Buddhist Stone Sutras in China: Sichuan Province ed. by Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (review)

Where the first volume of this series on the stone sutras in Sichuan dealt with the Lotus Sutra on the northern edge of Wofoyuan, Ziyang City Anyue County this volume deals with the caves that are situated in the southwestern part of the valley. In my discussion of the first volume on Sichuan (see Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua, eds., Buddhist Stone Sutras in China: Sichuan Province, volume 1 [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; 2014]), I suggested that a full appreciation of the significance of Wofoyuan would require consultation of the other volumes on Sichuan.

Indeed, the present volume completes our understanding significantly. Through the descriptions and discussions of the different texts in this part of the valley—with the Great Parinirvāṇa Sūtra, a textual homologue of the sculpture of the reclining Buddha at the northern edge of the valley, as the text to which the greatest effort was expended—it becomes clear that these caves were outlined according to a concept of gradual renunciation. The “Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Names of the Buddhas” (Fo shuo foming jing) (discussed by Chen Frederick Shih-Chung; pp. 16-23) was, probably starting in the fourth to fifth centuries, used in chanting services and has come to be a repentance sutra used exclusively for ritual. The “Consecration Sutra” of which scrolls 12 and 11 have been inscribed (discussed by Ryan Richard Overbey; pp. 24–34), is a compilation work of the fifth century, and focuses on rituals for protection, healing, and the production of merit for the living and the dead. The “Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Six Gates Spoken by the Buddha” (discussed by Manuel Sassmann and Claudia Wenzel; pp. 35–41) deals with the attainment of bodhisattvahood through six vows (gates) and as such addresses in particular lay followers of the bodhisattva path. In the “Deathbed Injunction Sutra” (discussed by Chen Frederick Shih-Chung; pp. 45-52), the Buddha gives a concise instruction to the monastic community on the rules of discipline for mendicant monks, the Buddhist moral restraints, and the core of his teaching. This text became important in the Chan school, and is also one of several Mahayana sutras that claim to be the last sermon delivered by the Buddha as he approached his parinirvāṇa. In the “Sutra on Renouncing the Householder’s Life” (discussed by Tsai Suey-Ling and Claudia Wenzel; pp. 53-62), the Buddha preaches a sermon on the boundless merit and virtue that are obtained by ordination. And finally the “Diamond Sutra” (discussed by Alexander L. Mayer; pp. 68-78), is one of the most important texts of Chinese Buddhism. All these texts, as noted by Lothar Ledderose, have a “performative character and liturgical use,” whereby “repentance passages were invoked in rituals of confession, and some texts explain how these rituals were to be performed” (p. 10). Taken together with the figure of the reclining Buddha and the Lotus Sutra on the northern edge of the valley, one can “thus recognize a progression in these six texts” (p. 11). This progression also reveals the development from the Lesser to the Greater Vehicle.

Depending on the peculiarities of these sutras, each of them is discussed with respect to their different editions and their appearance in Chinese catalogues; a comparison is made between the text as it is engraved on the walls of the caves and the existing woodblock edition of the Second Goryea Canon (on which the Taishō edition is based), Dunhuang manuscripts, and versions of the texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, or Central Asian languages; and commentaries and interpretations are addressed. This makes this volume also an interesting philological and text historical study. Moreover, the volume contains the first English translation ever of the “Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Six Gates Spoken by the Buddha” (pp. 42–44) and of the “Sutra on Renouncing the Householder...