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.

Who Translated the Heart Sutra into Sanskrit?

Xuánzàng 

This is the third in a series of essays exploring Jan Nattier's thesis that the Heart Sutra was composed in China in about the 7th century. The last two essays have looked at some of the sources for what ended up in the text. The other main issue addressed by Nattier is the question of who translated the text into Sanskrit. I think it's fair to say that this is still a mystery, but the text itself has some clues. 

Let's begin by looking more closely at some of the Sanskrit phrases. Many scholars by now have noted that the Sanskrit used in the Heart Sutra is rather unidiomatic at times. I can assure you that translating the Sanskrit text as it stands is not always easy! It was perhaps this awkwardness that hid a basic grammatical error in the first paragraph which I discovered at the end of last year. In this essay I outline some Chinese idioms identified by Nattier in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra, and show how this supports her Chinese origins thesis and puts some limits on who could have translated it into Sanskrit. Coming out of this examination are concomitant proposals to improve the Sanskrit text, which will be in next week's essay. 

In making the case that the Heart Sutra was composed in China, Nattier points to a number of idioms that seem more at home in China than India. For example the phrase niṣṭhā-nirvaṇa is rather awkward in Sanskrit. The Chinese 究竟涅槃 jiùjìng-nièpán is more natural. The last two characters render nirvāṇa while the first two mean 'finally attain' (Nattier has "literally 'ulimate[ly] nirvāṇa"). Nattier comments "[this phrase] is attested in a number of other Buddhist texts, and might well be described as standard (even idiomatic) Buddhist Chinese." (178).

The difficulty of this term can perhaps be exemplified by Edward Conze's equivocation with respect to it. The first two versions of his critical edition (1948) and (1967) have niṣṭhā-nirvāṇa, but (1975) has niṣṭhā-nirvāṇa-prāptaḥ. Conze has added the past participle prāptaḥ 'attained' (from pra√āp 'attains') to nirvāṇa extending the compound. This choice is ironic because the text earlier says na prāptiḥ 'no attaining' (this is a verbal noun from the same root). So why choose prāpta? The obvious answer is that it appears in some of the mss. Looking at the footnotes of Conze's 1967 critical edition (confirmed from my own observations in most cases) we find these variant readings:

N^abcdikm: nistanirvāṇaprāptaḥ
N^e: nirvvaṇaprāptās
J^ab, C^cg: niṣṭhanirvaṇaḥ
C^ae: tani nirvāṇam prāpnoti
C^g: niṣṭhanirvāṇā

Thus those mss. which supplement niṣṭhanirvāṇa, supplement it with a verbal form from pra√āp. But prāptaḥ doesn't make sense because the text itself rules it out. This, plus the fact that many mss. leave it out and Conze himself left it out in his first two versions of the critical edition, suggest that it was inserted later to help make sense of the text precisely because niṣṭhanirvāṇa alone is so awkward. It's extremely unlikely that the text was composed with the phrase niṣṭhanirvāṇa in Sanskrit.

In Pāli we find a strikingly similar idiom, though only in a single text, Gaṇakamoggallāna Sutta (MN 107):

Appekacce kho, brāhmaṇa, mama sāvakā mayā evaṃ ovadīyamānā evaṃ anusāsīyamānā accantaṃ niṭṭhaṃ nibbānaṃ ārādhenti, ekacce nārādhentī’’ti. (M iii.4)
When, O Brahmin, my disciples are advised and instructed by me, some do indeed succeed to the ultimate goal nibbāna, and some do not succeed. 

Note that the verb here is a causative from ā√rādh 'to suceed, attain, accomplish' rather than pra√āp. The Chinese counterpart, Madhyāgama 144, was translated ca. 397 or 398 CE probably from Gāndhārī. In Chinese the verb is 得 de 'get, obtain, etc'. Thus where there is a verb in a similar Indic phrase it was supplied by some Chinese translators. 

Nattier argues that no one would use niṣṭhānirvāṇa (with no verb) when composing a text in Sanskrit, but that the same idiom is right at home in Chinese, thus the Sanskrit reflects a Chinese original. Recall that, in the case of those sections known to be from the Pañcaviṃśati, the Sanskrit wording has almost invariably changed after going through Chinese. In the next essay we will see that Kumārajīva used the phrase 究竟涅槃 to translate several different Sanskrit phrases, and show that there are several that are better candidates than niṣṭhānirvāṇa. This in turn provides us with possible improvements to the Sanskrit Heart Sutra. 

Another phrase that stands out is satyam-amithyatvāt. Conze (1975) takes poetic flight in translating this phrase: "...in truth, for what could go wrong", but this is not grounded in the text. Satyam is easy enough, it means 'truth' and being a neuter word is in either the nominative or accusative singular. The preceding phrases are the epithets of prajñāpāramitā, discussed last week, and we might therefore suppose that here satyam is predicated of prajñāpāramitā. That is to say that we would naturally read this as saying that prajñāpāramitā is true. The fact of being true is of considerable importance to Buddhists. 

The other word amithyatvāt is much more troublesome however. The word mithyā is a contracted form of mithūyā and means 'inverted', or 'contrary' and thus 'false'. The root is √mith which Whitney's Roots glosses as 'alternate and altercate'. The term is often paired with samyañc (from saṃ + √añc 'to bend') which becomes samyak or samyag in actual use. Samyañc roughly means 'to go with' and mithyā 'to go against'. The form amithyatvāt has a prefix and a suffix, and a case ending. We add -tva to create an abstract noun, mithyatva meaning 'a state of being false' or 'falseness'. This is negated by the prefix a- so that amithyatva means 'a state of being true, truthful', however it's typical to retain the Sanskrit morphology and render a word like this as 'non-falseness' or 'a state of not being false'. Finally the whole word is in the ablative case, indicated by the ending -āt, which tells us the reason for the action of a verb (the verb here being a tacit 'to be').

Putting it all together we may say that satyam amithyatvāt literally means 'it is true because of non-falseness' or even 'it is true because of [its] truth'. This is as awkward in Sanskrit as it sounds in English. Nattier assures us that the Chinese version 真實不虛 zhēn shí bù xū is "entirely natural in Chinese" (177). Nattier suggests it means "genuine, not vain". 虛 xū can mean 'false, worthless; empty, hollow, vain'.

The suggestion is that satyam amithyatvāt is like the common idiom "long time no see". This phrase is thought to have derived from a Chinese greeting and to retain the Chinese grammar. It may be compared to Mandarin phrase 好久不見 (hǎojiǔ bù jiàn), which can be translated literally as "long-time, no see". 

However, as I will show next week, this is not in fact an artefact of back translation from Chinese, but the result of a poor decision by Conze in creating his critical edition. There were other options available to Conze from his manuscripts that would have made more sense, despite being minority readings.

Finally compare this line:

na rūpaṃ na vedanā na saṃjñā na saṃskārāḥ na vijñānaṃ

With these:

na cakṣuḥśrotraghrānajihvākāyamanāṃsi.
na rūpaśabdagandharasaspraṣṭavayadharmāh.

The former is just what we would expect from a Buddhist text. Buddhists are not afraid of repetition, especially not where the longer Perfection of Wisdom texts were concerned, and so use na in each case. The latter two lines look unusual (and the 'infelicity' was spotted for Nattier by highly experienced Sanskritist Richard Salomon. See 214: note 57). Nattier quotes from the Gilgit ms. of the Pañcaviṃśati: "na cakṣur na śrotram na ghrāṇam na jihvā na kāye na manaḥ". Compare the Pañcaviṃśati version from Kimura's edition (2007):

na cakṣurāyatanaṃ na rūpāyatanaṃ (no eye base, no form base).
na śrotrāyatanaṃna [na] śabdāyatanaṃ
na ghrāṇāyatanaṃ na gandhāyatanaṃ
na jihvāyatanaṃ [na] rasāyatanaṃ
na kāyāyatanaṃ [na] spraṣṭavyāyatanaṃ
na manaāyatanaṃ [na] dharmāyatanam,

The Chinese Heart Sutra has:

無眼、耳、鼻、舌、身、意；
Wú yǎn, ěr, bí, shé, shēn, yì;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind;

And this in turn precisely follows the Large Perfection of Wisdom Text of Kumārajīva except in the matter of punctuation, all of which was added by later editors: 

無眼耳鼻舌身意 (T 8. 223 p.0223a18.6). 

It seems reasonably clear that na cakṣuḥśrotraghrānajihvākāyamanāṃsi reflects Chinese syntax with a single negating particle for all of the items being negated. Sanskrit syntax would give each item it's own negative particle as we see from the Sanskrit Pañcavīṃśati.

For Nattier the weight of evidence suggests that the Heart Sutra is a back translation from Chinese to Sanskrit. However this is only the most obvious conclusion of her investigation. There is a further conclusion from these facts that Nattier does not explicitly draw, but which is implicit given the facts.

The composer of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra was probably a Chinese speaker. 

For Nattier the main suspect in the mystery of who composed the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is Xuánzàng. He lived at about the right time, travelled to India and learned Sanskrit at about the right time. Thus he had the opportunity and the means. He was also known from his memoir of travelling to India to have been a devotee of the text. 

Nattier invites us to imagine that Xuánzàng had arrived in India only to find that the Indian monks had not heard of this text. Upon learning the language would he not be tempted to compose a version in Sanskrit? Early in my own attempts to learn Sanskrit, the Heart Sutra was one of the first texts I looked at precisely because it is familiar and concise. As I mentioned in my last essay, an Indian provenance was crucial to the authenticity of a Buddhist text in China. The whole point of Xuánzàng's journey to India was to return with authentic Indian texts. To discover that one's favourite text was not extant in Sanskrit might tempt the most scrupulous monk to compose a new Sanskrit "original".

Xuánzàng was unlikely to have composed the Chinese Heart Sutra however. It is recorded that he was given the text. A man who he had cared for during an illness taught him the Heart Sutra out of gratitude (179). It subsequently became a favourite to chant in troubled times, such as crossing the Gobi desert.

Xuánzàng included all his translations of the Prajñāpāramitā texts into one huge volume, treating the various texts as chapters. The only translation of his not included is the Heart Sutra. Also the vocabulary of the Heart Sutra (T 8.251) closely matches Kumārajīva's translation of the Large Perfection of Wisdom text in most cases. Given that Xuánzàng led the effort to translate all of the extant Prajñāpāramitā texts, and developed a whole new approach to translating Sanskrit, why would he not use his own terminology?

A couple of terms used in the Heart Sutra are distinctive to Xuánzàng. Kumārajīva transliterates the name Śāriputra as 舍利弗 Shèlìfú. Here 弗 fú transliterates the first syllable of putra. Chinese transliterations frequently leave off the final syllable. Xuánzàng, on the other hand prefers 舍利子Shèlìzi, replacing 弗 with the Chinese word for 'son' 子. 

Kumārajīva translates Avalokiteśvara as 觀世音 Guānshìyīn (whence Guānyīn also spelt Kwan yin), whereas Xuánzàng prefers 觀自在 Guānzìzài. As I have noted before, this change in transliteration reflects a change in the Sanskrit name from Avalokita-svara to Avalokita-īśvara (with sandhi resolving a-ī to e and giving Avalokiteśvara). This change is discussed by Alexander Studholme and involves Avalokitasvara absorbing some of the characteristics of Śiva who is converted to Buddhism in the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra and in the process absorbing the epithet īśvara 'lord', which replaces svara 'sound'. Nattier notes that Xuánzàng's own students tended to retain the more popular form of the name, Guānshìyīn, even when they adopted his new readings of other terms including the name Shèlìzi (216, n.84).

These usages are innovations introduced into Chinese Buddhist texts by Xuánzàng. And thus we know that at the very least Xuánzàng, or someone familiar with this work, must have edited T 8.251, and have done so after Xuánzàng learned Sanskrit in India and devised these new transliterations of Indic names and terms. 

Whoever did translate the text into Sanskrit, they were soon vindicated by the adoption of the Heart Sutra into the pantheon of Prajñāpāramitā texts.  In China commentaries were produced from the 7th century onwards. In India a number of commentaries (now only preserved in Tibetan) were written from the 8th to the 11th centuries (see Donald Lopez 1988, 1996). All of the Chinese commentaries are based on the Chinese version attributed to Xuánzàng (i.e. T 8.251), and all the Indian commentaries are of the long text. The split in the dates of the commentaries of East and South Asia, as well as the text they chose to comment on are supporting evidence for Nattier's Chinese Origins thesis.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Conze, Edward (1948) ‘Text, Sources, and Bibliography of the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April 80(1-2): 33-51.

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

Conze, Edward. (1975) Buddhist Wisdom Books: The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra. George Allen & Unwin.

Kimura Takayasu (2010). Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Vol. I-1, Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin 2007. Online: 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.

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

Studholme, Alexander. (2002) The origins of oṃ manipadme hūṃ : a study of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra. Albany: State university of New York Press.

Heart Sutra Mantra Epithets

Karaṇḍamudrā dhāraṇī

My last essay mined the footnotes of Jan Nattier's excellent article 1992 on the provenance of the Heart Sutra. Her article is a remarkable piece of scholarship and repays close study. The footnotes are no less interesting and in this essay I want to expand on a single long footnote: 54a (211-213). The 'a' is added because this information was included just as the article was going to press and the note, amounting to two full pages, had to be squeezed in, sans any Chinese characters (which in any case were hand written on a separate page at the end of the article).

The subject of this note is the epithets of the mantra. The section we're interested in reads:

tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā mahāmantro mahāvidyāmantro ‘nuttaramantro ‘samasama-mantraḥ

Therefore, it should be known that the perfection of wisdom is a great mantra, a mantra of great insight, an unexcelled mantra, an unequalled mantra

For Conze these are epithets of the Buddha applied to a mantra as a way of conveying the magical power of the mantra: "The prañāpāramitā... is here envisaged as a spell" (1973: 101-104). The epithets in question are those from the familiar itipi so gathā that Triratna Buddhist Community members will know as the Buddha Vandana. In Pāli:

iti pi so bhagavā arahaṃ sammāsambuddho vijjācarana sampanno sugato lokavidū anuttaro purisadammasārathi satthā devamanussānaṃ buddho bhagavā ti

As we can see by simple comparison Conze is stretching things somewhat with this comparison. Of the Heart Sutra terms only anuttara 'unexcelled' has an actual parallel and it is a rather common superlative applied to any and all Buddhist ideals.

Nattier cites two letters sent to her by Nobuyoshi Yamabe. Yamabe San completed a PhD at Yale in 1999 and is the author of several books on Buddhism. Yamabe identified a number passages in Chinese which closely parallel the Heart Sutra epithets. Nattier adds two extra passages to those identified by Yamabe. We'll begin with the passage found in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (Aṣṭa). This text is the basis for the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrika Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (Pañcaviṃśati) and is therefore of some interest. Also the existence of a clear Sanskrit text allows us some insight into another matter.

The Chinese Heart Sutra (T 8.251) reads:

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， 

Gùzhī bōrěbōluómìduō, shì dàshén zhòu, shì dàmíng zhòu, shì wúshàng zhòu, shì wúděngděng zhòu, 

Therefore know the perfection of wisdom, the great magical mantra, it is the great knowledge mantra, unsurpassed mantra, an unequalled mantra,

般若波羅蜜多 bōrěbōluómìduō is a transliteration of prajñāpāramitā. A short digression here. The Middle Chinese pronunciation of 般若波羅蜜多, reconstructed from rhymes, but lacking information on tones, would have been ban ya ba ra mil da. As we will see shortly the Aṣṭa is written in Classical Sanskrit. However the transliteration banya suggests a spelling more like Pāli paññā than Sanskrit prajñā. Baum and Glass's interim Gāndhārī Dictionary record several spellings of prajñā from the Gāndhārī Dhammapada: praña, prañaï, prañaya. The transliteration of prajñā is quite standard across genres. I can find only one variant: 鉢若 bōruò, Middle Chinese balya. It seems the initial syllable was not heard or seen as a conjunct /pra/ by early Chinese translators even when we can be reasonably sure the text used it.

神 shén is a term from Daoism that is sometimes used to translate Sanskrit ṛddhi 'supernatural power' or even deva. Generally is means 'supernatural, divine' or 'magical'. It's missing from all of the Sanskrit versions of the text, which opens the possibility that it was added to the Chinese after the Sanskrit text was created.

Yamabe identified a counterpart from the Chinese Aṣṭa, early 5th century CE, translation by Kumārajīva (T 8.227 843b25-27) reads:

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

Bōrěbōluómì shì dà míngzhòu,
bōrěbōluómì shì wúshàng zhòu,
bōrěbōluómì shì wúděngděng zhòu.

Prajñāpāramitā is a great vidyā (明呪),
Prajñāpāramitā is an unsurpassed vidyā (呪),
Prajñāpāramitā is an unequalled vidyā (呪).

As in the last essay, one doesn't need to know Chinese to see that these are the identical characters, except that the anomalous 是大神咒 shì dà shén zhòu is absent. If one knows that Chinese languages, like English, are subject-verb-object languages, one can even guess that 是 means 'is'. Also note that in the Aṣṭa the last syllable of prajñāpāramitā is left off, which is typical. The reason for translating 明呪 míngzhòu and 呪 zhòu as vidyā becomes apparent when we look at the Sanskrit text below. Note also the substitution of 呪 zhòu for 咒 zhòu, on which I will say more below.

The Sanskrit version of this text has been edited by Vaidya (p.36, line 30-p.37 line 7 = Conze 's translation p.108-109). This is one of the best attested texts of Buddhist Sanskrit literature. I have seen and handled the beautiful Cambridge manuscript (Add 1643) dated to 1015 CE, which forms the basis of the critical edition. It's written in Classical Sanskrit with just a few Prakritisms. The edition by Vaidya has been digitised, from which I take the following (placing each sentence on a new line to facilitate reading):

mahāvidyeyaṁ kauśika yad uta prajñāpāramitā|
apramāṇeyaṁ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā|
aparimāṇeyaṁ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā|
anuttareyaṁ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā|
asameyaṁ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā|
asamasameyaṁ kauśika [vidyā] yad uta prajñāpāramitā|

O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly a great spell.
O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly an immeasurable spell.
O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly a measureless spell.
O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly an unsurpassed spell.
O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly an unequalled spell.
O Kauśika, the perfection of wisdom is certainly a peerless spell.

Kauśika is one of the epithets of the Vedic God Indra, usually called Śakra (Pāli Sakka) in Buddhist texts, who plays an important role in early Buddhism and is one of the main interlocutors of the Aṣṭa. The context here is the Perfection of Wisdom per se. Both apramāṇa and aparimāṇa mean 'not-measured or measureless'. Similarly both asama and asamasama mean 'without equal'. I translate vidyā here as 'spell', as the context shows that the idea is something to be spoken or chanted that has magical powers. There is an irreducible element of magical thinking in these texts that is inherent in their pre-scientific world view. It's nothing to be embarrassed about.

Note that the word in Sanskrit is vidyā throughout, and not mantra or dhāraṇī. Here we see 明呪 míngzhòu translating vidyā. Note that in the Heart Sutra epithets we get the sequence 大明咒，無上咒，無等等咒. In the context of the Heart Sutra the tendency is to see 明 as an extra character: the great 大 knowledge 明 mantra 咒. We know from the Aṣṭa passages that 明呪 means vidyā, so we ought to read 大明咒 as 'great vidyā'. And this means that 咒 is a shorthand reference to vidyā. The character 明 is being dropped from the other epithets, not added to only one of them. 

This passage from the Aṣṭa is a slightly more elaborate version of what we find in the Heart Sutra. Now compare the parallel passage in Kumārajīva's translation of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (T 8.223).

是般若波羅蜜是大明呪，是無上明呪。
Shì bōrěbōluómì shì dàmíngzhòu, shì wúshàng míngzhòu.
The prajñāpāramitā is a great vidyā, an unsurpassed vidyā.

Though Nattier notes that the relevant chapter is missing from earlier editions of the Sanskrit, it is found twice in the more recent Sanskrit edition produced by Takayasu Kimura (vols 2&3). Kimura has edited the earlier Sanskrit text of Dutt and referenced both the Chinese and Tibetan translations to produce a new Sanskrit edition based on the same late Sanskrit manuscripts used by Dutt. So we cannot be entirely sure that Kimura has not, once again, back translated an existing Chinese passage into Sanskrit to fill a perceived void. In any case the two passages are:

mahāvidyaiṣā kauśika yad uta prajñāpāramitā, anuttaraiṣā kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā. (Vol. 2-3:55)

evam ukte bhagavān śakraṃ devānām indram etad avocat: evam etat kauśikaivam etat, mahāvidyeyaṃ kauśika yad uta prajñāpāramitā, anuttareyaṃ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā, asamasameyaṃ kauśika vidyā yad uta prajñāpāramitā.
(Vol. 2-3:70)

The second of these more closely matches what we find in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra with three epithets: mahāvidyā, anuttara vidyā, and asamasama vidyā. It also alerts us to a further occurrence in Kumārajīva's Pañcaviṃśati (T. 223) at p. 286b28 (unnoticed by Yamabe or Nattier)

般若波羅蜜是大明呪、無上明呪、無等等明呪。
Bōrěbōluómì shì dàmíngzhòu, wúshàng míngzhòu, wúděngděng míngzhòu.
The prajñāpāramitā is a great vidyā, an unsurpassed vidyā, an unequalled vidyā.

Again we see from comparing Chinese with Sanskrit, that 明呪 translates vidyā and here it is not abbreviated to 呪 but spelt out each time. If the core part of the Heart Sutra comes from the earlier passage of the Pañcaviṃśati then this passage suggests that the epithets were also borrowed, probably from this passage. Except that it is clear from the context that these epithets are not describing the mantra, but the perfection of wisdom itself. We associate the epithets with the mantra because the word mantra appears in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra. The word is used just twice in the Aṣṭa and not at all in the Pañcaviṃśati (suggesting perhaps that the Aṣṭa occurrences are interpolations).

Vidyā has a number of connotations. Clearly both Aṣṭa and Pañcaviṃśati are applying the word to the prajñāpāramitā per se, not to the mantra (as we typically read the Heart Sutra). Vidyā derives from the verbal root √vid 'to know, to discover' (cognate with 'wise, wisdom' etc). Sometimes you'll see vidyā translated as 'science' but the whole context is pre-scientific so this is anachronistic. No body of knowledge before ca. 1700 fits today's definition of science, which is not to say that there was no valid knowledge, only that it could not be considered scientific until the scientific method ha been invented during the European Enlightenment. Vidyā means knowledge in a particular field: knowledge of the Vedas, knowledge of political governance etc. Knowledge cultivated through learning and experience, rather than divinely inspired knowledge or insight. It also have a magical connotation. Knowledge in the sense of vidyā bestows control over the subject studied, when one thoroughly knows a subject one is said to have "mastered" it. Ironically we are stuck using 'wisdom' for prajñā, which means (and is cognate with) knowledge; and 'knowledge' for vidyā, which is cognate with wisdom.

Although vidyā later becomes, at times, almost synonymous with mantra, at the time the Aṣṭa was composed, and probably even the Pañcaviṃśati, Indian Buddhists still probably thought of mantras as the spells mumbled by Brahmins (for money) at ceremonies. The Pāli texts contain a few passages making it clear that the chanting of mantras is un-Buddhist (DN 1 [i.9]; SN 7.8, SN 28.10, Sn 480). By contrast the chanting of parittās, or protective texts, was already established as a popular Buddhist practice in the Milindapañha, which predates the Aṣṭa.

The parittā practice may well be connected to the idea of the saccakiriyā (Skt satyakriyā) or 'truth act'. This practice, attested in for example the Pāli Aṅgulimālā Sutta, insists that plainly and clearly stating a truth can alter reality. Aṅgulimālā, for example, uses a saccakiriya to ease the pain of a women and baby experiencing a difficult childbirth. Many other examples are found in Pāli. Some scholars have attempted to link the practice to similar ideas in Vedic culture. There is even a suggestion that some aspects of the power of truth are Indo-European. Holding a red-hot axe-head is a test of truth in both Vedic and Celtic literature for example. It may be that by chanting a sacred text aloud, sacred texts being true by definition, that one might avoid calamity or avert disaster. As mentioned last week, this was how Xuánzàng used the Heart Sutra.

Nattier cites the example of the word for mantra as an example of a back translation. Her thesis is that the order of textual production was like this:

1. Sanskrit Pañcaviṃśati
2. Chinese translation Pañcaviṃśati
3. Chinese Heart Sutra - short text
4. Sanskrit Heart Sutra - short text
5. Sanskrit Heart Sutra - long text
6. Chinese Heart Sutra - long text

We can see that Nattier's theory explains the changes that occur in the word vidyā. In this case the Sanskrit Pañcaviṃśati (itself based on Aṣṭa) uses the word vidyā. Kumārajīva translated this as 明呪 míngzhòu, the usual translation of vidyā. The Heart Sutra first uses 明咒 míngzhòu then abbreviates to 咒 zhòu; where 咒 zhòu is a homonym for 呪 zhòu meaning dhāraṇī (or mantra). This is then back translated as Sanskrit mantra. The change from 呪 zhòu to 咒 zhòu might have occurred for any number of reasons, not excluding simple error based on similarities of sound and graphic form.

It is interesting to note here that T 250 (attributed to Kumārajīva) has 明呪 míngzhòu in each of the epithets, which conforms to the general pattern of Kumārajīva's translations noted above. Nattier's conclusion regarding T 250 is "[it] was based not directly on his version of the Large Sūtra, but on citations from the sūtra contained in the Ta chih-tu lun*" (187).

* i.e. T 25.1509 大智度論 Dàzhìdù lùn (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśastra) Attributed to Nāgārjuna and translated by Kumārajīva.

Dàzhìdù lùn itself shows signs of partly Chinese authorship: "Some of the most notable evidence provided by Chou is that the Dazhidu lun’s commentary on the Mahaprajñaparamita Sutra follows Chinese word order rather than Indian..." (McBride 332-333)

At the time the Heart was composed in China we might expect the key term to be dhāraṇī, since the mid seventh century date proposed by Nattier slightly predates the arrival of Tantra in China, while dhāraṇī texts, such as the Karaṇḍamudra Dhāraṇī depicted above, were and to some extent still are, a central aspect of Chinese Buddhism. The first Sanskrit version of the Heart Sutra was produced in India, probably in the late seventh or early eighth century at a time when Tantra was in full swing. These dates coincide for example with Stephen Hodges' proposed dates for the composition of the Sarvatathagata-tattvasaṃgraha. In such an environment mantra might have be the natural translation of 咒. Hence find a mantra where we expect not to and, according to my own definitions, where we might expect to find a dhāraṇī.

This is further evidence that the Heart Sutra is synthetic, which is to say it was constructed in China from a variety of sources, probably by a devotee of Avalokiteśvara in the 7th century. Now on the basis of a comparison with the Sanskrit sources, there is an argument for revising this portion of the Sanskrit text:

tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā mahāmantro mahāvidyāmantro ‘nuttaramantro ‘samasama-mantraḥ,

becomes

tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā mahāvidyā anuttaravidyā asamasamavidyā.

It should be understood that the perfection of wisdom is great knowledge, supreme knowledge, peerless knowledge.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

• Conze, Edward (1973). The Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines and its Verse Summary. San Francisco: City Lights.

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

• McBride, Richard D, II. (2004) 'Is there really "Esoteric" Buddhism?'  Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. 27(2): 329-356.

• 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

• Vaidya, P. L. (1960) Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. The Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning. Online: http://www.dsbcproject.org/node/8242

Heart Sutra Mantra

My calligraphy of Heart Sutra
Siddhaṃ script

The Heart Sutra is a synthetic text composed in China from three main elements:

1. Extracts from Kumārajīva's translation of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (T 8.223; ca. 5th century).
2. Elements drawn from the devotional cult of Avalokiteśvara (觀自在 Guānzìzài). 
3. The cult of dhāraṇī chanting, and a mantra probably drawn from existing Chinese texts. 

The first element is quite well covered in the literature, especially as Jan Nattier (1992) focusses on this part of the text in her reconstruction of its provenance. My next essay will address a lesser known aspect of this issue which is buried in Nattier's footnotes. The second element deserves a little more attention, but is covered briefly in Nattier (174-5). This essay will largely focus on the third element. 

In her long essay on the origins of the Heart Sutra, Jan Nattier notes (footnote 52 & 53) that two other scholars have found mantras similar to the Heart Sutra mantra in other places in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. One of these references is particularly significant as it seems to pre-date the composition of the Heart Sutra itself. This essay will present the Chinese source texts for these mantras. Before dealing with these mantras, we need to pay some attention to the dhāraṇī cult itself, and try to establish some terminological boundaries. 

The cult of dhāraṇī chanting is sometimes placed in the context of Tantric Buddhism, but I think this is a mistake. It is true that mantras are a feature of Tantric Buddhism. However, as Ryūichi Abé. has shown, Tantric Buddhism requires certain elements to be present in order to be Tantric. In The Weaving of Mantra he emphasises the abhiṣeka or initiation in particular because the abhiṣeka is the ür-ritual which underpins all of Tantric Buddhist practice. In Japan, prior to the arrival of Kūkai and Saichō with genuine Tantric Buddhism, some Tantric elements were present: images, dhāraṇī and mantra, and even texts such as the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra. However, in the absence of the Tantric paradigm and organising principles, these elements did not add up to Tantric Buddhism.

Abé is trying to revise the history of Japanese Buddhism, but he has enunciated an important hermeneutic for discussing the presence or absence of a mode of Buddhist thought. For example: if a person bows before a Buddha statue, burns incense, and chants oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ, but has no knowledge of why Buddhists do such things, does this make them a Buddhist? These are simply decontextualised actions with no intentional underpinning. They are Buddhist in externals only. A similar argument is simmering away with respect to the Jon Kabat Zinn inspired mindfulness treatments. Does the teaching of mindfulness amount to teaching Buddhism, or does it lack key elements, such as "going for refuge", that render the teaching non-Buddhist? Some Buddhists who teach mindfulness argue that they are teaching Buddhism when they teaching mindfulness. Others argue that the lack of context for the practice, particularly the absence of Buddhist metaphysics, means this is a beneficial secular practice that does not conduce to liberation.

In any case, the point is that although dhāraṇīs were incorporated into Tantric Buddhism, there is nothing in the dhāraṇī sūtras or the chapters inserted into larger texts such as the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka or Survabhāṣotama, to indicate a Tantric context. The first hints of Tantra associated with a mantra seem to be found in the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra according to Alexander Studholm's study of that text, which includes an account of something like an initiation, though it still lacks the central features of the abhiṣeka ritual. The point of chanting dhāraṇīs seems largely to have been protection from malign forces or entities. And thus they have much more in common with the Theravāda practice of parittā chanting than with Tantric practice (at least with respect to the Tantric Buddhism practised by Kūkai). It's not until they are incorporated into rituals centred on the abhiṣeka, that they become Tantric. This criteria is common to other elements that were incorporated, not least the elements from Vedic ritual. No one, to my knowledge, argues that Vedic fire rituals were "proto-Tantric". 

Nattier points to the opinion of Fukui Fumimasa (1981. Source text is in Japanese) that the name of the Heart Sutra in Chinese is 心經 Xīnjīng, literally "heart sūtra", but that 心 xīn (heart) here connotes dhāraṇī rather than 'pith' and that the text might well be a chanting text, i.e. a dhāraṇī text. We know from Xuánzàng's record of his journey to India that he used the text as a protective measure against unseen malevolent spirits. The title of the short text in Sanskrit, Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, does not include the word sūtra, and it seems likely that the original, short text was not considered as a sūtra. That transition probably happened in India when the traditional elements of a sūtra, such as the beginning evaṃ maya śrutaṃ... and the appreciation at the end were added. Another reading of 心 is "gist" with the idea that rather than Heart Sutra, the meaning is Gist Text, with the text representing the gist of Prajñāpāramitā.

The dhāraṇīs of the pre-tantric Mahāyāna texts are often radically different in form from the mantras of later Tantric Buddhism. Of course there is a huge amount of variation and cast-iron definitions are difficult to construct.


Defining Mantra and Dhāraṇī

Tantric mantras have a number of structural features in common: a beginning (usually oṃ); a name or function; and a final seed-syllable. 

Typically Tantric mantras begin with oṃ (not auṃ) which served to mark what follows as a mantra. However in the earliest fully-fledged Tantra, the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra, the mantras all begin namas samanta-buddhānāṃ or namas samanta-vajrānāṃ. The ending -ānām indicated the genitive plural case (of the Buddhas). However, in Prakrits (including Pāli) the dative case (to or for the Buddhas) endings began to be replaced by the genitive case endings. Here ending is the usual genitive, but the sense is dative and the words mean "homage to all Buddhas/vajras".

What follows oṃ can be the name of a deity (oṃ amideva hrīḥ, oṃ vajrapāṇi hūṃ, oṃ vagiśvara muṃ) or relate to a function in the ritual, especially purification with the śūnyatā mantra or the Vajrasattva mantra. Names of deities are sometimes in the dative case, or in a kind of faux dative created by the addition of -ye to the end of the word: oṃ muni muni mahāmuni śākyamuniye svāhā. The correct dative of śākyamuni is śākyamunaye (final i is replaced by aye)

Tantric mantras typically end with a seed-syllable (bījākṣara) related to the deity or with svāhā. Sometimes the seed-syllable is specific to the deity, or to the "family" they belong to. Mantras of the vajra family typically end in hūṃ, while the padma family often end in hrīḥ. At other times it seems unconnected to other considerations. For example  oṃ maṇīpadme hūṃ is a padma family mantra. Some mantras incorporate dhāraṇī style features into them which would include the Heart Sūtra mantra and the Tārā mantra (oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā). The variety of mantras is partly due to their being a number of systems existing in parallel. 

Dhāraṇī by contrast seldom begin with oṃ and almost never end in a seed-syllable. They almost always end with svāhā. The word svāhā is the Vedic equivalent to the Hebrew amen. It is used in the Yajurveda to solemnise offerings: one makes an offering of rice mixed with ghee to the fire while chanting, for example "agnaye svāhā" or 'For Agni, amen' (Taittirīra Saṃhitā 7.1.14.1). The content of the dhāraṇī is a string of words or sounds which seldom reference names of deities, and frequently include nonsense words such as hilli, huru often with repetition and ringing the changes of the first syllable: hilli hilli milli milli. There is a tendency to use words ending in -e. Various theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, but my opinion is that the -e ending is a Prakrit masculine nominative singular. This probably also applies to the well known oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ mantra. A feature of dhāraṇī, then, is the use of Prakrit or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. 

Typical dhāraṇīs from the Saddharmapuṇḍarikā Sūtra:

anye manye mane mamane citte carite same samitā viśānte mukte muktatame same aviṣame samasame jaye kṣaye akṣaye akṣiṇe śānte samite dhāraṇi ālokabhāṣe pratyavekṣaṇi nidhiru abhyantaraniviṣṭe abhyantarapāriśuddhimutkule araḍe paraḍe sukāṅkṣi asamasame buddhavilokite dharmaparīkṣite saṁghanirghoṣaṇi nirghoṇi bhayābhayaviśodhani mantre mantrākṣayate rute rutakauśalye akṣaye akṣayavanatāye vakkule valoḍra amanyanatāye svāhā.

iti me iti me iti me iti me iti me; nime nime nime nime nime; ruhe ruhe ruhe ruhe ruhe| stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe svāhā.

There is a world of difference between these two dhāraṇī and most Tantric mantras.


The Heart Sutra Mantra

The Heart Sutra mantra is clearly referred to as a mantra by the text. But it has more features in common with dhāraṇī in form and content. It's lacks the opening oṃ for example, though some traditions have simply added one. The repetition and play of sounds in gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate is typical of dhāraṇī. Why then does the text refer to this as a mantra? I will look more closely at this issue in the next essay.

Meanwhile let us compare the Heart Sutra mantra with the three mantra/dhāraṇī listed in Nattier's footnotes as being similar. Of these T 12.387  大方等無想經  Dàfāngděng wúxiǎng jīng (Mahāmegha Sūtra), identified by Fukui (1981), is important because it was translated in the early fifth century, two centuries before the proposed date for the composition of the Heart Sutra.

Mantras and dhāraṇīs are typically not translated by the Chinese, but the sounds are represented using characters for their pronunciation.  Unfortunately it can be very difficult to reconstruct the Sanskrit from a Chinese transliteration. For example the character 卑 bēi has been used to transliterate the Sanskrit syllables pra, pre, pe, pi, vi, and vai. Note that I'm using Pinyin Romanisation in these posts, which often does not reflect pronunciation at the time the texts were composed. The language of the day is referred to as Middle-Chinese (MC). Where relevant and possible I will indicate the MC pronunciation 

The dhāraṇī in question is:

竭帝　波利竭帝　僧竭帝　波羅僧竭帝波羅卑羅延坻　
三波羅卑羅延坻　婆羅 婆羅　波沙羅　波娑羅　摩文闍　摩文闍　
遮羅帝　遮羅坻 波遮羅坻 波遮羅坻　三波羅遮羅坻
比提 嘻利 嘻梨　薩隷醯　薩隷醯　富嚧 富嚧 莎呵

jiédì bōlìjiédì sēngjiédì bōluósēngjiédì bōluóbēiluóyánchí
sānbōluóbēiluóyánchí póluó póluó bōshāluó bōsuōluó mówéndū mówéndū
zhēluódì zhēluóchí bōzhēluóchí bōzhēluóchí sānbōluózhēluóchí
bǐtí xīlì xīlí sàlìxī sàlìxī fùlú fùlú shā hē

Fortunately for us some markers are clear at the beginning.  The Mantra in the Heart Sutra in Chinese is:

揭帝　揭帝　般羅揭帝　般羅僧揭帝　菩提 僧 莎訶
jiēdì jiēdì bānluójiēdì bānluósēngjiēdì pútí sēng shāhē

One does not need to understand the characters to see that many of them graphically match up between the two mantras above, especially at the beginning. The opening characters of both are very similar. Both 竭帝 jiédì and  揭帝  jiēdì are transliterations of Sanskrit gate (the difference in pronunciation is a matter of tone). MC pronunciation in both cases was gal (with a hard g sound).

The first words in the Mahāmegha Sutra mantra are: jiédì bōlìjiédì sēngjiédì bōluósēngjiédì which most likely represent Sanskrit: gate parigate saṃgate paragate. The Mahāmegha mantra ends 莎呵 shāhē; the Heart Sutra has 莎訶 shāhē; both represent svāhā. Note the graphic similarity of 呵 and 訶 which have the same pronunciation, he, in MC.

A little note here that the mantra in Xuánzàng's version of the Heart Sutra (T 8.251) has an extra out-of-place character, 僧 sēng, between bodhi (菩提 pútí) and svāhā (莎訶 shāhē). Even though this is probably the oldest version of the text, it is not without problems! 

A similar dhāraṇi is also found in T. 21.1353 東方最勝燈王陀羅尼經 Dōngfāng zuìshèng dēngwáng tuóluóní jīng (First-radiance Knowledge King Sūtra = Sanskrit Agrapradīpadhārāṇīvidyarāja-sūtra). As in T 12.387 the dhāraṇī shares opening elements with the Heart Sutra mantra using the same transliterating characters.

阿  竭帝　波羅竭帝 波羅僧竭帝　    
a    jiédì    bōluójiédì  bōluósēngjiédì   

a gate paragate parasaṃgate

Here the character 阿 is often used for the Sanskrit short 'a' vowel and thus may reference the idea of the perfection of wisdom  in one letter, or more precisely the fact that all dharmas are empty of self existence (sarvadharmāḥ svabhāvaśūnyatāḥ) because they are unarisen (anutpanna). See also The Essence of All Mantras; and Sound, Word, Reality.

The gate gate mantra itself, with the same transliteration, is found in T 18.901 陀羅尼集經 Tuóluóní jí jīng (Dhāraṇī Collection Sūtra). This was translated ca. 653 CE which is around the same time that Nattier proposes for the composition of the Heart Sutra. Note also that it is a collection of dhāraṇī (陀羅尼 Tuóluóní) rather than mantra. The presence of a dhāraṇī in a collection is not conclusive evidence that it existed detached from the Heart Sutra before its composition, but it at least shows that dhāraṇīs can be detachable. It's quite possible that similar examples may turn up with further examination. 

It seems that, not only is the core of the Heart Sutra an extract, but the "mantra" might also be an extract from a dhāraṇī. It might be thought that the fact that the Heart Sutra is a mash-up of bits from other texts invalidates the text. However the composition method closely resembles many Pāli texts which are clearly constructed from pre-existing elements that can be found scattered around the Canon. Far from being unusual, the Heart Sutra is following standard Buddhist procedure. Even the subsequent addition of a proper sūtra introduction is in keeping with general Buddhist practice. 

In my discussion of cladistic methods applied to studying manuscripts, I argued that it would help to iron out biases. Another bias that Buddhist Studies faces is the prejudice in favour of texts with Indian "originals". In my essay Which Mahāyāna Texts? I outlined an observation made in another publication by Jan Nattier about which Mahāyāna texts are prominent in the West. The existence of a Sanskrit manuscript is one of the influential factors likely to bring a Mahāyāna text to prominence. The fact is that the Heart Sutra is broadly accepted as a genuine masterpiece of Buddhist thought. Commentaries from across the spectrum of Buddhist schools adopt the Heart Sutra as an epitome of their thought. Is a text any less authentic because it was not composed in India? It is true that Buddhists believed that the text was of Indian origin and that was an element in popularising it. Now that we know differently will Buddhists have to abandon this text? I think there is no question of abandoning the text, but the necessary adjustments might be quite difficult. One sign of this is the rejection of the Chinese origin thesis by Red Pine in the introduction to his translation and commentary on the Heart Sutra. Though his reasoning is spurious, it is none-the-less interesting to see how difficult Buddhists find it to absorb information like this.

One of the reasons for writing about Nattier's work is that it has yet to penetrate to the heart of popular imagination and the discussion about textual origins is in its infancy. Such writing raises questions for Buddhists. If we take scholarship seriously, then we are forced to examine our own beliefs and sometimes to admit that our beliefs are based on false assumptions such as authenticity being related to India. 

~~oOo~~

A further note 26 sept 2013.

The Tibetan canonical versions of the Heart Sutra both include tadyathā in the mantra itself. I've looked at this generally in Tadyathā in the Heart Sūtra - the inclusion of tadyathā 'like this' in the mantra is like actors speaking stage directions out loud. One of the versions also interpolates oṃ into the mantra as do some of the Nepalese manuscripts. 

 

Bibliography

I've already written about the mantra of this text a couple of times:

• Words in Mantras that end in -e (see also Some Additional Notes).

• Tadyathā in the Heart Sūtra. 

• Heart Sūtra Mantra. (on my mantra website). 

All Chinese texts from CBETA.

• Abé, Ryūichi (1999). The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press.

• Fukui Fumimasa (1981) Hannya shingyô no rekishiteki kenkyû. [= Historical studies of the Buddhist scripture Prajñaparamita-hrdaya or Heart Sutra.] Tōkyō: Shunjūsha. 

• 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

• Studholme, Alexander (2002). The origins of oṃ manipadme hūṃ : a study of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra. Albany: State university of New York Press.