After twelve years of research and a year-long editorial process, my revised editions of the Heart Sutra in Chinese and Sanskrit have now been published in Asian Literature and Translation along with translations (and copious notes) that reflect how I think it should be understood. I thank people in the article, but I also want to thank the editor, Ian Rapley, for his heroic patience with me.
Since 2012, when I first noticed errors in Conze's Sanskrit, I have wanted to take this step of publishing revised editions. On the other hand, I have dreaded having to commit to a translation that would then be the subject of criticism from all sides. But the moment to take this step has arrived. So here are the "official" Jayarava texts and translations.
With help from many other scholars, I have at least identified the major issues with the existing editions and shown how I think they should be corrected. To the best of my ability, the Sanskrit text is now fully parseable as Sanskrit and, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in history that a Sanskrit Heart Sutra text can stake this claim. All the current Sanskrit editions have numerous grammatical errors and thus all existing translations based on those editions are also full of errors.
The revised Chinese text is less drastically changed and my revisions are mainly concerned with integrating insights from Huifeng (2014) into the structure of the text. Explanations for the changes can be found in the main article.
Please note that despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, the Heart Sutra is entirely in prose. So I avoid the faux-poetic arrangement of the text into disconnected short lines (that often ignore sentence breaks). I have added paragraphs to make reading/studying easier.
Practising the deep perfection of insight, Guanyin bodhisattva observed the branches of experience, all were absent and he transcended all suffering.
Śāriputra, appearance is not different from absence and absence is not different from appearance; appearance is only absence and absence is only appearance. Valence, recognition, intention, and objectification are the same.
Śāriputra, all phenomena are characterised by absence that does not arise or cease, is not defiled or pure, and is not declining or growing.
In that state of absence—there is no appearance, valence, recognition, intention, or objectification; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mental sense; no appearance, sound, smell, taste, touch, or percepts; no eye-sphere etc up to no mental cognition sphere; no ignorance or cessation of ignorance etc up to no ageing and death or the cessation of ageing and death; no dissatisfaction, no origin, no cessation, no path; no attainment and no realisation—due to practising nonapprehension.
Since the bodhisatva relies on perfect insight their mind is not attached anywhere; being detached they are not afraid, transcend illusions and delusions, and attain final extinction. Relying on perfect insight, the buddhas of the three times attained full and perfect awakening.
Understand that perfect insight is great know-how, unexcelled know-how, and unequalled know-how. It can remove all suffering; it is true and not false.
Therefore recite the incantation of perfect insight, the incantation that goes: jiēdì jiēdì bānluójiēdì bānluósēngjiēdì pútí sàpóhē.
~o~
The Sanskrit Heart Sutra
Revised Sanskrit Text
āryāvalokiteśvaro bodhisatvo gambhīrāṃ prajñāpāramitācaryāṃ caramāṇo vyavalokayati sma pañcaskandhāṃs tāṃś ca svabhāvaśūnyān paśyati sma ||
iha śāriputra rūpam eva śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śūnyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ | evam eva vedanā-saṃjñā-saṃskāra-vijñānaṃ ||
tasmāc chāriputra śūnyatāyāṃ na rūpaṃ na vedanā na saṃjñā na saṃskārāḥ na vijñānaṃ, na caksuḥ-śrotra-ghrāṇa-jihvā-kāya-manāṃsi na rūpa-śabda-gandha-rasa-spraṣṭavya-dharmāḥ na cakṣurdhātur yāvan na manovijñānadhātur nāvidyā nāvidyākṣayo yāvan na jarāmaraṇaṃ na jarāmaraṇakṣayo na duḥkha-samudaya-nirodha-mārgā na jñānaṃ na prāptiḥ ||
Practising the deep practice of perfect insight, noble Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva, examined the five branches of experience and saw that they lacked self-existence.
Obviously, Śāriputra, appearance only is absence; absence is only appearance. Absence is not different from appearance; appearance is not different from absence. The same applies to valence, recognition, intention, and objectification.
Obviously, Śāriputra all dharmas are characterised by absence that does not arise or cease, is not defiled or pure, and is not deficient or complete.
Therefore, Śāriputra, in that state of absence there is no appearance, valence, recognition, intention, or objectification; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mental sense; no appearance, sound, smell, taste, touch, or percepts; no eye-sphere, and so on up to, no mental-cognition-sphere; no ignorance or destruction of ignorance, and so on up to, no ageing and death or the destruction of ageing and death; no dissatisfaction, no origin, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.
Therefore, Śāriputra, in the absence of attainment, the bodhisattva who is without mental obstructions dwells having relied on perfect insight, [and] being free of mental obstructions he is unafraid, has overcome delusions, and his extinction is complete. Having relied on perfect insight, all the buddhas appearing in the three times fully awakened to the unexcelled perfectly complete awakening.
Therefore, know that perfect insight is a great mantra, a great mantra of mastery, an unexcelled mantra, an unequalled mantra that allays all suffering and it is true and without wrongness.
Concerning perfect insight, a mantra goes like this: gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā.
I'm just finishing up a translation of an article from modern Chinese using ChatGPT: "Early Versions of the Heart Sutra" by Hè Míng and Xù Xiǎoyù was published in a collection of essays about the Fangshan collection of inscriptions. In this post I want to briefly go over the evidence presented by He & Xu and make a few remarks. The original citation is:
Hè Míng and Xù Xiǎoyù. (2017). "Early Versions of the Heart Sutra." In Stone Scripture Research Vol 1, edited by the Fangshan Stone Scriptures Museum, and the Fangshan Stone Scriptures and Yunju Temple Cultural Research Center, 12-28. Beijing: Beijing Yanshan Publishing House.
The authors went to quite a lot of trouble to identify early versions of the Heart Sutra in China. For each text identified they supply an image. I'll include some images, but mainly just want summarise the text. Most of the images are of "rubbings": the process is in fact similar to lithographic printing. One smears ink on the stone surface and pressed paper against it, to obtain a negative image (hence the white text on a black background in most of the images).
—Inscriptions from Fangshan—
The authors noted 26 instances of the Heart Sutra amongst the Fangshan Stone Sutras 房山石经, of which only four could be securely dated. Hè & Xù only give specific details for the first two.
Yáng Shèshēng 楊社生 stele, 661 CE.
sixth year of Xianqing (661 CE) (Cave Eight, number 770).
second year of Zongzhang (669 CE) (Cave Three, number 238).
second year of Tiānshòu 天授 (691 CE)
first year of Yánzài延载 (694 CE)
The first two are found in:
中国佛敎协会, 中国佛敎图书文物馆编. (2000). «房山石经,隋唐刻经2» 华夏出版社.
Chinese Buddhist Association and Chinese Buddhist Library and Museum. (2000). Fangshan Stone Sutras, Sui and Tang Engraved Scriptures. Vol. 2, Huaxia Publishing House.
[There are no copies of this publication in the UK.]
The first inscription was commissioned by Yáng Shèshēng 楊社生 (date unknown) on 13 March 661 CE. My understanding was that this stele was one of 10,000 votive texts buried in a courtyard in Yunjusi ca. 1100 CE. However, He & Xu's information puts the stele in one of the storage caves. A minor point, but significant since it was stored rather than disposed of by burial. Though this doesn't explain how badly damaged the stone is or where the missing piece is (and I always thought that burial did explain these things). Unfortunately we now have conflicting sources and I have no way to resolve this.
The Yáng Shèshēng 楊社生 stele is the oldest known text of the Heart Sutra, and more or less conforms to the standard canonical text (T 251) with some minor character substitutions (which have the same phonetic value). As far as I know, my investigation of this artefact (Attwood 2019) is still the only English-language study of it.
Originally from the ancient capital, Chang'an, this famous stele is now on display in the Stele Museum 碑林 in Xi'an 西安, Shaanxi 陕西. The artifact is known as
Táng jí wángxīzhī shèng jiào xù bēi. «唐集王羲之圣教序碑» “The Preface to the Holy Teaching by Wang Xizhi in the Tang Collection”
In his comprehensive study of this object, Pietro De Laurentis (2021: 1, n. 1) notes that although all scholars cite the date as 672 CE and the compilation of characters began some years earlier: “the actual date of the stele’s erection falls on the first day of 673”.
On the other hand the project was many years in the making. This object is remarkable because each character was first individually copied from extant works of the celebrated calligrapher Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (307-365 CE). The style of script varies considerably from character to character, giving this text a very unusual look and feel. 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. The Heart Sutra occurs in three columns on the left of this artefact (followed by the names of donors at the far left).
This artefact is only mentioned in passing, the whole entry can be translated as:
"The National Library 国家图书馆 holds rubbings from the stele Fú shuō Mílè púsà dōu lǜ tiānxià shēngchéng fójīng bēi «佛说弥勒菩萨兜率天下生成佛经碑» “The Sutra of the Buddha Pronouncing the Advent of Maitreya Bodhisattva and His Attainment of Buddhahood”, from the third year of Tang Yifeng (678 CE) in Gaoyang County 高阳县, Hebei Province 河北 . On these rubbings, the translation of the Heart Sutra by Master Xuanzang can also be observed."
The stele is ca 206 x 95 x 24 cm, with writing covering front, back, and the sides. The Heart Sutra is on one side. He & Xu don't supply an image of this inscription, but images are online in any number of places. This image from an auction house is the only one I could find which included the side panels. I can just make out part of the Heart Sutra on the left side panel.
—Inscriptions from Longmen—
The authors identified three datable Heart Sutra texts in the Longmen Grottoes 龙门石窟, in Henan 河南 Provence. This is the site of the other ancient capital of Tang China, Luòyáng 洛阳.
Two copies of the Heart Sutra were found in the Liánhuā dòng 莲花洞 “Lianhua Cave”, both dated by He & Xu to ca 700 CE. One was inscribed by Huángfǔ Yuánhēng 皇甫元亨. This is all the detail that the author's give. However, from a forthcoming article by Claudia Wenzel we learn:
The Heart Sutra inscription below niche 37 is followed by a date corresponding to July 11, 700 (久視元年八月廿一日).
It seems that the other inscription (below niche 43) is in fact undated, and that He & Xu simply assumed it was from the same period. I don't have enough information to know if this was valid, but Wenzel had access to He & Xu (2017).
A third copy found in the Leigutai Zhong Cave 擂鼓台中洞, dates from the reign of Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 (690-704 CE) [aka Wǔ Zhào 武曌; 624–705 CE].
Rubbing of a Heart Sutra from Liánhuā dòng 莲花洞
The source that He & Xu cite for these inscriptions is
王振国 (2006) «龙门石窟与洛阳佛教文化» 中州古籍出版社
Wáng, Zhènguó (2006) The Longmen Grottoes and Buddhist Culture in Luoyang. Zhongzhou Ancient Books Publishing House.
—Earliest Dated Manuscript—
Pelliot Chinois 2884
In addition to noting the oldest inscriptions, the authors also attempted to identify the oldest Heart Sutra manuscript in China. This is a manuscript, dated 771 CE, from the Dunhuang cache. It was acquired by Paul Pelliot and is now held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France: catalogued as Pelliot Chinois No. 2884. The paper is ripped and pieces are missing.
The last line of the colophon reads:
景雲二年四月八日孔直主安張而易思忠敬忍
This may be translated as:
"On the 8th day of the 4th month of the 2nd year of Jingyun, Kǒng Dàoshēng's 孔道生 wife, née Zhāng 張, respectfully had this copy made for her son Sīzhōng 思忠 ." [Based on the BnF translation].
The date in question, 景雲二年四月八日 "Jǐngyún 2.4.8", corresponds to 30 April 711 CE (De Laurentis 2021: 111).
Note: I used a colour image from the BnF site rather than the monochrome image from the article.
—Spurious Claims to Antiquity—
The authors note some minor variations in the various inscriptions. More significantly they also track down some rumours of older texts that are, to my knowledge completely unknown in the English language Heart Sutra literature.
The first is a claim that a copy of the Heart Sutra was made by Ouyang Xun 欧阳询 in 625 CE (a date that would confound my own theories). The image of this calligraphy has been published numerous times (and can be found in many places online),
The authors dismiss the date as spurious:
However, this is impossible because it was not until the twenty-third year of the Zhenguan 贞观 era (649) on May 24th that Master Xuanzang translated this sutra in Cuìwēi gong 翠微宫 ”Cuiwei Palace” on Zhōng nánshān 终南山 “Mount Zhongnan”.
While this fact is widely cited, it is certainly not accurate.
The 649 CE date only occurs in the hagiography of Xuanzang composed by Yàncóng 彥悰, brought out in 688 CE (24 years after Xuanzang's death). The fact is not corroborated by any contemporary document or official records (Kotyk 2019; Attwood 2020). Furthermore, it occurs in the context of a standard Chinese miracle tale. The same story asserts that Emperor Taizong made a deathbed conversion to Buddhism, which mainstream historians have universally expressed doubts over (he was famously anti-Buddhist). All of which cast doubt on the 649 CE date.
My work on the history of the Heart Sutra suggests that the text was not composed until after 654 CE, when the text containing the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī—Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» (T 901)—was translated by Atikūṭa. Thus I come to the same conclusion as He & Xu, for slightly different reasons.
The upshot is that the date on the Ouyang calligraphy is (still) not creditable. The authors note several other claims that copies or inscriptions were made much earlier than 654 CE and dismiss these for the same reason. My rationale for rejecting these claims is the same.
Another spurious claim is that a Heart Sutra text was inscribed in stone by Zhāng Ài 张爱 "at Shàolín sì 少林寺 'Shaolin Temple' in August of the twenty-third year of the Zhenguan era (649)." While this "fact" is also widely cited, the authors could find no evidence that it ever existed: there is no extant inscription and no rubbing of it. They concluded that Zhēnguān 贞观 may have been a mistake for Kāiyuán 开元 (some centuries later).
I note that the Shaolin Temple is now a Chinese government-run tourist attraction focused on martial arts and the link between martial arts and Buddhism has always seemed tenuous for the simple reason that Buddhists universally espouse non-violence.
And finally the authors investigated the claim that on “August 27, 657", Zhuāng Níng inscribed a blessing for Husband Zīfú” (显庆二年八月一日庄宁为夫资福书) and included the Xīn jīng «心经»). And they concluded that the texts were actually fabricated by Gù Nányǎ 顾南雅 (1765-1832).
Thus none of the stories of early copies Heart Sutras in China stand up to scrutiny. Which is something of a relief for me. My thesis on the date of composition survives a major test.
~~oOo~~
My thanks to Ji Yun 纪赟, who first alerted me to this article in 2018. And thanks to Michael Radich for allowing me a preview of Claudia Wenzel's forthcoming article.
—Bibliography—
On Chinese epigraphy generally see the Stone Sutras project which will eventually reproduce the fine, large-format printed volumes from Harrassowitz Verlag and the China Academy of Arts Press.
Attwood, Jayarava. (2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, 32, 1–30. https://chinesebuddhiststudies.org/article/xuanzangs-relationship-to-the-heart-sutra-in-light-of-the-fangshan-stele/
———.2020. "The History of the Heart Sutra as a Palimpsest." Pacific World, Series 4, no.1, 155-182. https://pwj.shin-ibs.edu/2020/6934
De Laurentis, Pietro. (2021). Protecting the dharma through calligraphy in Tang China : a study of the Ji wang shengjiao xu 集王聖教序 , the preface to the Buddhist scriptures engraved on stone in Wang Xizhi's collated characters. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica.
Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). "Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci'en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳." T'oung Pao 105(5-6): 513–544. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-10556P01
Wenzel, Claudia. (forthcoming). Buddhist Stone Sutras: Shaanxi 3. Wiesbade: Harrassowitz Verlag – Hangzhou: China Academy of Arts Press.
People often react positively when I say that I study the Heart Sutra. They often seem to imagine that the holiness of the text must rub off on me (I wish!). In reality, I don't find the Heart Sutra particularly interesting, except as a case study in the history of ideas in Buddhism. Unfortunately, I found a sixty year old mistake in Conze's edition as I was beginning to learn Sanskrit back in 2012 and for me that meant figuring out how to fix it (see Attwood 2015). But it also meant looking to see in what other ways it was broken. As much as anything, what fascinates me now is that people continue to translate the text even though it is broken in several ways, both by Conze and by the original translator. What goes on in the mind of a translator who stumbles on a passage that simply does not make sense, but publishes something anyway?
The English language literature on the Heart Sutra mostly celebrates irrationality and mysticism, which goes a long way to explaining why no one noticed that the text did not make sense. It reminds me of that popular formulation of the laws of thermodynamics (aka Ginsberg's Theorem), which I can paraphrase for our purposes as: "you can't understand, you can't hope to understand, there is nothing you can do that will bring about understanding". Call this Conze's Theorem, though it could equally well be Suzuki's. If someone accepts Conze's Theorem, then their chances of spotting grammatical errors plummets.
Amidst all the smoke and mirrors, we don't usually see that, like many philosophers, priests and mystics actively get in the way of understanding. They impede us by asserting falsehoods, contradicting themselves and, above all, by trying to convince us to take up the defeatist, fixed mindset (in the Professor Carol Dweck sense) that Conze's Theorem represents. If anyone actually understood, all the priests would be out of a job, or they would have competition. On the other hand, there is a symbiotic relationship between those who confuse and those who wish to be confused (or to justify their state of confusion or be absolved of responsibility for it). Priest and congregation co-exist and feed off each other.
A friend who likes to produce his own translations of the Heart Sutra, partly based on our long discussions about it, was criticised recently for "taking the mystery out of it". What can I say? The mystery of the Heart Sutra is how Buddhists get away with promoting magical thinking.
The Horror...
Anyway, sometimes my desire to understand forces me (reluctantly) to read books about the Heart Sutra. It's a bit like, having dropped my glasses in the toilet while having a piss, I have to fish them out before I flush, just in case they go past the U-bend. For some reason, I had high hopes about Kazuaki Tanahashi’s book. I think it might have been the nice cover. The book does have a very nice cover (right). As the subtitle suggests, this was an attempt at a comprehensive account of the Heart Sutra. However, like Red Pine, there was a mismatch between the author's expertise, the subject of the book, and the scope of his ambition. Tanahashi is even less proficient than Red Pine in Sanskrit and appears to be entirely reliant on third parties, who apparently mislead him on many occasions. His commentary on the Sanskrit text is full of errors of lexicon and morphology and, as a result, quite unreliable.
I'm not even going to mention the new English Heart Sutra contrived with help from Roshi Joan Halifax. Instead, in this essay, I want to focus on how Tanahashi deals with the news, delivered in 1992, that the Heart Sutra was composed in China, in Chinese. It was not Indian and not written in Sanskrit, and therefore not a sūtra. Tanahashi devotes almost four pages to outlining Nattier’s seventy-page article in a fairly neutral manner. His gloss is more or less accurate and he states that he thinks it is plausible (2014: 73-76).
Then in a separate chapter, he notes the horror with which the article was received in Japan. He cites the late Japanese scholar, Fumimasa-Bunga Fukui (福井文雅), as saying, “it would be a matter of grave concern if [the Heart Sutra] were proved to be an apocryphon produced in China” (2014: 77). Fukui (who died in May 2017) was a major figure of the Japanese Buddhist establishment, though almost completely unknown in the West because he didn't write in English (e.g. he only has a Japanese Wikipedia entry). Fukui, unsurprisingly, given this attitude, is not convinced by the evidence presented, though Tanahashi does not really say anything about Fukui's reasoning.
Tanahashi also records Red Pine’s objection, which I have already dealt with to some extent (Red Pine's "Vagaries of Sanskrit grammar". 13 October 2017). However, unlike Pine, Tanahashi declares himself satisfied by the case that Nattier has made for the Heart Sutra having been composed in China. On the surface this is a victory for reason (sorely needed), but watch what happens next.
It Cannot Be Ruled Out
The chapter that starts off assessing Nattier's thesis veers off on what seems to be a tangent. Tanahashi notices that T250 is closer to T223 and dubs it the “alpha version”. Despite the fact that T250 differs considerably more from the received Sanskrit text than T251, Tanahashi proposes it as the source text for the Sanskrit. He is concerned here to rally facts that support the identity of Xuánzàng as the translator, a case which, in reality, is very weak. Someone as familiar with the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā literature as Xuánzàng undoubtedly was would be unlikely to make so many idiomatic mistakes or to misread the Chinese text. The reasoning becomes increasingly specious, but it comes around to an unexpected conclusion:
“Therefore, technically speaking, by the traditional Chinese standard that regards all sutras created in India as authentic, Xuanzang’s Sanskrit version could be accepted as an authentic scripture.” (84)
So, having accepted the rational argument against the text being authentic, Tanahashi uses deduction to show that, after all, it is authentic. The reasoning here is quite something and it might be instructive to diagram it.
Axiom1: Authentic sutras come from India.
Axiom2: Authentic sutras are the word of the Buddha.
Axiom3: The Heart Sutra is an authentic sūtra.
Note that Axiom3 assumes that the Heart Sutra complies with Axioms1 & 2. Nattier shows, however, that the Heart Sutra was composed in China some time between 404 CE and 672 CE. And so we get the syllogism:
If the Heart Sutra was composed in China, it did not come from India, therefore it is not the word of the Buddha, and therefore it is not an authentic sūtra.
Conclusion1: The Heart Sutra is not an authentic sūtra.
Conclusion1 is the complete opposite of Axiom3. One or other must be false. Nattier, in fact, downplays this conclusion, presumably out of sympathy with her many Asian Buddhist Colleagues. But anyone can see the implications for this most popular of all East Asian texts. To put it baldly: it's a fake. Anyone who promoted it is a fool. Even if you did understand it, the understanding itself would not be authentic. This is the fear, anyway. In my view, the Heart Sutra is an authentic expression of early medieval Chinese Buddhism, but that's probably not enough for the traditionalist.
Buddhist religious authority is partly predicated on the authenticity of the sūtras and, for Japanese Zen Buddhists, this sūtra has a central and vital role. The Heart Sutra is the central mystery in the mystery religion that is modern Zen Buddhism (especially after D T Suzuki’s influential Theosophy inspired presentation of it). Axiom1 is the warp upon which the Zen Buddhist priests weave the weft of their religious authority. If Axiom1 is no longer a given, then the whole fabric of the religious tradition may unravel. Zen Buddhism is in danger of losing all credibility: hence the horrified reaction in Japan to Nattier’s article.
So, for obvious reasons, Conclusion1 is unacceptable: Fukui and Pine reject the evidence out of hand. Pine goes as far as denying that there is any evidence.
Tanahashi is, unlike Red Pine, honest enough to admit that Nattier’s case for Conclusion goes beyond any reasonable doubt. However, he is still committed to the three axioms. Therefore, he looks for a weak point in Nattier’s case. Her 1992 article is 70 pages long and covers a lot of ground. One of the subjects she covers is the attribution of T250 to Kumārajīva and T251 to Xuánzàng.
Traditionally, of course, T251 is attributed to Xuánzàng as translator. While Nattier casts enough doubt on this attribution for it to be abandoned, she leaves open the possibility that Xuánzàng produced the Sanskrit translation. This is a very appealing possibility to many Buddhists and in it Tanahashi finds his salvation.
Having definitely identified Xuánzàng as translator, Tanahashi constructs a fantasy that goes like this: Buddhists, he says, meditate and sometimes, in meditation, they receive divine revelations. Stories of meditating monks receiving instructions from Maitreya or Mañjuśrī are exceedingly common in Buddhist folklore. In these stories, the figures are usually bodhisatvas and they play the role of a virtual-buddha who provides the necessary imprimatur to meet Axiom2 (sūtras are the word of the Buddha).
It is, of course, well known that Xuánzàng travelled to India. In his final manoeuvre, Tanahashi imagines that the revelation from Avalokiteśvara conveniently took place in India. This allows him to construct the following syllogism:
If Xuánzàng had “received” the [translated] text in India [Axiom1], it would have to be seen as a scripture of Indian origin! Therefore, technically speaking, by the traditional Chinese standard that regards all sutras created in India as authentic, Xuanzang's version could be accepted as an authentic scripture (84).
Axiom1: Authentic sutras come from India.
Axiom2: Authentic sutras are the word of the Buddha.
Axiom3: The Heart Sutra is an authentic sūtra.
The essential axioms are satisfied and the horror of the prospect that the Heart Sutra is an apocryphon is banished, just as Xuánzàng himself banished the demons of the Gobi desert by reciting the Heart Sutra by magic. As Tanahashi says, this possibility “cannot be ruled out”. He is of course right. Just as we cannot rule out the possibility of the tooth-fairy.
However, Tanahashi cannot cite a single source for this idea. There is nothing in Xuánzàng's own account of his journey to suggest any of this happened. Nothing in the biographies composed by his contemporaries. Not even a suspicious-looking legend. There is nothing for anyone to base such speculation on. We associate Xuánzàng with the Heart Sutra because shoe-horned into his travelogue is a single mention of the text; and because his two main disciples wrote commentaries on the text (which are, curiously, undated - the Chinese dated everything). Xuánzàng is famous precisely for bringing Sanskrit Buddhist texts to China, and translating them into Chinese after he arrived. He was a prolific translator, so we have a very good idea of what to look for, and the Heart Sutra has none of the tell-tale signs. What is apparent is that someone has inexpertly altered the text to make it look more like a Xuánzàng production, but they didn't do a very good job of it.
So no, we cannot prove that it didn't happen, but there is also no reason to believe it did, except for Axioms1 & 2.
One weakness that Tanahashi did not exploit is that, while he was in India, Xuánzàng is believed to have made a Sanskrit translation of the Chinese apocryphal text known in English as The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna. However, in this case the text is widely acknowledged to be an apocryphon. In trying to establish the authenticity of the Heart Sutra, it would be risky to pair it with a known forgery. Tanahashi avoids this potential complication by not mentioning it (though it is equally likely that he was simply ignorant of this fact).
Having proved to his own satisfaction that the Heart Sutra is authentic, despite also accepting that Nattier has proved that it is not authentic (in that sense), Tanahashi proceeds as though his fantasy is reality. Just three pages later, he says:
“However, when Xuanzang translated the Hridaya into Chinese, there is no doubt that he referred to the α version [i.e. T250], which he might have believed to be the Kumarajiva translation” (87)
This is a neat trick. He begins by making a show of rationality, of gravely considering and accepting the validity of Nattier’s argument, despite the horrifying consequences that have made his prejudiced contemporaries in Japan (and elsewhere) reject it outright. Nevertheless, he proceeds as though Nattier got it completely wrong and the Heart Sutra is everything the Japanese Zen tradition says it is. The level of self-deception and desperation involved is shocking even to this relatively cynical author.
Oh, and the lack of doubt that Xuánzàng consulted T250 is convenient cover for the fact that T251 is not a separate translation at all, it is T250 that has been lightly edited: two lines have been removed, one from the beginning and one from the middle of the quote from the Large Sutra (T223) and/or it's commentary (T1509); and three words have been changed to reflect Xuánzàng's preferred "spelling" (Avalokiteśvara, Śāriputra, and skandha).
"We Fear Change."
With apologies to the copyright holders
Anyone familiar with the history of science probably knows about Thomas Kuhn's description of how science makes progress. It is down to him that we use the word paradigm as much as we do. Scientists supposedly resist paradigm change because they stake their careers on the old idea. However, in science, though there may be resistance, attitudes, theories, and practices do change, because scientists respond to evidence (my lifetime has seen many paradigms shift). In religion, it can be a very different story, even in the religion whose unofficial motto is "everything changes". Ideally in science, theory is evidence led. Religion is almost always the opposite: theory leads evidence. Evidence is either made to fit the theory or it is simply discarded as irrelevant. As we have seen in this case.
In all likelihood, both Red Pine and Kaz Tanahashi are good men; they are sincere and wrote their books in good faith, not consciously intending to impede understanding by giving false information or creating confusion. They, most likely, care deeply about the traditions they've given their lives to. They don’t see themselves as deceiving anyone, nor the self-serving nature of their deceptions. In all likelihood, they are just as deceived by their own words as others are (though happy to accept the benefits that accrue to them as a result). The axioms of their worldview override other concerns. Such axioms underpin the deductive logic of the rejection of any counter-factual information. This is the characteristic of a religious mindset.
However, it leaves them vulnerable. Sooner or later, someone like me was going to examine their work and point out the fallacies, biases, and mistakes in their work. The problems that don't just detract from their efforts but characterise them. Everything that is wrong with religion as a cultural institution is on display in Tanahashi's attempt to both accept and subvert the Chinese origins thesis. The rhetoric, the pretence, is that they are concerned with ultimate reality and that they accept that everything changes. But a simple truth such as the Heart Sutra being a Chinese composition, causes such consternation that they revert to type: they obfuscate, deny, and misdirect.
The reality in this case is that the Heart Sutra is changing. It has changed in the past, and it will change again. Buddhism is changing, it has changed in the past, and it will change again. If change is the nature of reality, then the changes wrought by Jan Nattier should be joyfully embraced by Buddhists. Instead, they are fearfully rejected and replaced with fantasy versions of reality. And this is sanctioned by followers because they don’t want things to change either. All too often Buddhism seems like a tragedy blurring into a farce.
The final irony is that, if you could ask the Heart Sutra itself, it would reply: in emptiness there is no Heart Sutra. And the mainstream, the paradigmatic, metaphysical interpretation would be that the Heart Sutra doesn't exist! And laughably, it is precisely my epistemological interpretation (based on Sue Hamilton's reading of the Pāḷi suttas) that rescues the text from this ignominious fate. It's only me arguing that of course the text exists, it's just that perception of it is not governed by the same rules as the existence of it.
The uncomfortable truth is that the text that everyone knows and loves is full of errors. And faith is getting in the way of fixing them.
