The Lost Translations of the Heart Sutra

If there is anything eternal, it may well be Buddhist anxieties about the authenticity, legitimacy, and authority. These anxieties seem to be present in the earliest strata of Buddhist writing and continue down to the present. One of the principle methods of making a text seem more authentic (etc) is to claim that it is old. There is a Buddhist heuristic that the older a text is, the more authentic it is. This is one reason that, for some people, the Pāli texts are seen as more authentic and thus more legitimate and more authoritative than other texts.

In the arena of Heart Sutra studies there is an old argument for the antiquity of the text, which is to cite the so-called "lost translations", and one in particular. This essay draws heavily on Watanabe (1990) an article, published in Japanese, but of which I have recently made an English translation, using ChatGPT and some other online translation apps. Watanabe was the first to make this argument and it was made in 1990, two years before Nattier stumbled on the fact that the Sanskrit text is a backtranslation. 

We can see this trope of lost translations invoked, for example, in recent Zen Buddhist commentaries on the Heart Sutra by Red Pine (2004) and Tanahashi Kazuaki (2014). Both men cite a lost translation attributed to Zhi Qian 支謙 (fl. 222–254 AD) that enables them to date the Heart Sutra very early (first or second century CE). Tanahashi Kazuaki (2014: 62) says:

Among the vanished texts, the most noteworthy is the rendition by Zhiqian [sic] of the third century. Traditionally regarded as the oldest Chinese translation of the Heart Sutra, this text was reportedly included in [Sengyou’s Catalogue].

"Sengyou's Catalogue" refers to the Chūsānzàng jìjí «出三蔵記集» (T 2145), compiled by Sēngyòu 僧祐 (445-518 CE). Amongst the resources employed by Sengyou were older catalogues, notably one by Dao-an 道安 (312–385) compiled in 374 CE (itself now lost). In the Dao-an section of Sengyou’s catalogue we find two texts listed:

A. Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn 摩訶般若波羅蜜神呪一卷 “Dhāraṇī of the Great Prajñāpāramitā”; one scroll. (T 2145; 55.31b9)

B. Bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn (yìběn) 般若波羅蜜神呪一卷(異本) “Dhāraṇī of the Prajñāpāramitā”; one scroll (different version). (T 2145; 55.31b10).

The astute reader will note that neither text is called a Heart Sutra; or a sutra, for that matter. It is less obvious, perhaps, that neither text is attributed to Zhi Qian. The term shénzhòu 神呪 probably translates dhāraṇī or vidyā, but we don't know. Not only are there no Indic sources for these titles, the texts themselves were lost by the Tang dynasty. So these catalogue entries are almost everything we know about these two shénzhòu texts.

One may compare these with the two entries in the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» (T 901), translated by Atikūṭa 654 CE. I translate and comment on these entries in a blog post: Svāhā in The Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī (5 July 2019)

I say almost everything we know, but there is a little more because the texts crop up in some later catalogues with the notation: "produced from the Large Sutra" (Chū dà pǐn jīng 出大品經), which is used to indicate the text is an extract from the larger work. Furthermore, in the Zhòngjīng mùlù (衆經目録) (also known as Yàncóng Lù 録), compiled and written under the guidance of Yàncóng 彦琮 (602 CE), both the A and B shénzhòu texts are classified as “separately produced” (biéshēng 別生). This is a term used for locally produced Chinese Buddhist texts, and has also been applied to chāo jīng 抄經 or digest texts. 

And all this evidence from the catalogues is consistent with the comments of Kuījī (T 1710) and Woncheuk (T 1711) who both composed commentaries on the Heart Sutra in the late-seventh century. They clearly state that they don’t believe the Heart Sutra to be an authentic Buddhist sutra; rather, they both see it as a compilation of passages from other Prajñāpāramitā texts. Moreover, physical and literary evidence stops entirely in the mid-seventh century: earliest artefact is from 661CE, earliest literary mention is from 656 CE.

So there are two processes to try to understand. How did the two shénzhòu come to be associated with Zhi Qian? And how did the shénzhòu texts come to be considered versions of the Heart Sutra?

Zhi Qian and Fèi Chángfáng

Following Sengyou, a series of three catalogues named Zhòngjīng mùlù «衆經目錄», by Fǎjīng 法經 (594 CE), Yancong 彥悰 (602 CE), and Jìngtài 靜泰 (663-665 CE), all list the two shénzhòu texts as "translator lost" (shī yì 失譯). However, in the midst of these we also have the Lìdài sānbǎo jì «歷代三寶紀» (T 2034) compiled by Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 (597 CE). The Lìdài sānbǎo jì is infamous amongst scholars for adding attributions to texts that were previously listed as "translator lost". Many of these attributions are false and the text is widely considered unreliable in matters of attribution. Fei's entry for the A text reads:

摩詞般若波羅蜜呪經 見宝唱録或直云般若波羅蜜呪經〔支謙訳〕
Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng. See the Bǎochànglù; in some cases it is just called Bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng. Translated by Zhi Qian.

Note the subtle change in the title. The character shén 神 "divine" has been dropped and the character jīng 經 "text, sutra" has been added. Still, everyone involved thinks this is the same text as found in Sengyou's Catalogue. Note that the Bǎochànglù is a reference to another catalogue that no longer exists: the Liángshì zhòng jīng mùlù «梁世衆經目錄» compiled by Bǎochàng 寶唱 ca. 520-521. It's possible that Bǎochàng was responsible for this attribution, but Fèi Chángfáng made up so many attributions that the finger points squarely at him. Also note that, contra the Zhòngjīng mùlù catalogues, Fèi Chángfáng considers the version without móhē 摩詞 in the title to be a variant of the A text rather than a distinct B text.

As far as we can tell, then, Chángfáng simply made up this attribution. And there is no reason to suppose that Zhi Qian translated the Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu or the Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng. Rather, such texts were likely just extracts from the Large Prajñāpāramitā text that circulated independently. Note that it is quite definite that the Xīn jīng (T 251) copied multiple passages from the Móhē bānrě bōluómì jīng «摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T 223), translated by Kumārajīva in 404 CE, as does the Dàmíngzhòu jīng (see below). Assuming that all the catalogue entries relating to the shénzhòu texts are references to the same text, the appearance in Dao-an's catalogue dated 374 definitely rules out it being a Heart Sutra. The passages copied did not even exist until thirty years after this date.

That said, the attribution to Zhi Qian is cited in influential catalogues such as the Neidian Catalogue (Dà Táng nèidiǎn lù «大唐内典録» T 2149), compiled by Dàoxuān 道宣 (664) and the Kaiyuan Catalogue (Dà Táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù «大唐開元釋教錄» T 2154), compiled by Zhìshēng 智昇 (730). The latter was especially influential as it was used to reconstruct the Buddhist canon after the purges of 849 and eventually provided the organisational scheme followed by the Tasihō canon.

At this point, then, the móhē shénzhòu text has been identified as a translation by Zhi Qian, while the B shénzhòu (sans móhē) is either noted as "translator lost" or is said to be the same text with a different title, despite Sengyou's clear note that they were different. What we do not have anywhere in the picture is a Heart Sutra text. We turn to this mystery next.

Zhi Qian and the Heart Sutra

The key moment here is the appearance, already mentioned above, of the Kaiyuan Catalogue by Zhìshēng, in 730 CE. Something new happens in this catalogue, which is the first mention of a text that we know to be a Heart Sutra:

A 摩詞般若波羅蜜呪經 或無摩詞学 見宝唱録〔支謙訳〕 Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng. Some texts lack the Móhē characters; see the Bǎochànglù; (translator Zhi Qian).

B 欠 Missing.

C 摩詞般若波羅蜜大明呪經 亦云摩訶大明呪經 初出与唐 訳般若心経等 同本見経題上〔羅什訳〕 C. Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng. Also called Móhē dàmíng zhòu jīng, first produced in the Tang. A translation of the Heart Sutra, See the same Sutra title above. (Translated by Kumārajīva).

Like Fèi Chángfáng and unlike the earlier catalogues, Zhìshēng considers the texts without Móhē to be a variant title rather than a separate text. 

Text C, the Dàmíngzhòu jīng, is extant and included in the Taishō as T 250. This entry in the Kaiyuan Catalogue is the first mention of the text in history. The Dàmíngzhòu jīng is not included amongst the translations of Kumārajīva in any older catalogue. And this means that it was almost certainly not by Kumārajīva. Indeed, this has long been the consensus. Back in 1932, when listing all the Prajñāpāramitā texts, Matsumoto Tokumyo (1932: 9) noted Er hat aber dieses Sūtra nicht übersetzt “But he has not translated this sutra”. Conze adds the detail that it was translated by one of Kumārajīva's "disciples" a theme recently taken up by Charles Willemen in a series of rather silly articles. Willemen asserts, on the flimsiest evidence imaginable, that Dàmíngzhòu jīng was translated by Zhu Daosheng. But he presents no plausible evidence for this assertion. Indeed, we know that the Heart Sutra per se is not a translation. It was composed in Chinese, in the middle seventh century (actually between 654 and 656 CE).

There is no doubt that this entry in the Kaiyuan Catalogue, dated 730 CE, is also the source of the conflation of the shénzhòutexts with the Dàmíngzhòu jīng, and combined with the idea that Zhi Qian translated the Móhē shénzhòu text, it explains why some people believe in a lost translation of the Heart Sutra by Zhi Qian. To be clear, no such thing ever existed and the evidence for it was always weak.

From the absence of the Dàmíngzhòu jīng in earlier catalogues we can also infer it was composed after the composition of the Xīn jīng. And Watanabe adds that it was not translated from Sanskrit, but composed in Chinese. Thus not only is the Dàmíngzhòu jīng not a translation, it is not (and could not be) a translation by Kumārajīva.

Conclusions

Watanabe (1990) concludes from this that the idea of a lost translation of the Heart Sutra by Zhi Qian was simply made up. The text in question was not a Heart Sutra and was not associated with Zhi Qian. Moveover the Dàmíngzhòu jīng attributed to Kumārajīva was not associated with him, was not even a translation, and was produced after the Xīn jīng. 

There is no reliable evidence of the Heart Sutra prior to the 650s CE. Moreover, Jan Nattier (1992) showed that the Sanskrit text was a back-translation from Chinese. The first mention of a Sanskrit text is in Woncheuk's commentary, but it is vague and could be a reference to the Sanskrit Large Sutra, since Woncheuk knew that to be the source of most of the copied passages.

All attempts at pushing back the existence to dates earlier the seventh century fail for lack of evidence. The oldest physical evidence of the Heart Sutra from anywhere in the world, is the inscription from Fangshan (see Attwood 2019) dated 13 March 661. The oldest literary mention occurs in letter dated 26 Dec 656, reproduced in Yancong's hagiography of Xuanzang (T 2053), but also preserved independently (See Kotyk 2020). This gives us the terminus ante quem. The earliest commentaries are Chinese texts from the late seventh century by Kuījī (T 1710), Woncheuk (T 1711), and Jìngmài 靖邁 (X 522). Note that the latter has received almost no scholarly attention.

We find evidence of the Heart Sutra in Tibet from roughly the eighth century, though this date is dependent on the attribution of Tibetan commentaries to Indian authors, some of whom are otherwise completely unknown, and some of whom are the most famous Buddhists who ever lived. And from India? There is no evidence of the Heart Sutra from India. No manuscripts, no inscriptions, no mentions in other texts. This is consistent with what we expect given that the Sanskrit text is a back-translation made in China.
All the evidence points to the same conclusion: The Heart Sutra was composed in Chinese ca 654–656 CE, using copied passages from Móhē bānrě bōluómì jīng «摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T 223) and a dhāraṇī from the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀罗尼集經» (T 901) translated in 654 CE (giving us the terminus post quem).

It's interesting that translators like Red Pine and Tanahashi have drawn on Japanese scholarship where it suits their purposes, but have entirely ignored this very important work by Watanabe. The false idea of the lost translation by Zhi Qian plays into their anxieties about the authenticity of this sutra that is not a sutra. And they employ the idea uncritically despite a long standing consensus around Watanabe's solid debunking of it. It turns out that, despite being very popular, both Red Pine and Tanahashi belong with D. T. Suzuki and Edward Conze as unreliable guides to this text. 

I have produced a draft English translation of Watanabe (1990) and uploaded it for comment on academia.edu. I will soon submit an article to an academic journal that discusses this material.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Attwood, J. (2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, 32, 1–30.

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.

Watanabe, Shōgo. 1990. “Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu jīng and Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng, As Seen in the Sutra Catalogues.” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 39-1: 54–58.

Extant Chinese Bibliographies

1. Chūsānzàng jìjí «出三蔵記集» (T 2145), compiled by Sēngyòu 僧祐 (445–518 CE)
2. Zhòngjīng mùlù «衆經目錄». (T 2146), compiled by Fǎjīng 法經 (594 CE)
3. Lìdài sānbǎo jì «歷代三寶紀» (T 2034), compiled by Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 (597 CE).
4. Zhòngjīng mùlù «衆經目錄» (T 2147), compiled by Yancong 彥悰 (602 CE)
5. Zhòngjīng mùlù «衆經目錄» (T 2148), compiled by Jìngtài 靜泰 (663-665 CE)
6. Dà Táng nèidiǎn lù «大唐内典録» (T 2149), compiled by Dàoxuān 道宣 (664).
7. Gǔ jīn yìjīng tújì «古今譯經圖紀» (T 2151), compiled by Jingmai 靖邁 (7th century).
8. Dàzhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù «大周刊定衆經目錄» (T 2153), compiled by Míngquán 明佺 et al. (695).
9. Dà Táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù «大唐開元釋教錄» (T 2154), compiled by Zhìshēng 智昇 (730)
10. Zhēnyuán xīn dìng shìjiào mùlù «貞元新定釋教目錄» (T 2157) compiled by Upāsaka Yuán Zhàozhuàn 照撰, (800)

"Authenticity" is Not a Useful Criterion

One of the complaints that we most often see in response to the Chinese origins thesis is that it sounds implausible, or as one senior Japanese academic recently said, it sounds "unnatural".

Underlying this attitude, I think, is the idea that the Chinese passively received Buddhism. They translated sutras into Chinese and never looked back. And this implies that authentic Chinese Buddhism cannot be wholly located in China. For example, even some Chinese Buddhists (at least amongst the elite monks of Chang'an and Luoyang) seem to have believed that authenticity was predicated on the ideas, attitudes, and practices coming from the West (meaning Greater India or Central Asia).

In reality however, many Chinese were not only literate but they were intellectuals, philosophers, historians, etc. Moreover, unlike Europeans, they were not yet slaves to technology. They made conscious decisions not to let technology take over their lives.

There is ample evidence that Chinese Buddhists began composing their own texts almost immediately. And why not? Indians had been doing so for some centuries, and continued to do so long after contact with China was established. We know, partly from Chinese translations, that Mahāyāna texts in particular were never finished. While there was life in Indian Buddhism, Buddhists constantly tinkered with their texts. The Prajñāpāramitā literature was no exception. Indeed one text in about 8000 lines was transformed into a series of much longer texts (ca 2 to 3 times more material was added in each case). And all continued to evolve over time.

I see no a priori reason why a Chinese person could not attain liberation and write about it. Or even imagine what it might be like and write about that. Or contribute a culturally appropriate version of the Pure Land, or any number of other possibilities.

Another common complaint is that there is no precedent for what we say happened to the Heart Sutra. In this vein one of the reviewers of my forthcoming articles has pointed me to two articles by (fellow Kiwi) Michael Radich.

Radich, Michael. "On the Sources, Style and Authorship of Chapters of the Synoptic Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra T 664 Ascribed to Paramārtha (Part1)." Annual Report of The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University 17 (2014): 207-244.

———. "Tibetan Evidence for the Sources of Chapters of the Synoptic Suvarṇaprabhāsottama-sūtra T664 Ascribed to Paramārtha." Buddhist Studies Review 32 (2015): 245-270.

In these two papers, Radich explores the origins of four Chapters that were added to the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra (Suv or Golden Light Sutra). They are not found in the first translation but appear in the translation attributed to Paramārtha (now lost) and in a subsequent text that combines material from various sources, including Paramārtha's translation.

On examination, the added chapters appear to have been composed in China on the basis of existing Chinese translations.

As I read Radich this is not an example of the practice of chāo 抄 or extract-making despite being based on existing texts. Recall that the idea that the Heart Sutra is a chāo jīng 抄經 (digest text) is now fairly well established. Rather what seems to have happened with Suv is that someone, possibly Paramārtha, decided it needed something more and went about creating it in Chinese. Moreover, when the Tibetan sources are examined in detail, we find some supporting evidence for this conclusion.

This procedure is very much how Indian Buddhists composed their texts as well. The typical Buddhist text is modular: it is made from a combination of pre-existing elements, from lines and phrases to whole chapters. It was not uncommon for independently circulating smaller works to be absorbed into a larger work, e.g. the Avalokiteśvara chapter of the Saddharmapuṇḍarikā Sūtra.

Another complaint is that there is very little evidence of Chinese texts being translated into Sanskrit. But it did happen. And one of the people most often associated with this is none other than Xuanzang. We can be fairly sure, for example, that Awakening Faith in Mahāyāna was a Chinese text, translated into Sanskrit, by Xuanzang.

By the mid-seventh century, i.e. around the time the Heart Sutra was composed, Chinese Buddhists were exposed to a number of co-existing literary traditions and cultures. At that time Chang'an was not only the largest city in the world but, because of the Silk Road, it was the most cosmopolitan. So the reception of Buddhism in China was vastly more complex than a simple interaction of Buddhism with Confucianism and Daoism.

Chinese literary culture had been evolving for almost 2000 years by this time. And not only that but the fine arts were focussed on poetry and calligraphy. The idea that Chinese Buddhists would not compose their own texts looks less plausible to me than that they did. Of course they did.

Buddhism is not a revealed religion. Our texts are sacred but not sacrosanct. We change them when there is a need. And if all else fails we simply write new texts and we invent ways to authenticate them. A great deal can rest on the charisma of the individual.

Rather than thinking of Chinese Buddhism as a bodhi tree planted in the alluvial soils of the Yellow River, we should think of it as a recipe passed on through a series of friendly strangers who each adapted it to their local ingredients and tastes, to create a new dish with the same name. Culinary examples abound: pizza as served by places like Pizza Hut or Dominos is only loosely (theoretically even) connected to the traditional dish enjoyed by working people in Naples. Which is fine. It's not like I am or want to be Neapolitan. I happen to like grilled cheese on toast with a dash of tomato sauce. If I want pineapple with that, it's nobody's business but mine. To say that I can't call it pizza or that my cheese on toast is somehow inauthentic would be to miss the point. It's not like anyone calls humans and chimps inauthentic because they evolved to be different from their last common ancestor.

I recently happened to read about an idea attributed to Derek Parfit recently, although he apparently attributed it back to Buddhism. Which is this: continuity not identity over time is what matters. This is quite similar to my conclusion after reflecting on the Ship of Theseus conundrum. Identity (i.e. sameness) over time doesn't really exist because we change. But change does not preclude continuity.

If this is true, then it suggests that we have missed the point about the evolution of Buddhist texts in China, but also we have missed something important about the notion of authenticity in China.

I think we can say that for a Chinese person to consider a non-Chinese text authentic was actually a stretch. Keep in mind that some Chinese continued to see Buddhism as a foreign barbarian religion well beyond the time of Xuanzang. Authenticity in China was complex. Authentic Buddhist texts did have to have a connection with India, but it also required that the ideas be expressed in elegant Chinese. Once translated, the Indian manuscripts were seldom if ever consulted again. Initially, of course, there were no manuscripts since texts arrived in the memories of monks. But by the Tang, 100s or even 1000s of Indic and Central Asian (mostly Iranic) manuscripts were physically present in China. Few if any of them survive.

Chinese translators often consulted earlier translations when preparing new ones. But there is little evidence of going back to the source languages. Proficiency in Sanskrit was exceedingly rare then (and now).

In view of the dynamics of Chinese literary culture, it should not be surprising that Chinese Buddhists created their own texts. The argument about authenticity really gets us nowhere. The Heart Sutra is a Chinese text. We cannot reasonable say that it is not authentic simply because it was composed in Chinese. Even the fact that it is almost universally misunderstood, doesn't make that misunderstanding less authentic: on the contrary since the misunderstanding is virtually canonical, it is the correct reading that is viewed as inauthentic (sigh). People believed what they wanted to believe. That is interesting in and of itself. Asking open questions allows us to explore these beliefs and their implications. Asking binary questions about authenticity/inauthenticity tends to collapse any line of investigation.

~~oOo~~

Removing All Suffering

The Heart Sutra is less than 300 words (in any language) and I have been studying it in detail for eight years now, though I first met it 25 years ago. And yet I still find new things in it. Yesterday, I noticed a new oddity concerning the phrase after the epithets, i.e. after the part where prajñāpāramitā is described as a superlative kind of vidyā (if you're not familiar with this see my article on the epithets). I'll cite it with the opening phrase and give a word for word translation

故知般若波羅蜜多... 能除一切苦

Therefore 故 know 知, gnosis 般若-perfected 波羅蜜多 ... can 能 remove 除 all 一切 suffering 苦.

This is a well formed Chinese sentence: 除 "remove" is a verb, qualified by 能 "can, able to"; 般若波羅蜜多 is the agent of the verb (or subject) and 苦 is the patient of the verb (or object). There is nothing remarkable about this.

Electronic searching allows us to quickly show that this phrase does not occur in Kumārajīva's Large Sutra translation (T.223) but that it does occur in some other pre-7th Century Chinese translations. Unfortunately, there are no Sanskrit source texts to consult.

• T.397 大方等大集經 Mahāvaipulya-mahāsannipāta-sūtra. (414~426 CE.)
• T.410 大方廣十輪經 Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra. (397~439 CE)
• T.1421 彌沙塞部和醯五分律 The Five Section Vinaya of the Mahīśāsaka School. (423~424 CE)

The third passage is a poem about fully understanding the conditioned links of the nidāna chain (T 1421; 22.103.a2-7; if you use Facebook, I posted a translation of the poem on my Facebook Heart Sutra group). It uses the exact phrase: 能除一切苦.

The first two occurrences seem a little more apposite.

此陀羅尼有大勢力猶如電光，速能破壞一切欲事，能大利益能盡一切欲貪，乃至能除一切苦擔，(T 397; 13.241.c19-24).
This dhāraṇī has great power like like a bolt of lightning; it can quickly destroy all sexual passion, it has the great benefit and advantage that it can end all coveting resulting from passion, up to... it can relieve all the burdens of suffering...

此呪利益能除一切苦惱繫縛。(T 410; 13.685.b19)

"This dhāraṇī has the benefit and advantage that it can remove all suffering, distress, and attachments."

It's not clear if the phrase was borrowed from any of these sources, but it was clearly in circulation from the early 5th Century onwards, probably a little after Kumārajīva died. And in two texts it's associated with a dhāraṇī. Although it is in Chinese, this kind of syntax where "something is able to do something", immediately brings to mind a particular Sanskrit grammatical construction: the infinitive combined with the verb śaknoti "able, capable". The actual Sanskrit translation of the Heart Sutra does not use this idiom, however, and opts for:

tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ...

Therefore (tasmāt) it should be known (jñātavya) [as] gnosis-perfected (prajñāpāramitā)... pacifying-of-all-suffering (sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ).

The word praśamaṇa is an adjective meaning "tranquillizing, pacifying, curing, healing". Adjectives take the case, number, and gender of a noun or pronoun that they describe. Here it is declined in the masculine nominative singular, but there is no nearby noun or pronoun in the masculine nominative singular.

One of the quirks of Sanskrit is that it frequently uses adjectives, especially compound adjectives, as nouns. One example is calling Śiva, and later Avalokiteśvara, nīlakaṇṭha "blue throated". More literally, "the one whose throat is blue".

So we might read this as saying prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ asti "gnosis perfected is easing all misery". But this doesn't seem satisfactory either. It looks like praśamana is the wrong derivative to use here or the grammar is wrong. But something is wrong.

Conze's (not 100% reliable) critical apparatus only lists one variant reading, i.e. sarvaduḥkha-praśamano mantraḥ; however, we know from my study of the epithets passage that this is a mistake. No prajñāpāramitā text uses sarvaduḥkha-praśamana as an epithet. Worse, no prajñāpāramitā text even uses the word praśamana.


Capability

If you don't know Sanskrit, it will be difficult to get a sense of how odd this phrase is. What I'm thinking at this point is, "how was this overlooked for decades?" Here is how I would translate the last part of the Chinese. Let me restate it for comparison and then offer a Sanskrit translation

Ch : [it] can 能 remove 除 all 一切 suffering 苦.
S : tad sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayitum śaknoti.
E : It is able to remove all suffering.

This is a common Sanskrit idiom. In Chinese "can" is a qualifier for the verb "to remove". In Sanskrit we put the main action in the infinitive (with the -tum ending) and employ the finite verb śaknoti to indicate capability, so that nāśayitum śaknoti means "is able to remove". The implication here is not hypothetical; rather, when it is put into practice prajñāpāramitā does remove all suffering, i.e. there's no doubt about the outcome.

However, when we look at the Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra this idiom seems to be used only to indicate negative capacity. Looking at Kimura's edition, we find the Buddha explaining that Māra is "not able to make an obstacle" (na śaknoty antarāyaṃ kartum PPS 4.26). Or: "Just as, Subhuti, a wingless bird is not able to move through the sky..." (tadyathā subhūte 'pakṣaḥ pakṣī na śaknoty ākāśe kramitum PPS 6-8.137). Again, note that these are not hypotheticals.

What about other possibilities? Are there other ways that Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā talks about "all suffering"? There are one or two. For example: "The burdens of all beings should be removed by me" (mayā sarvasattvānāṃ bhāra āhartavyas P 5:26). Conze translates "I, who ought to remove the suffering from all beings" confusing the issue by translating bhāra "burden, load, weight" as "suffering" the usual translation of duḥkha.

Another example: "for, having awakened to the unsurpassed perfect awakening, I should cause them to be liberated from all suffering" (tathā hi te mayānuttarāṃ samyaksaṃbodhim abhisaṃbudhya sarvaduḥkhebhyaḥ parimocayitavyāḥ. P 5:27).

In these examples āhartavyas and parimocayitavyā are future passive participles. And the FPP is more hypothetical; hence "ought to remove " and "should be liberated". This construct lacks the definite quality that I read in the Chinese.

If the infinitive + śaknoti idiom is too obscure, my next choice would be to state the outcome directly using a finite verb, i.e. tad sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayati "it removes all suffering". I don't see this in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā and this raises the question of what verbs the text does use in relation to duḥkha.


Duḥkha in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā

I did not do the kind of comprehensive survey (noting all the variants) that I'd do for a publication, but I did skim through every occurrence of sarvaduḥkha; but this turns out to be a rare word in Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā. I can find only one passage which uses the expression:

2-3:44 tathā hi kauśika prajñāpāramitā sarvadharmāṇam upaśamayitrī na vivardhikā, katameṣāṃ dharmāṇām?.. sarvaduḥkhaskandhasya... upaśamayitrī na vivardhikā.

"For here, Kauśika, gnosis-perfected is a extinguisher of all mental phenomena, not an enhancer... is an extinguisher of the whole mass of suffering, not a enhancer."

Although upaśamayitrin in a nominal form is used, the verbal root is upa√śam "to cease, become extinct". Used verbally we might expect to use the causative, i.e. prajñāpārmaitā sarvaduḥkaṃ upaśāmayati "gnosis-perfected causes all misery to cease". But the fact is that Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā doesn't use the expression sarvaduḥkha more than once and it uses the word duḥkha hundreds of times. Note that praśamana is from the same verbal root but with a different prefix, i.e. pra√śam.

So we can broaden the search out to see what verbs have duḥkha as a patient (duḥkham). This makes the number of items to check more manageable. Again, I skimmed through every occurence of the word. The vast majority of mentions of duḥkha are related to denying the applicability of the twin terms sukha and duḥkha to Absence.

As far as I can tell the single passage quoted above is the only one in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā that even comes close to suggesting that prajñāpāramitā can help get rid of suffering.

In fact, one does find the idiom with nāśayitum śaknoti here and there in Sanskrit literature, but it tends not to be Buddhist. So creating a more idiomatic translation of 能除一切苦 is quite problematic because it does not seem to be a Prajñāpāramitā idiom. And we don't have Sanskrit sources for the few texts that we do find the words in.

Dukkha in Pāli

So if we cannot find the phrase in Sanskrit, perhaps if we start from Pāḷi and then look for Chinese parallels? I found something promising in the Aṅguttara Nikāya:

‘Anattani anattāti, asubhaṃ asubhataddasuṃ;
Sammādiṭṭhisamādānā, sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ upaccagun ti (AN 4.49; II.52)

They have seen the selfless as selfless
And the ugly as ugly;
Through acquiring rightview,
They have overcome all suffering.

Now we can use the wonderful Sutta Central site to look for Chinese parallels to this text. And, after some work we strike gold, because the Ekottarikāgama (EA2 5; T150A) does not have this verse, but it does have the phrase: 便見是法除一切苦 "directly seeing this teaching eliminated all suffering". Here 除chú corresponds to upaccaguṃ which is a 3rd person plural past tense of the verb upātigacchati "to surpass, overcome"). This is helpful.

We also find in the Suttanipāta (and here I rely heavily on Roy Norman's translation and commentary):

Ye ca dukkhaṃ pajānanti, atho dukkhassa sambhavaṃ;
Yattha ca sabbaso dukkhaṃ, asesaṃ uparujjhati;
Tañca maggaṃ pajānanti, dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ. (Sn 726)
Cetovimuttisampannā, atho paññāvimuttiyā;
Bhabbā te antakiriyāya, na te jātijarūpagā’’ti. (Sn 727)

Those who know misery and the origin of misery;
And where misery is completely stopped, without omission;
And who know the path leading to the easing of misery.
Endowed with freedom of mind, i.e. release through gnosis;
They are capable of making an ene. They do experience birth and old age.

"Leading to the path of easing of misery" (dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ) leads us to an idiom that is repeated a few times in Pāli.

Yato ca ariyasaccāni, sammappaññāya passati;Dukkhaṃ dukkhasamuppādaṃ, dukkhassa ca atikkamaṃ;Ariyaṃ caṭṭhaṅgikaṃ maggaṃ, dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ. (SN 15:10; II.185)

"Yet when one sees with perfect gnosis these four truths of the nobles
Misery, the origin of misery, the transcendence of misery
The noble eightfold path leading to the easing of misery..."

And a similar phrase at SN 22.78, 56.22; AN 4.33, 4.49; Dhp 191. So it seems that in Pāli the standard phrase for "easing of suffering" dukkhūpasama. Where upasama (Skt upaśama) is an action noun. Leading to is gāmin. And we've seen that EA2 除一切苦 corresponds to sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ upaccagun (upa-atigam).

If we now plug 除 into the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, we see that it has been used for a ridiculously wide range of Indic words, but does include some target words that look good for us: upaśama, upaśānta, vyupaśama, śama, śamana, saṃśamana. Notably praśama, praśamaṇa are absent.

Conclusion

The opening proposition in this essay was that tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ... was a poor translation of the Chinese 故知般若波羅蜜多... 能除一切苦,

What we want is some way of indicating that easing suffering is an activity of prajñāpāramitā, and not simply a hypothetical activity but one with some certainty behind it. In Pāli, in relation to the four noble truths, we saw easing suffering associated with magga; we saw this expressed as maggaṃ dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ "the path that leads to the calming of misery".

It seems that the standard word was not praśamana (adjective) but upaśama (action noun). Missing this kind of detail is quite typical of the monk that translated the Heart Sutra into Sanskrit. I think we have to assume that they were not Indian. And probably did not learn Sanskrit from an Indian because they seem to make very odd choices of vocabulary and inflection.

We have one Sanskrit example in the Large Sutra: prajñāpāramitā sarvadharmāṇam upaśamayitrī where the action is expressed using an agent noun, i.e. "gnosis-perfected is an extinguisher of all dharmas". So we could adapt this to say: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkhāṇam upaśamayitrī "gnosis-perfected is an extinguisher of all miseries."

Or if we adapt the phrase related to the four noble truths: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkhopaśamana-gāminaṃ "gnosis perfected leads to the easing of all misery".

Or there is my original suggestion: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayitum śaknoti."gnosis-perfected can eliminate all misery".

Any of these would do. No doubt there are many other ways also.

My observations are nowadays framed as if the Chinese origins thesis is true. I plan to publish a long article showing the very many reasons for believing this (this essay has added a 23rd point of comparison). There is a pervasive pattern of similarities and differences that all point towards a single conclusion: the Sanskrit Heart Sutra was produced by a Chinese monk struggling with limited Sanskrit. Trying to explain the oddities that we find in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra if it was composed by an Indian monk, who probably spoke a related Middle Indic language, takes us well beyond what is credible. There are too many Chinese idioms and too many odd word choices for Indian origins to be plausible.

~~oOo~~