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Chapter Three The Dharma That Goes against the Ways of the World: The Short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra with an English Translation from Tibetan Editions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra in the Kanjur The Tibetan canonical collections of Buddhist scriptures are a colossal accumulation of nearly 4,500 texts. These works occupy a vital position in the religious literature of Tibet and Buddhist literature in Tibetan translation, and also include a small number of original works authored by Tibetans. The Tibetan Tripiṭaka is divided into the Kanjur (bKa’-’gyur; lit., “translation of the word”), which comprises teachings said to have been propagated by Buddha Śākyamuni (Skt. buddhavacana), and the Tanjur (bsTan- ’gyur; lit., “translations of commentaries”), which features commentarial literature on Buddhist sutras and tantras and scriptures on rituals, hymns, and technical compositions on grammar, poetry, logic, medicine, astrology , divination, and so forth. The most influential collection of buddhavacana in Tibetan was compiled at Narthang Monastery in the region of gTsang in the fourteenth century.1 The production of a handwritten Kanjur was an enormous enterprise, which would not have been possible without the resources and expertise of mChims ’Jam-dpal-dbyangs, who served as the chaplain to Buyantu-qan (1311–1320) and used his position at the Yuan court to solicit substantial donations . It necessitated the collection of Buddhist manuscripts from many monasteries across Tibet, and the expertise of religious specialists who had to ascertain the authenticity of the texts and supervise their distribution in the Vinaya (’Dul-ba), Sutra (mDo), and Tantra (rGyud) sections that commonly comprise the Kanjur.2 The making of the first Narthang collection was an impressive endeavor, as Eimer (1988, 66) explains: A learned monk needs about five months in order to copy one volume of the Kanjur. The task of revising the manuscript copy takes an additional month. Here one has to bear in mind the fact that full set of the early version of the 87 Kanjur consists of 111 volumes. Therefore, a great number of well-trained monks were assembled at Narthang monastery. All these scribes needed housing , food and assistance, not to mention paper and ink; and they were not only engaged in copying the Kanjur, but they were also busy preparing exemplars of the Tanjur with its more than 200 volumes. The Narthang handwritten collection is no longer available and the earliest complete and accessible version of the Tibetan Kanjur dates to the seventeenth century.3 While a prototype can be traced to the fourteenth-century Narthang compilation, there is no consensus among experts on whether this collection, which was never printed, is the sole basis for two well-established transmission lines of the Kanjur. The first transmission line is known as the Tshal-pa, named after Tshal-gung-thang Monastery in dBus, where an edition of the Kanjur that included the old tantras (rnyingrgyud ) was produced between 1347 and 1351. The second line is the Themspangs -ma, which is based on a collection compiled in 1431 in the region of rGyal-rtse at dPal-’khor-chos-sde Monastery and is in agreement with the Collected Works of Bu-ston that excludes the old tantras.4 The history of the transmission of the Buddhist Kanjurs is a very complex enterprise, given their overlapping lines of descent and the reciprocal influence they exerted on each other.5 Several Kanjurs exhibit notable contamination from both the Tshal-pa and Them-spangs-ma lines, like the collections from sDe-dge (1733) and sNar-thang (1730–1732). Moreover, a growing number of independent or local Kanjurs discovered in Tibet and its Himalayan borders do not exactly fit a twofold lineage schema, nor can they be traced to the old sNar-thang prototype.6 Local Kanjurs often contain unique recensions and translations of individual texts that may go back to lines of textual transmission that predate the mainstream canons.7 In Appendix I, a critical analysis of the Orgyan-gling gold MS of the short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (bDe-mdo) relies on eight Kanjurs, including two lessstudied regional collections, the Phug-brag and the handwritten Orgyangling . The eight Kanjurs are briefly introduced below with their sigla.8 1. The Orgyan Gold-MS Kanjur (Og) The exact date of the Orgyan gold-MS has not been established. Based on its faded physical form and ancient orthographical features—the frequent use of myi, myed, stsogs, and reverse gi-gu—it appears older than the Orgyan handwritten copy...

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