96) the image above is captioned "The earliest known rendering of the Heart Sutra. Carved in 672. Stone Rubbing". The List of illustrations adds "Public Domain" (xi). The discussion of this inscription says "Xuanzang's Heart Sutra was carved on the monument erected by Emperor Gao in 672 at the Gaofu Monastery, Chang'an." (81; sic). This statement is credited in the notes to "Ibid., 562", i.e. Fukui (2000: 562). I don't have access to Fukui (2000) yet, so I set about trying to track down this "public domain" image mainly in order to compare the text with other Chinese Heart Sutra texts, but also because I was intrigued that it might be the earliest dated Heart Sutra.

You might think that a public domain image of the "The earliest known rendering of the Heart Sutra" would be of considerable interest and therefore be easy to find. Not so. Initially I could find no images of this text on the internet, except for a badly cropped version showing only the upper half.

Note 3 Jan 2016. I was mistaken about this image being cropped. The text is all there but is a little more compressed that the image above. I will add more about this other image below.

So I wrote to Shambala Publications who kindly sent me a high resolution image. The author himself has not replied to my questions about the provenance of the image however. So I had to find out for myself.

The first step to finding out more, was to try to clarify the information supplied in the reference. There were two Emperors of the early Tang called "Gao". To coincide with the year 672 CE, Tanahashi must be referring to 唐高宗 Táng Gāozōng, i.e. Gāozōng of the Tang Dynasty (628 – 683). Gāozōng was the third Emperor of the Tang Dynasty. He is usually considered a rather lacklustre emperor. After a series of strokes his wife, Empress Wu 妾皇后, more or less took over running the state, then after he died she became the first Empress. Where Gāo, like previous Tang emperors, was not very supportive of Buddhism, Wu found in it her justification for being a female emperor in deeply patriarchal China.

Seal One

At first I could find no reference linking Gāozōng to this inscription. At the end of the inscription however, are two seals. The practice of adding seals to documents for authenticity may have begun with Gāozōng's father, 唐太宗 i.e. Emperor Tàizōng of Táng (r. 627-649). It seems to have been related to his interest in the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi (see below). Chinese seals are carved, usually into soft stone, with characters in the Seal Script, an archaic form of Chinese writing still used for decorative purposes. Unlike the inscription itself, the forms of these seal characters is often quite different from the modern ones. Reading seal script is an art in itself. Identifying the characters in these seals seemed like it might be illuminating.

seal generator

I asked for help identifying the characters in these seals via my Visible Mantra Facebook Page. Seal One reads: 高堅之印 or "The Seal of Gāo jiān". Where 印 means "seal" and 之 is possessive. 高Gāo is the same character as occurs in the name of Emperor Gāozōng, which made me think that perhaps it was related to the emperor. Different fonts render seal script in different ways, but on the right is one version, created by an online app, which shows some similarities with this seal (the bottom left character is inverted). However one of the comments gave me some useful information about this seal:

"Yes this is 高堅之印, the seal made by a very famous seal artist Mitsui Takakata 三井高堅". (@Shugendo Canada).

So here the character 高 is in fact Japanese taka(i) "high, elevated". And Seal one in fact reads "Seal of Takakata". Mitsui Takakata (1867-1945), aka 宗堅 Sōken, was a Japanese industrialist and art collector (note that in Japanese the Kanji 堅 can be pronounced kata or ken). He was a senior member of the Mitsui Zaibatsu, one of the largest corporations in the world at the time. He also had strong artistic leanings: "Takakata was a talented calligrapher versed in classical literature and an amateur epigrapher with a particularly good knowledge of seals." (Sherman 1982). Below are some examples of seals he created, supplied by my informant. The one of the left bears a striking resemblance to Seal One.

三井高堅之印

高堅之印

Takakata was responsible for collecting perhaps 500 rubbings of stone inscriptions now held in the East Asiatic Library, University Of California, Berkeley (Mitsui was broken up by the post-WWII government and forced to divest itself of many assets, which meant selling a large chunk of their extensive library). I could not locate the rubbing from Tanahashi in EAL collection, though it contains several examples of the Heart Sutra or 心經.

It seems that Mitsui Takakata was the person who did the rubbing that appears in Tanahashi (2014). He must have stamped it with his own seal afterwards. We still don't know when he created this image or where the original rubbing is.

Seal Two

In the second seal we may have 安唐. 唐 means Tang, the name of the Tang Dynasty which is the Dynasty under which Xuanzang lived. Or it may be 安適. Opinion was divided amongst commentators and neither option produced much insight into whose seal this is. The two seals are very different in style, so perhaps this seal was part of the original inscription? In any case I could not learn anything further about Seal Two.

Update 3 Jan 2016. The plot thickens a little as I discovered, by paying attention, that the other image of a rubbing found on Wikimedia shows what may well be the original rubbing that the image in Tanahashi is based on.

Wikimedia

The image here is rather indistinct, but a very hi resolution image is available via Wikimedia. Here there are 40 short columns, while in Tanahashi there are 27 longer columns. I'm not sure if this is a separate rubbing or if this is the model used for creating the image in Tanahashi. If so it has been cleaned up substantially. There's a lot more noise in the Wikimedia image - white pixels surrounding the characters. I've tried looking specifically at the stray pixels around the characters - since the characters themselves are more or less identical - but the Tanahashi image has either been cleaned up in some way (perhaps using photoshop) or they are different. Note that the Wikimedia image has no seals. 

Returning to the description in Tanahashi (2014), "Gaofu Monastery" was a brief mystery in its own right. In fact it is a mistake. The author or perhaps the typesetter has taken the name Gao from the emperor and mixed it up with the name of the monastery. The monastery is called 弘福寺 Hóngfú sì (Great Good-fortune Monastery), a place closely associated with Xuanzang. It was where he started his translation work on returning from China. Later he moved to 西明寺 Xīmíng sì (Western Bright Monastery).

Tanahashi relates the story behind the creation of the inscription of which the rubbing is a copy (2014: 95-97). In Wong (2002) we find another version of the story.

"In 652, at Xuanzang's request, Gaozong authorized the erection on the temple grounds of a five-story Indian-style stūpa, which was built as a brick-covered earth core. After the stūpa was completed, the two steles incised with the imperial texts were installed in a stone chamber on its top floor."

"In 672 the same imperial texts were inscribed anew, this time in the style of Wang Xizhi's 王羲之 (307-65) xingshu, or running script (fig. 3). Huairen 懷仁 a monk from the Hongfu Monastery, initiated the project and was responsible for its design. Assembling characters from Wang Xizhi's extant works, he shrank or enlarged them as necessary, so that the texts incised on the stele would replicate Wang's fluent, semi-cursive style. 12 This work is currently in Xi'an's Beilin 碑林, or Forest of Steles." (Wong 2002: 49; emphasis added)

Each version of this story that I have uncovered seems to have slightly different details. Emperor Taizong who was originally fascinated by the calligraphy of 王羲之 Wáng Xīzhī (303–361), a Chinese calligrapher traditionally referred to as the Sage of Calligraphy (書聖), and became a collector of his work (Powers & Tsiang 2015: 299). In 2010 an example of this calligraphy sold for $46 million (BBC News). In 648 Taizong issued an edict as the preface to the Chinese Tripiṭaka titled, Preface to the Sacred Teaching 聖教序 (781 characters). It was this text that was initially inscribed in stone on a stele. According to Powers & Tsiang (2015), two versions were created. One based on the calligraphy of Chu Suiliang 褚遂良 (597-658) in 653 and a more elaborate one, by Huairen based on the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi. Perhaps the Heart Sutra was added by the pious Huairen? All sources agree that it took 25 years to assemble all the characters needed for Huairen to compose the full text in this way (so collecting the characters must have begun in 647 at the latest, which is during the reign of Taizong and six years before the first stele was completed). When a precise character could not be found its radical and parts were extracted from other characters so it could be constructed. The finished project (1903 characters) included the Heart Sutra that interests us here.

Sheng (2011: 65) by contrast mentions:

"A pair of steles inscribed with the Da Tang Sanzang shengjiao xu 大唐三藏聖教序 (Preface to the Holy Teachings of the Tripiṭaka of the Great Tang Dynasty) and Da Tang Sanzang shengjiao xu ji 大唐三藏聖教序記 (Notes to the Preface to the Holy Teachings of the Tripiṭaka of the Great Tang Dynasty) erected in 653, represent the most refined phase of [Chu Suiliang's] calligraphy

The former preface was composed by Li Shimin 李世民, i.e. Emperor Tàizōng, and the latter by Li Zhi 李治, i.e. Emperor Gāozōng. The first steles stood at the southern entrance of the famous 大雁塔 or Great Goose Pagoda at 大慈恩寺 (Great Grace and Goodwill Monastery) (Sheng 2001: 87-88), which we mentioned in last week's essay as a monastery associated with Xuanzang's disciple Kuījī. A good deal more detail on the influence of the Imperial obsession with the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi on the development of writing in China can be found in Sheng (2011: 48ff).

So Huáirén created a kind of Frankenstein text of these two prefaces, plus some other bits and pieces and a Heart Sutra text. Sheng (2011: 100) notes that Chinese art historians have tried to trace the individual characters to individual works by Wang Xizhi with limited success. Knowing this is quite helpful because when we look at the image from Tanahashi we can see that the characters are indeed a mishmash of styles. We probably would not guess they were all by the same calligrapher. For example compare these characters (below) which were selected to highlight the differences. They were all copied from the Tanahashi image without any resizing:

The characters are different styles and different sizes, a fairly random collection of mismatched characters. It becomes even more apparent when we look at variations of individual characters, for example of 不, 亦, and 無 respectively.

This observation supports the idea that the rubbing in Tanahashi was created from the stele created by Huairen in 672. At this point it might we worth saying something about the Chinese practice of making inscriptions of sutras.

Dhāraṇī Pillars

Dhāraṇī texts (including the Heart Sutra) are the subject of Paul Copp's (2014) book, The Body Incantatory. Carved pillars with short texts including the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya and Uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī Sūtra were very common in medieval China. Around the 7th century the writing down of texts for use as amulets worn as arm-bands or necklaces had become a specific practice and it appears that short texts, such as the Uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī Sūtra and possibly the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya were composed especially for this purpose.

The image on the right (taken from Sotheby's online catalogue) shows a typical stone pillar, octagonal and carved with the Uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī Sūtra. One of Conze's Heart Sutra texts was a similar octagonal pillar discovered in Mongolia and published by Miranov in 1932. The Heart Sutra and Uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī appear together on the famous Horiuzi Palm-leaf manuscript and in several other manuscript sources.

See also Liying Kuo (2014), who notes that the second oldest Heart Sutra text is found engraved on a pillar erected in 702, during Wu’s reign. And recall that Wu could not justify her taking power through either Daoism or Confucianism and so sought legitimation through Buddhism. By this time the kings of Japan were also using Buddhism as a legitimating narrative for their kingship.

So the inscription and indeed the Heart Sutra more generally, needs to be seen in this light. It was distinctive in its way, but also fits into the context of a widespread popular practice. And it was in the context of clarifying this information that I came across the real prize in this research.


The Stele

Amongst the many searches for the image itself I turned up many references to the original stele now residing in the Forest of Steles Beilin, in Xian, no other images of the stele itself. Then serendipitously, whilst looking for images of Dhāraṇī pillars, I chanced upon an image of another rubbing of the same stele held in a collection of rubbings at Harvard University Fine Arts Library. In the image below the Heart Sutra takes up columns 23-27 (counting from the right).

The Stele is 226 x 94 cm. There are 30 columns of text, each of which contains up to 84 characters. Each character is about 3.5 cm in width and 4 cm in height. Although most sources mention only three texts, Sheng (2011: 96) describes several:

"The stele begins with the title Da Tang Sanzang shengjiao xu. Next to the title, two important statements—―太宗文皇帝製 (Composed by Taizong, the Literary Emperor) and ―弘福寺沙門懷仁集晉右將軍王羲之書 (Monk Huairen in Hongfu Monastery collected the characters from the calligraphies of Wang Xizhi, General of the Right Army of the Jin dynasty [to engrave on this slab] are presented in one line. This statement of calligraphic authorship is followed by five individual bodies of text: the complete text of Taizong’s Preface (ten lines), Taizong’s reply to Xuanzang’s gratitude letter (one line), Gaozong’s Notes to the Preface (ten lines), Gaizong’s reply to Xuanzang’s gratitude letter (one line), and a paragraph [sic] from the Heart Sutra (five lines).

"The last line of the inscription reads, ―On the eighth day of the twelfth month in the third year of [Gaozong] Xianheng era [672], erected by the Buddhist priests in the capital; calligraphies engraved on the stone by civil official Gentleman-litterateur, Zhuge Shenli, and Commandant of Militant Cavalry, Zhu Jingzang (咸亨三年十二月八日京城法 侶建立; 文林郎 諸葛神力 勒石 武騎尉 朱靜藏 鐫字). (Sheng 2011: 95)

Because of the distinctive nature of the text a comparison is relatively easy. The text of the rubbing in Tanahashi is the same as the text in this rubbing. See image right comparing the title of the text - with Harvard on the left, Tanahashi in the middle, and the Wikimedia image on the right. I have tweaked the contrast in the Harvard image to improve the contrast (by adjusting the black, mid and white points using the "levels" tool in Photoshop Elements) Looking at this my impression is that the characters in the Tanahashi image have also had the contrast adjusted. The white of the characters is too white. Contrarily the Wikimedia image shows texture in the white of the letters, which is what me might expect with an engraving.

The third image complicated matters somewhat because we don't have enough information on the provenance of any of them to know how or even if they are related. We can say that the Harvard rubbing shows no sign of seals and that these must have been added to the rubbing at a later date, possibly by Mitsui Takakata himself, or perhaps by someone else. 

The original stele was more like a dhāraṇī pillar than a page of manuscript. This stele now stands at Beilin Museum in Xian and it is commonly referred to as the 集王聖教序并記 "Preface and the Notes to the Preface to the Holy Teaching with the Collected Wang's [calligraphies]" (Sheng 2011: 89). Sheng goes on to discuss the Preface in great detail (90ff). Sheng suggest that Taizong's preface was composed specifically for Xuanzang's translation of the 100 fascicle Yogācārabhūmi.

Of the utmost importance for the history of the Heart Sutra is the note by Sheng (2011: 96) that "At the end of the main text, five high officials are credited with giving the translation of the sutra a proper elegance and finish... and ... the process of the afore named officials' finalizing and polishing the sutra's translation took place in 656". Thus the Xuanzangisms in the text (the spelling of 觀自在 and 舍利子 for example) may well have been added in tribute to Xuanzang rather than by him, but before his death in 664. We also know that although Emperor Gāo appreciated Xuanzang, more generally he was no fan of Buddhism and is, contra Tanahashi (95), unlikely to have thought of promoting the Heart Sutra. Gāo cancelled the translation program in the same year as Xuanzang died and thence turned increasingly to Daoism (Wriggins 2004: 203). This also means we can date T251, which is more or less identical to this text, to 656 CE at the latest. This is still long after Xuanzang returned from India and also after the date traditionally ascribed to T251 i.e. 649 CE.

The Text of the Stele Inscription

I have transcribed the inscription as it appears in Tanahashi, checking against the Harvard rubbing where possible. My version is shown below in a semi-cursive font (and repeated below in whatever your browser uses for a standard Chinese font). The text mainly follows Xuanzang's version and the traditional Chinese reading order - one starts at top right and reads down, then goes to the top of the next column to the left and finishes in the bottom left. It's like English writing with the page rotated 90° clockwise.

The first two lines read:

1. 般若波羅蜜多心經 i.e. Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sūtra.
2. 沙门玄奘奉 "Homage to Shāmen Xuánzàng." 沙门 shāmen here means “monk”. There are two separate characters below this that are indistinct in Takakata's rubbing and even less clear in the Harvard rubbing. The characters are difficult to read, but comparison with a number of other texts suggests that they are 詺 "named," and 譯 "interpret, translate". I'm not sure how to read them in this context. The Wikimedia image does not separate these characters out. 

The rest of the text is the same as T251 the version attributed to Xuanzang, except that in columns 25 and 26 the character 帝 is written as 諦. However these two have the same pronunciation, dì. The text written left to right reads:

般若波羅蜜多心經
沙门玄奘奉    詺 譯
觀自在菩薩行深般若波羅
蜜多時照見五蘊皆空度一
切苦厄舍利子色不異空空
不異色色即是空空即是色
受想行識亦復如是舍利子
是諸法空相不生不滅不垢
不淨不增不減是故空中無
色無受想行識無眼耳 鼻
舌身意無色聲香味觸法
無眼界乃至無意識界無無
明亦無無明盡乃至無老死
亦無老死盡無苦集滅道無
智亦無得以無所得故菩提薩
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三世
諸佛依般若波羅蜜多故得
阿耨多羅三藐三菩提故知
般若波羅蜜多是大神咒是
大明咒是無上咒是無等等
咒能除一切苦真實不虛故說
般若波羅蜜多咒即說咒曰
    揭諦揭諦    般羅揭諦
    般羅僧揭諦    菩提僧莎訶
般若多心經

Conclusions

I think this story shows how important good referencing is. Without accurate information it can be very difficult to track down the original, be it an image or a textual source. Tanahashi has not made it easy to locate this important version of the Heart, so seldom written about or studied in English. However, I believe I have now correctly identified the image, filled in many of the gaps in the information about its provenance, transcribed it and shown how it fits in with existing versions. Scholarship is partly about ensuring that those who come after you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

If this is indeed the earliest dated Heart Sutra text then it is extremely important in the history of the Heart Sutra. The Japanese Horiuzi palm-leaf manuscript is said to date from 609 CE, but this is unlikely to be true. The first European scholars to examine the ms. dated it to the 8th century on palaeographic grounds. Of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but an earliest text dated 672 CE is consistent with Nattier's Chinese Origins hypothesis. If, for example, it really had been "translated" in the 5th Century by Kumārajīva we might expect an earlier inscription or some other corroborating archaeology. Not only do we have the first physical evidence of the Heart Sutra in the late 7th century, but we can also date the first commentaries to around the same time, i.e. shortly after the death of Xuanzang. Again, if the text were earlier we might expect a narrative source, such as the diaries of previous Chinese pilgrims to India to mention the text, but again the earliest source for this kind of evidence is associated with Xuanzang. As it is the earliest Indian evidence, the Indian commentaries preserved in Tibetan, date from the 8th century.

All of this is consistent with the text being composed or at least popularised in the 7th century, probably originally as an amulet for protection from misfortune. The status as an epitome of Prajñāpāramitā most likely came later and in fact the first commentators (i.e. 원측 Woncheuk and 窺基 Kuījī),  understood the text to be an epitome of Yogācāra thought, unlike the Indian commentators who saw in the text either a Madhyamaka or Tantric epitome.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Copp, Paul. (2014). The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Columbia University Press.

Liying Kuo. (2014). Dhāraṇī Pillars in China: Functions and Symbols in Wong, Dorothy C. & Heldt, Gustav. (Eds) China and Beyond in the Mediaeval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections. https://www.academia.edu/10400197/Dha_ra_ni_Pillars_in_China_Functions_and_Symbols

Powers, Martin J. & Tsiang, Katherine R. (2015). A Companion to Chinese Art. [229] Google Books: http://is.gd/CNjFij

Roger Sherman. (1982). Acquisition of the Mitsui Collection by the East Asiatic Library, University Of California, Berkeley. Journal of East Asian Libraries, 67. [This article is a summary of the author's MLS specialization paper, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, UCLA, 1980].

Sheng, Ruth. (2011). The Development of Chinese Calligraphy in Relation to Buddhism and Politics During the Early Tang Era. A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Florida.

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

Wong, Dorothy C. (2002). The Making of a Saint: Images of Xuanzang In East Asia. Early Medieval China 8, 43-81.

Wriggins, Salley Hovey. (2004). The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang. (Rev Ed.) Icon Editions, Westview Press.

Taishō 256: The Other Chinese Heart Sutra

Amoghavajra
(14th Century Japan).
Wikimedia.

There are three versions of the short text of the Heart Sutra in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. To date I have focussed almost exclusively on T250 and T251 (see Chinese Heart Sutra: Dates and Attributions). T256 (T 8.851.a1-852.a23) is interesting in its own right and I have begun familiarising myself with it. The text contains a transliteration of a Sanskrit text alongside a Chinese text. Both the Sanskrit and Chinese texts are somewhat idiosyncratic. T256 has a preface which tells us about its provenance and tells the story of how Xuanzang received the text in the first place. There is also a manuscript of the text, which was obtained from Dunhuang by Aurel Stein and is now in the British Library. The manuscript (Or.8210/S.5648) has been digitised and put online as part of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP). The text in the manuscript has a number of alternate characters and some other differences that might be scribal errors.

In his recent book on the Heart Sutra, Kazuaki Tanahashi (2014) makes repeated mention of a comprehensive study of the Heart Sutra in Japanese by Fukui Fumimasa (2000). Apparently Fukui also studied S.5648 and T256, but he only writes in Japanese. Very little of the huge volume of Japanese research into this text makes it into European languages. The glimpses Tanahashi provides into Fukui's work are tantalising but ultimately unsatisfying. In English we have a transcription and Romanisation of T256 by Matsumoto (1932), however, his Chinese characters are handwritten (due to limitations in print media in 1932) and are a little difficult to read in parts. In 1977 Leon Hurvitz published a complete translation of the Chinese preface along with a romanisation and translation of the Sanskrit text. Chen Shu-Fen 陳淑芬 (2004) wrote a detailed study of the methods used to transliterate the text and a partial reconstruction of the Middle-Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit transliteration.

British Library Manuscript Or.8210/S.5648

Both Hurvitz (1997) and Chen (2004) attribute T256 to Xuanzang. For example Hurvitz says in his translation of the introduction:

Preface to the copy humbly made, of the record inscribed by the upadhyāya of the Monastery of Compassionate Grace, on a stone wall of the Great Monastery of the Furtherance of Good in the Western Capital.

In a note (1977 121, n.56) Hurvitz says that the upadhyāya or preceptor of 慈恩 was a reference to Xuanzang. And thus, the text was attributed to Xuanzang. However, in an email exchange between myself and the Chinese translator, Rulu, (Buddha Sūtras Mantras Sanskrit) it became clear that Hurvitz correctly interpreted 慈恩和尚 as "upadhyāya of Monastery of Compassionate Grace", however he was mistaken about who this referred to. The first two characters 慈恩 Ciēn are part of the name of a monastery, 大慈恩寺 The Great Monastery of Compassionate Grace, which was located in Changan, the main capital of the Tang Dynasty (now the site of the major city of Xian). Note also that the 大興善寺 (Great Monastery of the Furtherance of Good) was also in Changan, not Loyang as Hurvitz suggests (1977: 108). During the Tang Dynasty, Loyang was referred to as 东都 The Eastern Capital and T256 refers to 西京 The Western Capital meaning Changan.

It seems that 慈恩 is also an epithet for Xuanzang's foremost disciple, 窺基 Kuījī. Xuanzang was strongly associated with two Monasteries in Changan, initially with Hongfu Monastery 弘福寺 and subsequently with 西明寺 Ximing Monastery. These two were where he did his translations after returning from India. Kuījī by contrast was associated with Ciēn. And preceptor of Ciēn was Kuījī. As mentioned in a previous essay (Chinese Heart Sutra: Dates and Attributions):

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.

In that essay I noted Lusthaus's argument that Woncheuk had a Sanskrit text to refer to. Lusthaus saw in this fact a challenge to Nattier's Chinese Origins hypothesis. However, Lusthaus also thought that Woncheuk composed his commentary after Xuanzang's death and I argued that this was entirely consistent with Nattier's hypothesis. Here a similar argument applies to Kuījī. The fact that the two of them had a Sanskrit text when they were students of Xuanzang, decades after his return from India is also consistent with the Chinese Origins hypothesis. In fact we expect this, especially if, as we suspect, that Xuanzang was involved in the Sanskrit translation. Wriggins (2004: 9) has Xuanzang beginning to learn Sanskrit before his departure for India. What would be more natural for a student of Sanskrit than making a translation of a well known and loved text? And, as I have noted, the composer of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra seems unfamiliar with some of the idioms of the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā tradition. After he returned Xuanzang was asked to translate the 道德經 Dàodéjīng into Sanskrit (Wriggins 2004: 196), so we know that he did translate some texts from Chinese into Sanskrit.

Tanahashi refers to the earliest known text of the Heart Sutra, a stone inscription erected in 672 by 唐高宗 Emperor Táng Gāozōng at Hongfu Monastery, Changan. Tanahashi is also mistaken in thinking that this presents a challenge to the Chinese origins hypothesis (2014: 81). I will deal with this inscription in my next essay.

What the Chinese Origins hypothesis says is that the Heart Sutra is composed in Chinese after the translation of the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra by Kumārajīva in 404 CE, i.e. T223 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》, since it clearly borrows from this text. And it must have been composed prior to Xuanzang's leaving for India in 630 CE, since Xuanzang reportedly had a version of the text by the time he left China, possibly much earlier, though this could be an apocryphal story. The association of Xuanzang with the production of the Sanskrit text and its transmission back to China is based on supposition (and perhaps a little wishful thinking), but it is neither implausible nor at odds with the known facts. Any time after Xuanzang's arrival back in Changan in 645 CE we can fully expect Chinese scholars to have access to a Sanskrit text of the Heart Sutra alongside a Chinese text. That we have evidence of precisely this is a sign that the theory makes an accurate (but not decisive) prediction. At the very least does not conflict with the hypothesis as Lusthaus and Tanahashi try to make out.

Another piece of information, also pointed out by Rulu, is that the introduction tells the story of Xuanzang receiving the Heart Sutra after he set out for India. It suggests that he stopped off in 益州 Yì zhōu, present day Chengdu, Sichuan on his way. Though since Chengdu is about 800km south-west of Changan and there is an imposing mountain range blocking travel to the west, it is not a likely stopping off point on a journey from Changan to India. The more plausible stories say that due to political upheaval associated with the collapse of the Sui Dynasty, Xuanzang moved to Chengdu and became a bhikṣu there (cf. Wriggins 2004: 7). Xuanzang apparently spent time wandering through China collecting texts before heading to India. In any case, the introduction of T256 refers to Xuanzang as 三藏 or tripiṭaka. Someone expert in the branches of the Buddhist Canon (traditionally sūtra, vinaya, and abhidharma) might be called 三藏, in this case corresponding to the Sanskrit traipiṭaka (the grammatical form is the same as the title jaina for someone associated with the jina, similarly bauddha is the Sanskrit for "Buddhist"). Those who remember the TV show Monkey, will remember that the Xuanzang character is called "Tripitaka". As Rulu points out, Xuanzang would not refer to himself in the third person or by this title, clearly this is written about him, not by him. So apparently the preface was composed by a senior disciple, i.e. Kuījī, remembering his master in reverential terms.

However there is another little nugget at the end of this preface, which is that the text was transcribed by Bùkōng不空 aka 不空金剛 (MC Bulgong Geumgang) or Amoghavajra (705–774) in response to an Imperial command. Amoghavajra was of mixed Sogdian and Indian heritage. He became a novice at a young age and then travelled to China where he received the bhikṣu initiation ca. 724 CE. Apart from a period of travelling, enforced by the expulsion of foreign monks from China, he lived most of his life in China and was a noted translator of Tantric texts. We don't know when he edited the text of T256, but we do know that in 771 CE he presented a petition to the throne asking that his translations be added to the Tripiṭaka. And the current preface of T256 was added after his death in 774 CE which we know because it mentions his posthumous 謚 name, 大辦正廣 (Dà bàn zhèng guǎng). Tanahashi translates Fukui's transcription of the preface of S.5648 and it also says that the text was "translated" by Amoghavajra (2014: 68). S.5648 suggests that Xuanzang got the text directly from Avalokiteśvara which contradicts the account in T256.

Summary

Contra Hurvitz (1977), T256 was originally a text associated with Kuījī and was inscribed in stone by in Changan at some unknown date, but probably after the death of Xuanzang. We can surmise that Kuījī had a Sanskrit text that he got from his teacher, because we know that his fellow disciple and rival Woncheuk had a Sanskrit text. A question remains over what form the Sanskrit text took - was it this transliterated version, or was there a lost manuscript in Siddham script? However it's not clear whether that Sanskrit text influenced this version of the text. It seems we must attribute the final sūtra text to Amoghavajra, but he most likely only copied and slightly edited the Kuījī text. The current text of T256 probably entered the Canon ca. 771 but was updated sometime (probably soon) after 774 by (at least) the addition of a preface.

Given that Jan Nattier has given us reason to doubt the attribution of T250 and T251, this makes T256 more important than it might have seemed previously. An urgent task for researchers interested in the Heart Sutra is a comparison of the three Chinese versions of the short Heart Sutra in the light of the Sanskrit text in T256. And also a more detailed comparison of the Sanskrit text of T256 with the critical edition by Conze - though Conze used Matsumoto's version, Matsumoto acknowledges that he edited the text to conform to the edition by Max Müller. A diplomatic edition of T256, with a reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit transliteration would be useful for future researchers and I am working on this now.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Chen Shu-Fen. (2004). On Xuan-Zang’s Transliterated Version of the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayasūtra (Heart Sutra). Monumenta Serica, 52, 113-159.

Fukui Fumimasa. (2000) Heart Sutra of the Comprehensive Study: History, social and material.　Spring and Autumn, Inc. , 2000. = 福井文雅　『般若心経の総合的研究：歴史・社会・資料』　春秋社、2000年。

Hurvitz, Leon. (1977). Hsüan-tsang 玄奘 (602-664) and the Heart Scripture in Prajnaparamita and Related Systems: Studies in Honor of Edward Conze. University of California at Berkeley Press, 103-113.

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, 6, Feb: 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, 3, Sept: 59-103.

Matsumoto, Tokumyo. (1932). Die Prajñāpāramitā-literatur: Nebst Einem Specimen der Suvikrāntavikrāmi-Prajñāpāramitā. Stuttgart: Verlag von W. Kohlhammer. [My thanks to Eva Ludolf for reading through the German preface to this article with me].

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. Shambala.

Wriggins, Salley Hovey. (2004). The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang. (Rev Ed.) Icon Editions, Westview Press.

Form is Emptiness. Part III: Commentary continued.

~~Continued from Part I & Part II~~

I've combined the three parts of this essay into a single pdf:
Form is (Not) Emptiness.

Previously: In Part I, we explored the language of the passage associated with the phrase "form is emptiness, emptiness is only form". We identified the authoritative versions of the passage, in Sanskrit and Chinese, in the Heart Sutra and the source of the quotation, the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra. In Part II, we glossed over the existing commentaries, discarding them largely because they treat the Heart Sutra as a tabula rasa on which can be asserted various sectarians versions of Buddhism. We then began to explore passages from the Aṣṭasahāsrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Aṣṭa) to see what they might tell us about the phrase "form is emptiness, emptiness only form" from the Heart Sutra. The method is productive of interesting commentary on the passage, but we had not found an exact parallel. In Part III we begin to dig deeper.

Māyā

So far we've been looking for a statement along the lines of "rūpaṃ śūnyatā", which would be the obvious ancestor of the line from the Heart Sutra. So far the approach has been productive, but we haven't really hit the mother lode. But what if, in being transmitted, the text was changed in an unexpected way? What if, for example, a key word was changed? Is this plausible?

In fact this seems to be what has happened. In Chapter One of Aṣṭa (1.22) we find a passage that is identical in syntax to the famous passage from Pañcaviṃśati, except that one of the words has been changed. This passage follows on from the one that I identified with the Kātyāyana Sūtra in an essay a few weeks ago. The context is a series of questions and answers on the subject of how a Bodhisattva trains. The passage we are looking at begins with Subhūti asking a question of the Buddha:

"If the Bhagavan were asked, 'Can the man of illusions (māyā-puruṣa) train in omniscience (sarvajñā), will he come near it, will he go forth to it?' How would the Bhagavan explain the answer to this question?"

Here sarvajñā 'complete knowledge, omniscience' is a synonym of prajñāpāramitā and originally of mahājñāna (which was hyper-Sanskritised to mahāyāna as we saw in Early Mahāyāna). In East Asia manuscripts of the Heart Sutra the maṅgala is often namas sarvajñāya. This seems to be the first mention of the māyāpuruṣa or 'man of illusions', or as Conze translations "illusory man", so we're not quite sure of the context of the word. By way of answer the Buddha asks Subhūti a related question:

"What do you think Subhūti: is illusion (māyā) different from form? Different from sensation, apperception, or volition? Is illusion different from cognition?"

The key phrase in Sanskrit is "anyā sā māyā anyat tad rūpam". This is starting to seem familiar. The form of this question also suggests that Conze has erred in interpreting māyāpuruṣa. It's not an adjective 'illusory', not 'the man who is illusory', rather 'illusion' is a substantive, as in the 'man who is an illusion' or more likely '...has illusions'. The Buddha seems to be asking whether we can separate the man from his illusions about experience. Subhuti answers:

"It is not the case, Bhagavan, that illusion is different form. Bhagavan, the illusion is form; form is only an illusion. It is not the case, Bhagavan, that illusion is different from sensation, from apperception, from volition. The illusion is only sensation, apperception and volition, and sensation, apperception and volition are only illusions. It is not, Bhagavan that illusion is different from cognition. The illusion is cognition; cognition is only an illusion."

What the Buddha is saying here is that illusions (things the unenlightened take to be real) are not found outside the five branches of experience (pañcaskandhāḥ), but in fact that the five branches of experience are the illusion. At least to the unenlightened, experience is an illusion that we buy into. This is a useful observation.

Even more interesting is that this passage from Aṣṭa uses exactly the same syntax as used in the Heart Sutra passage from Pañcaviṃśati with one change: the word śūnyatā is replaced by māyā. A reminder that the form of the words from the Heart Sutra found in Pañcaviṃśati is:

nānyad rūpam anyā śūnyatā | nānyā śūnyatā anyad rūpaṃ | rūpam eva śūnyatā | śūnyataiva rūpam

And here in Aṣṭa

na hi anyā sā māyā anyat tad rūpam | rūpam eva māyā | māyaiva rūpam |

In Aṣṭa it is part of a discussion between the Buddha and Subhūti, but in Pañcaviṃśati the protagonists are the Buddha and Śāriputra, and in the Heart Sutra they are Avalokiteśvara and Śāriputra. There are some minor spelling differences caused by sandhi, and by the use of pronouns in Aṣṭa, but neither the words nor the grammar is changed by this. Aṣṭa only has three phrases, to Pañcaviṃśati's four, leaving off an equivalent of nānyad rūpam anyā śūnyatā. Otherwise the two passages are more or less the same. Too similar for this to be a coincidence. The Aṣṭa passage has to be the source of the passage in Pañcaviṃśati that became the famous line in the Heart Sutra, but with reference to illusion rather than emptiness.

Unfortunately I have not been able to locate this passage in the Gāndhārī manuscript published by Falk & Karashima (2012). However, we can find a probable counterpart to this passage in the Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā (Rgs).

māyopamāṃ ya iha jānati pañca skandhāṃ
na ca māya anya na ca skandha karoti anyān |
nānātvasaṃjñavigato upaśāntacārī
eṣā sa prajñavarapāramitāya caryā || Rgs_1.14 ||

Here, the one who knows that the five skandhas are like an illusion,
Does not make illusion one thing and the skandhas another;
The one who practices for peace is free of multiplying perceptions,
His practice is the highest perfection of understanding.

The Relation Between rūpa and māyā.

The phrase in Aṣṭa, with "illusion", makes sense in both directions with māyā: "the illusion is form; form is only an illusion." Or "form is an illusion, which is the illusion of form." Indeed this is fairly standard Buddhist rhetoric about the nature of experience, which seeks to undermine our fascination (or intoxication) with sense experience and encourages us to do the practices which enable us to detach (sober up) from it (especially the vimokṣa practices found in MN 121 & 122).

Initially in Buddhist texts, the relationship between form and illusion is stated as a simile. We find it said in Aṣṭa for example that form is like an illusion (māyopamaṃ rūpam. Aṣṭa 9 cf. Rgs 1.14a). The same simile is given at the end of the Vajracchedikā:

tārakā timiraṃ dīpo māyāvaśyāya budbudaḥ
supinaṃ vidyud abhraṃ ca evaṃ draṣṭavya saṃskṛtam | || Vaj 22

We should see the conditioned as a star, a kind of blindness, a lamp,
An illusion, a dew drop, a bubble, a dream, a lightening flash, a cloud.

The simile is well known and comes from early Buddhism. For example in the Pāḷi Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta (SN 22.95) we find it stated like this:

Evameva kho, bhikkhave, yaṃ kiñci rūpaṃ atītānāgatapaccuppannaṃ [ajjhattaṃ vā bahiddhā vā, oḷārikaṃ vā sukhumaṃ vā, hīnaṃ vā paṇītaṃ vā], yaṃ dūre santike vā taṃ bhikkhu passati nijjhāyati yoniso upaparikkhati. Tassa taṃ passato nijjhāyato yoniso upaparikkhato rittakaññeva khāyati, tucchakaññeva khāyati, asārakaññeva khāyati. Kiñhi siyā, bhikkhave, rūpe sāro?

Just so, Bhikkhus, a bhikkhu sees some form, past, future or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, faraway or right here, he studies it, investigates its origins... and it appears to him unreal (rittaka), empty (tucchaka), without substance (asāraka). After all, what substance (sāra) is there in form?

The word sāra here might also be translated by 'essence', a metaphor drawn from the heartwood of a tree. In the passage below a plantain tree lacks any wood, let alone heartwood. The point being that nothing real comes into being when we have an experience that can be designated 'form'. 'Form' is a label we apply to experience, even when we think we are applying it to the world. Pheṇa concludes with a verse similar to Vaj.

Pheṇapiṇḍūpamaṃ rūpaṃ, vedanā bubbuḷūpamā
Marīcikūpamā saññā, saṅkhārā kadalūpamā;
Māyūpamañca viññāṇaṃ, desitādiccabandhunā.

Form is like a ball of foam, sensation like a bubble.
Apperception is like a mirage, volition like a plantain
Cognition is like an illusion. So the kinsman of the Sun taught.

So there is some continuity of this idea from Mainstream Buddhism into the early Prajñāpāramitā texts (Aṣṭa, Rgs, and Vaj). Unfortunately, the replacement of māyā with śūnyatā in the comparison breaks the metaphor and the statement no longer makes sense. What makes the Aṣṭa version work is that māyā is another substantive noun (even though illusions are insubstantial). In rūpameva māyā we are comparing two substantives in a well known metaphoric relationship, based on an old simile. Anyone familiar with Buddhist literature is aware of the kinds of comparisons quoted above and can contextualise the statement to make sense of it. However śūnyatā is an abstract noun from an adjective. In order for the apposition to really work we need something like rūpatā śūnyata 'formness is emptiness', but this still does make sense when we reverse it. So the substitution of śūnyatā for māyā leaves us with a mess of grammatical and exegetical problems. In short it seems to have been a mistake.

But is it plausible to say that an ancient editor introduced a mistake into a "sacred" Buddhist text, rendering it nonsensical? Before answering this question we need to follow the lead just discovered a little longer. The invocation of māyā leads us back to the Pañcaviṃśati, which reinforces the idea that we have discovered the origin of the "form is emptiness" passage.

Back to Pañcaviṃśati

In a forthcoming article I show that the passage known as "the epithets of the mantra" has two possible sources in Pañcaviṃśati that occur close together. One is far more likely to be the source, but the two are very similar in wording apart from the context. Nattier (1992) noted that in the epithets that the word vidyā had been translated into Chinese and then came out as mantra in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra. My article will examine this case in more detail.

Alerted by the word māyā to look again at the Pañcaviṃśati I discovered that the "rūpam śunyatā" phrase also occurs twice. The other occurrence is at the beginning of Chapter Three. The form here is a dialogue between the Buddha and Śāriputra, and one of the main differences from Aṣṭa is that the answers are more long winded. Śāriputra asks how a bodhisatva ought to practice (caritavyam). In the Gilgit ms. the Buddha begins his reply iha śāradvatīputra (recall how uncertain was the wording of this address in Part 1). The fact that Śāriputra is the interlocutor here also brings us closer to the Heart Sutra.

Importantly, the Buddha's reply is that the bodhisatva does not samanupaśyati 'perceive, observe, regard, consider' anything about themselves or what they are doing (which sounds a lot like śūnyatāvimokṣa). And they especially don't perceive/consider the skandhas. And why not?

Because a bodhisatva is indeed empty of self-existence. It is not through being empty that form, sensation, apperception, volition and cognition are empty. Emptiness is not separate (anyatra†) from form. Emptiness is not separate from sensation, apperception, volition and cognition. Form is only emptiness. Sensation, apperception, volition and cognition are only emptiness.

† Note here that anya (other, different) is replaced by the locative anyatra (elsewhere, elsewhen).

What is the reason? Because this is a mere name; bodhi and bodhisatva are mere names which are emptiness. Form, sensation, apperception, volition and cognition are mere names. Because form, sensation, apperception, volition and cognition are like illusions (māyopama) and a mere name is not situated or located [anywhere]: non-existent, unreal, false, an illusory idea, self-existenceless, and without self-existence, non-arising, non-ceasing, not decreasing or growing, not defilement or purification.

Although we can be fairly sure that the quotation from the Heart Sutra is taken from the passage a little further on, this passage may well have been influential. What this passage does, is tie us back to the Aṣṭa more clearly through the reference to the skandhas being mere names (nāmamātra) and like illusions (māyā-upama). The use of the locative adverbial pronoun, anyatra, means we read the text as saying that emptiness is not found outside of form in time or space. Emptiness, then, is a quality of experience, rather than a quality of reality. Or we might say that phenomena are characterised by emptiness and noumena remain unknown and (as far as Buddhists are concerned) unknowable.

It becomes more clear why a bodhisatva is doing a skandha reflection at the beginning of the Heart Sutra. The context in the Pañcaviṃśati is precisely this:

kathaṃ punar bhagavan bodhisatvena mahāsatvena prajñāpāramitāyāṃ caritavyam

How moreover, Bhagavan, should the bodhisatva mahāsatva practice with respect to perfection of wisdom.

The Heart Sutra begins with Avalokiteśvara, the archetype of a bodhisatva in 7th Century China, doing the practice of perfection of wisdom (prajñāpāramitācāryām caramāno) which consists of examining the five skandhas (vyavalokayati sma pañcaskandhān)

It then proceeds to describe how the bodhisatva should relate to the skandhas, in a passage that seems to resonate with the Pāḷi Cūlasuññatā Sutta. Thus the opening of the Heart Sutra is probably not arbitrary, but also relates more generally to Chapter Three of Pañcaviṃśati. The main difference being that the abstract bodhisatva has been replaced by the archetypal bodhisatva Avalokiteśvara. An obvious next step is to compare this passage in Kumārajīva's T223, which I have not had the time to do yet. And this blog post is far too long already. We can also connect this with the skandha reflection practice in the Mahāsuññatā Sutta (MN 122) which shows how one pursues the experience of emptiness, while at the same time reflecting on experience.

On final comment on this is that in Conze's translation of the Pañcaviṃśati he uses the subject divisions of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra which would have us believe that passage quoted in the Heart Sutra (1975: 61) is related somehow to the Four Noble Truths. The Heart Sutra passage covers the end of the second and beginning of the third truth. This seems to me to be a very unlikely reading of the text.

Having established the connections we need to say a few words about the introduction of deleterious changes to Buddhist texts.

How Buddhist Texts Change for the Worse

From the available evidence it appears that Buddhists constantly tinkered with their texts in large and small ways, sometimes expanding them massively as with the extrapolation of the 8,000 line text to 100,000 lines; sometimes changing a single word. We often find that successive Chinese translations of texts get longer and longer. There are many reasons why texts get amended and adapted. These are not always to do with increasing wisdom over time. Sometimes the changes are ideological. Sometimes our texts have been amended in ways that are dubious at best and catastrophic at worst. For example in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, sandwiched between a discussion of the four pilgrimage places and how to deal with the Tathāgata's remains is a passage about how male monks should have nothing to do with women (DN ii.140-1). It is so out of place that it jars the mind when reading the text. But for an example of poor editorial choices we can use the Heart Sutra itself to demonstrate. Take the line:

Nāvidyā nāvidyākṣayo yāvan na jarāmaraṇam na jarāmaraṇa-kṣayo.

No ignorance or end of ignorance... up to... no ageing and death, no end of ageing and death.

This is the standard list of twelve nidānas, in both the forward and reverse directions at once, with just the first and last items on the list, and using the abbreviation yāvat 'as far as' to stand for the middle ten items. One could hardly get a more orthodox pan-Buddhist idea than this list. In an ideal world we'd have given the directions separately, tadyathā:

Nāvidyā yāvan na jarāmaraṇam | na jarāmaraṇa-kṣayo yāvan nāvidyākṣayo

No ignorance [as a condition for the arising of volitions]... up to no ageing and death [arising on the basis of birth as a condition]. No cutting off ageing and death [through the cessation of birth] down to no cutting off ignorance [and thus putting an end to this whole mass of suffering].

Even so, the intent of the text is clear, it's about the twelve nidānas and negating them as a set, for the purpose of undermining the idea that the words are more than mere words (nāmamatra). However, some editors or scribes have failed to see the twelve nidānas here and just noticed nāvidyā (or na avidyā) 'no ignorance' and interpolated na vidyā 'no knowledge' as though the point were simply to negate pairs of opposites. One of the manuscripts that does this is the Horiuzi Palm-leaf Manuscript held in Hōryūji monastery, the oldest extant Sanskrit manuscript of the Heart Sūtra. In the Horiuzi ms. this passage reads (interpolations in bold):

na vidyā nāvidyā na vidyākṣayo nāvidyāksāyo yāvan na jarāmaraṇaṃ na jarāmaraṇakṣayo

In fact here the editor has gone one step further and also interpolated na vidyākṣayo as well. It's a bizarre intervention. It's difficult to explain. This particular manuscript has been very influential, especially in Japan. For example this mistake is replicated at least twice in John Steven's book Sacred Calligraphy of the East (1995: 119, 120-1), and also in the modern Japanese Siddham script calligraphy manual, 梵字必携 (A Manual of Sanskrit Writing).

Depending on when the changes happen and how often manuscripts get copied such interventions can become the standard. In the first part of the long text Heart Sutra, the sentence in which Avalokiteśvara examines the skandhas and sees that they are empty of svabhāva ought to have two verbs: one meaning "examined" (vyavalokayati sma) and one meaning "saw" (paśyati sma). However, in the extant versions the verb paśyati sma has been replaced by a second vyavalokayati sma. This is clearly a simple error, but it must have occurred early on, because it infected all of the extant long texts, including those in Tibetan, and no copyist since has been honest or brave enough to correct it.

Similarly I've showed that the 100 Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra routinely transmitted by Tibetan lamas is garbled (Jayarava 2010). The garbled version occurs in every Tibetan source that I have consulted over many years, except the Kanjur (See Canonical Sources for the Vajrasatva Mantra). So we can say that bizarre interpolations in texts seem to be de rigueur, and mostly because some Buddhists didn't learn Sanskrit (at all or well enough), but a simple correction by someone who does know Sanskrit is almost always unwelcome because the text is "sacred" or because it would undermine the authority of the guru. Once a text has become nonsense, it seems to be resistant to being repaired, even when the repair is simple and obvious.

So the idea that someone who did not fully understand the text changing the wording in an ad hoc way that did not take the context into account and resulted in non-sense, and this bizarre intervention being accepted as authentic and transmitted faithfully, is not at all far fetched. In fact it happens all to often! We can point the finger at ancient Buddhists, but in fact the process continues. Conze's translations, for example, are full of bizarre interventions and his Sanskrit editions of grammatical errors. My first published article on the Heart Sutra (Attwood 2015) looks at a simple grammatical mistake that appears to have been overlooked by Conze, apparently because of his religious beliefs. I'm not quite sure why anyone else overlooked it, but in fact everyone did for over 60 years. A less technical (and non-paywalled) summary of this article is also available: Heart Murmurs.

When someone we admire and believe to be wise says something incomprehensible, we are predisposed to assume that the statement is profound, too profound for us to understand. Dan Sperber (2010) has called this "The Guru Effect". Sperber was largely focussed on secular contexts, living as he does in the France of post-modern philosophy which turned nonsense into an art form, to wide acclaim. Conze and many other commentators take this approach with Prajñāpāramitā. Their attitude is that the nonsense is a feature not a bug. "Of course it is illogical," they say, "if it was logical anyone could understand it and it wouldn't be profound." This kind of aberrant thinking has prevented progress being made on understanding these texts for generations.

Conclusions

This exercise has proven the value of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra as a commentary on the Heart Sutra. The strategy has provided us with an important new insight into the meaning of the text. Though we still don't have the passage in the original Prakrit, locating it in the early Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā texts gives us a better sense of the history of the ideas. Now the history the passage looks like this:

• Rgs

māyopamāṃ ya iha jānati pañca skandhāṃ
na ca māya anya na ca skandha karoti anyān |

• Aṣṭa

na hi bhagavan anyā sā māyā anyat tad rūpam | rūpam eva bhagavan māyā | māyaiva rūpam ||

• Pañcaviṃśati

nānyad rūpam anyā śūnyatā | nānyā śūnyatā anyad rūpaṃ | rūpam eva śūnyatā | śūnyataiva rūpam ||

• T223/T250

非色異空 非空異色 。色即是空 空即是色。

• Hṛdaya

rūpaṃ śūnyatā | śūnyataiva rūpaṃ | rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā | śūnyatāyā na pṛthag rūpam ||

A fairly standard Buddhist simile—experience is like an illusion—becomes a metaphor—experience is illusion—and then given a seemingly deliberate, perhaps ideologically motivated, twist that makes it abstruse—experience is emptiness. The change left dozens of generations of Buddhists puzzling over what it could mean, caught in the "Guru Effect" trap of assuming that the text as presented was the most profound wisdom imaginable. Under these conditions the apparent lack of logic and sense is used to undermine the reader (Conze does this quite openly). This is partly because the putative author of the Heart Sutra was the perfect Buddha, who by this time can do no wrong (I explored aspects of this change in the how Buddhists understood the nature of a Buddha in Attwood 2014). The Guru Effect means that we take what are simple mistakes, and construe them as inevitably failed attempts to communicate some higher Truth. The possibility of error is axiomatically ruled out. All that is left is the failure of the reader. And some readers can turn this to their advantage by claiming to understand the incomprehensible, often through their meditative experience. Unfortunately meditation gives few insights into Sanskrit literary or grammatical traditions.

There seems to have been a simultaneous valorisation and decontextualisation of the term śūnyatā in Mahāyāna circles. If we see Aṣṭa in the light of the Pāḷi Suññatā Suttas which focus on the vimokṣa meditations, especially the signless liberation (animitta-vimokṣa) and the emptiness liberation (śūnyatā-vimokṣa) we see a strong continuity of ideas. But in Pañcaviṃśati the continuity was broken or least a good deal weaker. Śūnyatā was not longer an experience to be cultivated in meditation, but a kind of ontological absolute. The change from māyā to śūnyatā may have fitted with a developing Prajñāpāramitā ideology, but linguistically and philosophically it was a disaster because the passage could no longer be parsed linguistically or logically.

The change might have remained very obscure, except that the Pañcaviṃśati was almost as popular as the Aṣṭa and this line came to form part of the Heart Sutra, which gained popularity far outweighing its humble origins (which were also soon forgotten). Again it might have remained an obscure Chinese magical text had someone, likely Xuánzàng, translated it into Sanskrit, called it a sūtra, and re-imported it to China as an authentic Sanskrit Buddhist text. Again the context was forgotten and the Sanskrit version taken to be the ur-text. From there it took off. Generations of Buddhists, from quite early on, assumed that the obscure Chinese amulet was actually the Sanskrit essence of the superlative insights into "reality", the sarvajñā, prajñāpāramitā or mahājñāna. The fact that it was nonsense only made it seem more profound (via the Guru Effect). This left the text resistant to analysis, and each new generation of confused Buddhists went along with it for fear of being thought shallow and foolish. The willingness to submerge one's identity to the extent that one will agree to endorse something that is nonsense is a key aspect of belonging to a religious group. In modern times, the more Romantic one is, the easier this embracing of the illogical. To date the world of academia has done little to dispel the pall of foolish piety that hangs over the Heart Sutra.

Another surprising conclusion of this study is that "form is emptiness" is not in fact the be all and end all of the Heart Sutra, not the essence of the Prajñāpāramitā. The Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā makes clear that when one practices with concepts like "form is empty" in mind that this is still an error. The śūnyatā-vimokṣa samādhi is free of such concepts. If we are looking for a key line in the Heart Sutra I suggest that it is in fact sarvadharmāḥ śūnyatālakṣanāḥ 'all mental events are characterised by lack of self-existence'. This is the underlying reason that 'form' is like an illusion. It is this that opens up the discussion of what the text means and points to the profound insight that the Buddha had about the nature of experience.

We really ought to talk more about śūnyatā as one of the trivimokṣa or 'three liberations', a state in which all verbal cognition shuts down and the experience is empty of all concepts (something of this is hinted at in my discussion of SN 45.11 and 45.12 from 2008: Communicating the Dharma). Śūnyatā-vimokṣa is a condition that can be attained temporarily in meditation and as a permanent condition is synonymous with bodhi. The Cūlasuññata Sutta (MN 121) explains to some extent how one approaches this in meditation. But this is another subject that I'll have to return to.

The alternate passage in Pañcaviṃśati also sheds light on the construction of the opening passage of the Heart Sutra, at least in outline we now understand more why Avalokiteśvara makes an appearance and what he is doing. And perhaps helps to explain why Śāriputra is the interlocutor.

Finally I have tried to show that "error" has to be a possible state in any textual hermeneutic. When we read a text we have to be capable of seeing error as error. Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism are all to often blind to this possibility. The tendency, especially with respect to the Prajñāpāramitā has been to take error as "paradox" or as being a consequence of the ineffability of Reality. Notable exceptions to this criticism are Paul Harrison and Richard H Jones whose work has helped me to see errors for what they are. The refusal to see clearly means that there has been little investigation of errors in Buddhist texts. Ironically errors seem to have two main sources: unfamiliarity with our canonical languages, and deliberate alteration motivated by ideology. Sometimes both at once.

Those of us who take study seriously, eventually learn that the texts are not a true refuge. Having now written 21 essays on the text (this one is 12,000 words long) and with one published article and one in development, and having discovered a new Heart Sutra manuscript, I fancy I know a thing or two about the Heart Sutra. In the last five years I have certainly discovered things about the Heart Sutra that were previously unknown, but the main thing I've learned is that knowing it, even understanding it, is no substitute for a systematic approach to transformation. Śūnyatā is primarily an experience. On the other hand, while nonsense is a possible reading for any passage in my hermeneutic, we get nowhere by assuming that the message of our texts is intentionally illogical and thus impervious to analysis. There has to be a balance.

For me, at least, the Heart Sutra will never be the same.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Chinese Texts from the CBETA version of the Taishō. http://www.cbeta.org

Sanskrit texts from Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages (Gretil) http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/

Except

• Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā from Harrison & Watanabe, as simplified on Bibliotecha Polyglota.
• Prajñāpāramitā-ratnaguṇasaṃcaya-gāthā from Yuyama, Akira. (1976)

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Attwood, Jayarava (2014) Escaping the Inescapable: Changes in Buddhist Karma. Journal of Buddhist Ethics. 21: 503-535.

Attwood, Jayarava (2015). Heart Murmurs: Some Problems with Conze’s Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 8: 28-48.

Conze, Edward. (1967) ‘The Prajñāpāramitā-Hṛdaya Sūtra’ in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays, Bruno Cassirer, pp. 147-167. [revised version of Conze (1948).]

Conze Edward. (1975) The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom: with the Divisions of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra. University of California Press.

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

Falk, Harry & Karashima, Seishi. (2012) A first‐century Prajñāpāramitā manuscript from Gandhāra - parivarta 1 (Texts from the Split Collection 1). ARIRIAB XV, 19-61. Online: https://www.academia.edu/3561115/prajnaparamita-5.

Hamilton, Sue. (2000) Early Buddhism: A New Approach. London: Routledge.

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.

Jayarava (2010) The Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra. Western Buddhist Review. 5.

Jones, Richard H. (2012) The Heart of Wisdom. Jackson Square Books.

KIMURA Takayasu (2010). Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. Vol. I-1, Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin 2007. http://fiindolo.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/psp_1u.htm [Input by Klaus Wille, Göttingen, April 2010].

Lopez, Donald S. (1988) The Heart Sūtra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries. State University of New York Press.

Lopez, Donald S. (1996) Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra. Princeton University Press.

Huifeng [aka Orsborn, M. B.] (2008) A Survey Of Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra Translations In Chinese. Online: http://prajnacara.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/survey-of-prajnaparamita-sutra.html.

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.

Sperber, Dan. (2010) The Guru Effect. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 1:583–592 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0025-0

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

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

Yuyama, Akira. (1976) Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guṇa-saṃcaya-gāthā (Sanskrit Recension A). Cambridge University Press.

Zacchetti, Stefano. (2005) In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1-3 of Dharmarakṣa's Guang zan jing, Being the Earliest Chinese Translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā, Tokyo. (Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica, 8). IRIAB. Sanskrit text also available from Gretil.

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Although I don't cite it directly, the material on śūnyatā-vimokṣa is inspired by an essay privately circulated by my colleague Satyadhāna, which I read when most of this essay was already sketched out. That essay was a follow up to his article (which I have only skimmed so far):

Satyadhāna. (2014) The Shorter Discourse on Emptiness (Cūḷasuññatasutta, Majjhima-nikāya 121): translation and commentary. Western Buddhist Review. 6: 78–104

Satyadhāna's work seems to me to provide further keys for understanding the early Perfection of Wisdom. But in any case I'm now working on the Pāḷi material myself. A good introduction to śūnyatā in Pāḷi texts can be found in:

Anālayo. 2010. Excursions into the Thought-World of the Pāli Discourses. Pariyatti Press: 272-281

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Sanskrit Aṣṭasāhasrikā Passages

Numbers in square brackets are pages in Vaidya's Edition.

1.12 [6] evamukte āyuṣmān subhūtir āyuṣmantaṃ śāriputram etad avocat – etam etad āyuṣman śāriputra evam etat | rūpam evāyuṣman śāriputra virahitaṃ rūpasvabhāvena | evaṃ vedanaiva saṃjñaiva saṃskārā eva | vijñānam evāyuṣman śāriputra virahitaṃ vijñānasvabhāvena | prajñāpāramitaiva āyuṣman śāriputra virahitā prajñāpāramitāsvabhāvena | sarvajñataiva āyuṣman śāriputra virahitā sarvajñatāsvabhāvena | prajñāpāramitālakṣaṇenāpi prajñāpāramitā virahitā | lakṣaṇa-svabhāvenāpi lakṣaṇaṃ virahitam | lakṣya-svabhāvenāpi lakṣyaṃ virahitam | svabhāva-lakṣaṇenāpi svabhāvo virahitaḥ ||

1.14. punaraparamāyuṣmān subhūtir bodhisattvaṃ mahāsattvam ārabhyaivam āha – saced rūpe carati, nimitte carati | saced rūpanimitte carati, nimitte carati | saced ‘rūpaṃ nimittam’ iti carati, nimitte carati | sa ced rūpasyotpāde carati, nimitte carati | saced rūpasya nirodhe carati, nimitte carati | saced rūpasya vināśe carati, nimitte carati | saced rūpaṃ śūnyamiti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ carāmīti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ bodhisattva iti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ bodhisattva iti hy upalambha eva sa carati | evaṃ saced vidanāyāṃ saṃjñāyāṃ saṃskāreṣu | saced vijñāne carati, nimitte carati | saced vijñānanimitte carati, nimitte carati sacedvijñānaṃ nimittamiti carati, nimitte carati | saced vijñānasyotpāde carati, nimitte carati | saced vijñānasya nirodhe carati, nimitte carati | saced vijñānasya vināśe carati, nimitte carati | saced vijñānaṃ śūnyamiti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ carāmīti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ bodhisattva iti carati, nimitte carati | ahaṃ bodhisattva iti hy upalambha eva sa carati| sacet punarasyaivaṃ bhavati - ya evaṃ carati, sa prajñāpāramitāyāṃ carati, sa prajñāpāramitāṃ bhāvayatīti, nimitta eva sa carati | ayaṃ bodhisattvo 'nupāyakuśalo veditavyaḥ ||

1.22 atha khalvāyuṣmān subhūtir bhagavantam etada vocat - yo bhagavan evaṃ paripṛcchet - kimayaṃ māyāpuruṣāḥ sarvajñatāyāṃ śikṣiṣyate, sarvajñatāyā āsannībhaviṣyati, sarvajñatāyāṃ niryāsyatīti? tasya bhagavan evaṃ paripṛcchataḥ kathaṃ nirdeṣṭavyaṃ syāt? evamukte bhagavānāyuṣmantaṃ subhūtimetadavocat - tena hi subhūte tvāmevātra pratiprakṣyāmi / yathā te kṣamate, tathā vyākuryāḥ / sādhu bhagavannityāyuṣmān subhūtirbhagavataḥ pratyaśrauṣīt / bhagavānetadavocat - tatkiṃ manyase subhūte anyā sā māyā, anyattadrūpam, anyā sā māyā, anyā sā vedanā / anyā sā saṃjñā, anye te saṃskārāḥ / anyā sā māyā, anyattadvijñānam? subhūtirāha - na hyetadbhagavan / na hi bhagavan anyā sā māyā anyattadrūpam / rūpameva bhagavan māyā, māyaiva rūpam / na hi bhagavan anyā sā māyā anyā sā vedanā, anyā sā saṃjñā anye te saṃskārāḥ / vedanā saṃjñā [9] saṃskārā eva bhagavan māyā, māyaiva vedanāsaṃjñāsaṃskārāḥ / na bhagavan anyā sā māyā anyattadvijñānam / vijñānameva bhagavan māyā, māyaiva vijñānam //

15.2 iha subhūte bodhisattvā mahāsattvā anuttarāṃ samyaksaṃbodhimabhisaṃbuddhāḥ santo lokasya ākāśagatikaṃ rupamiti dharmaṃ deśayanti / evaṃ vedanā saṃjñā saṃskārāḥ / evameva subhūte sarvadharmā ākāśagatikā anāgatikā agatikā ākāśasamāḥ / yathā ākāśam anāgatam agatam akṛtam avikṛtam anabhisaṃskṛtam, asthitam asaṃsthitam avyavasthitam , anutpannam aniruddham, evameva subhūte sarvadharmā anāgatā āgatā ākṛtā avikṛtā anabhisaṃskṛtā asthitā asaṃsthitā avyavasthitā anutpannā aniruddhā ākāśakalpatvādavikalpāḥ / tatkasya hetoḥ? yā subhūte rūpasya śūnyatā, na sā āgacchati vā gacchati vā / evaṃ vedanāyāḥ saṃjñāyāḥ saṃskārāṇām / yā subhūte vijñānasya śūnyatā, na sā āgacchati vā gacchati vā / evameva subhūte yā sarvadharmāṇāṃ śūnyatā, na sā āgacchati vā gacchati vā / tatkasya hetoḥ? śūnyatāgatikā hi subhūte sarvadharmāḥ / te tāṃ gatiṃ na vyativartante /[148]


Sanskrit Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Passage.

Gligit ms. folio 17 recto - 17 verso.

tathā hi sa bodhisatvo nāma svabhāvena śunyaḥ na śunyatayā rūpaṃ śunyaṃ na vedanā saṃjñā saṃskārā na śunyatayā vijñānaṃ śunyam nānyatra rūpāc chunyatā nānyatra vedanāyāḥ saṃjñāyāḥ saṃskārebhyo nānyatra vijñānāc chunyatā | śunyataiva rūpaṃ śunyataiva vedanā saṃjñā saṃskārāḥ śunyataiva vijñānaṃ (Gilgit 17v) tat kasya hetoḥ | tathā hi nāmamātram idaṃ yad uta bodhiḥ nāmamātram idaṃ yad uta bodhisatvaḥ nāmamātram idaṃ yad uta cchunyatā | nāmamātram idaṃ yad uta rūpaṃ vedanā saṃjñā saṃskārā vijñānaṃ | tathā hi māyopamaṃ rūpam vedanā saṃjñā saṃskārā māyopamaṃ vijñānaṃ māyā ca nāmamātraṃ na deśasthā na pradeśasthā: asad abhūtaṃ vitathasamaṃ māyādarśanaṃ svabhāvarahitaṃ asvabhāvaś cānutpādaḥ anirodaḥ na hānir na vṛddhiḥ na saṃkleśo na vyavadānam