English
^ i, 4) says distinctly that God docs not come under the category of things {ovSev yap Tuv uvTWV i(Tr[u) ; and again. He is ^""ep yvwcTiv irdvTus kuI vir^p oufflav; and it is only l)y way of negation, Si' a.<patp€(Tfooi, that we can acquire any knowledge of His attributes. Scotus Erigena declares ' Deus itaque nescit se quid est quia non est quid' (De Div. Wat., ii, 28). Anselm confines himself to the statement 'si quid de summa natura dicitur relative, non est ejus siguificativum substantia).' Aquinas proved that there can be no ' cognitio quidditativa' of God. [For further re- marks on this subject, vide Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, passim.] SCRIPTURES FROM THE CHINESE. 277 viz., that the coudition of Being which admits of verbal definition is not a real condition, it is but an empty ex- pression. From this it follows that there is an ineffable condition, which, although not to be described, neverthe- less exists. Again, in the twenty-sixth cap. of the Vajra chhedika Sutra, entitled " The mystical body of Tathagata, without any distinct characteristic," there is this statement : — " He who looks for me, i. e., for the true Tathagata, through any material form, or seeks me through any audible sound, that man has entered on an erroneous course, and shall never behold Tathagata.^' Again, in the twenty-ninth chapter of the same work, it is said, " if there be a man who speaks of Tathagata as coming or going, sitting or sleeping, that man is ignorant of the secret of the system which I declare. And why ? Because Tathagata has nowhere whence to come, and no- where whither to goj and thei-efore he is named Tathagata.^' The concluding words of the same work are to like pur- port: ^^ Wherefore the conclusion is this — that all things having any personal or individual characteristics (yih tsai yeou wei fah) are as a dream, a phantom, a bubble, as the dew or lightning flash — and they should be regarded as such.'^ Which seems to imply that the aim of all the dis- course had been to direct the mind to the existence of that which is not characterised by any such limitations. The word paramita, however, has been differently defined. Mr. vSpence Hardy speaks of the paramitas as "virtues.'^ Wassilief translates the word by "perfection." Burnouf understands it as a feminine participle in agreement with some such word as " Buddhi" (intelligence) understood, and so translates the phrase, "Prajila paramita", by the words, " intellisrence arrived at the other shore of wisdom." The Chinese explanation of the phrase is simply " wisdom gone across;" and (although Chinese criticisms on such questions are not always to be trusted) this exposition favours the idea that the intention of this and all phrases 278 A CATENA OF BUDDHIST of a similar connection, relating to charity, patience, etc., was simply to denote the character of that wisdom, charity, patience, etc., which comports with the perfection of these several conditions, as existing in the Supreme condition of Being "on the other shore"; in other words, that the attempt is to describe " Absolute wisdom," etc. There are two versions of the Pradjna Paramita works commonly met with in China. The first, by Kumarajiva, a native of Takshasila (Taxila), who laboured in China as a most active and judicious translator (a.d. 397-415) [Eitel]. This translation is an abbreviated one. It consists of thirty kiouen and ninety sections, comprising 1468 pages of ten columns each, each column of twenty words, so that the whole work consists of 293,600 words. It is calculated that there are 181,253 words in the New Testament. The trans- lation, therefore, of Kumarajiva is about half as long again as the latter, and about one-fourth the size of the whole Bible. But this represents only a very small portion of the original. The Buddhists say that "the copy of the Prajna paramita Sutra, consisting of 100,000 slokas, is the shortest of the three." A sloka is a couplet of two lines, of sixteen syllables each. These lines are commonly converted into Chinese pentameters, and sometimes hep- tameters. Taking the pentameter, however, as the pre- vailing model, the translation of the copy of 100,000 slokas would represent about 1,000,000 words, or a volume about six times the size of the New Testament. But Hiouen Thsang included in his translation of the Prajna Paramita works, not only the copy of 100,000 slokas, but those of 25,000 slokas, 18,000 slokas, 10,000 slokas, 8,000 slokas, and other paramitas, so that we are prepared for the statement,^ that the whole of Hiouen Thsang's translations of the Prajna Paramita works consists of 120 volumes (Wassilief says 600 kiouen), being about eighty times the size of the New Testament, that is, about twenty-five times ^ Edkins, Sbangliae Almanac, 1857. SCRIPTURES PROM THE CHINESE. 279 the size of the whole Bible.^ The translation of this im- mense literature occupied Hiouen Thsang four entire years, and was the crowning labour of his life. It would be clearly impossible to give even a summary of this literature in a work like the present_, and, in fact, to attempt to do so would be labour lost; the entire trans- lation is a succession of repetitions so frequent, 'Hhat it would be easy for any one acquainted with Buddhist termi- nology to repeat a whole volume of the Prajna paramita, without having even read it."" There is, however, a con- venient abstract of this laborious compilation, used by Hiouen Thsang as an Introduction to his work. It is found immediately following the Imperial Preface by T'ae Tsung. The common name for it in China is the ''Sin King," or the '' Heart Sutra." It is found in every temple, and very fre- quently in the interior of the small ''idols" (Josses) that garnish the domestic altars. The full title of the work is Maha-prajna-paramita hridaya-Sutra.^ Whether this brief summary was the germ from which the later tedious Sutras were expanded, or whether it is merely a sort of tabular statement of the contents of the larger works, I am unable to determine, but I incline to the former opinion, for it is improbable that Hiouen Thsang would commence his great undertaking by any unauthentic production ; and the sum- mary, as it stands at the beginning of his translation, is not arranged in any way corresponding to an index or " table of contents ;" for this reason, therefore, it would seem to be an original though hrief precis on the whole pro- duction. There are numerous editions of this little tract in China. The one most frequently met with (in the south at least) is that written by Wu-tsing-tsze, being a republication of Tai- Theen's edition of the same work, written about 820 a.d. Tai- theen selects every phrase or word of the original, and 1 The Buddhist Cauon, in China, is seven hundred times larger than the Bible. [Edkins.] 2 Wassilief, p. 146, § 146. ' Wassilief, p. 145, § 145. 280 A CATENA OF BUDDHIST writes a couplet of verses upon it by way of comment. These verses are sometimes entirely in defiance of tlie sense of the original. For instance^ the final syllables of the word *' paramitUj^' i.e., "mi" and "ta," are expressed by two Chinese words of the same phonetic value, "mih" and "to." Now in Chinese " mih" is the equivalent for " honey/' and *Ho" for "many/' or"a number." Tai-theen, therefore, takes occasion to illustrate the sense of the final portion of the word "paramita" by several verses on the subject of "many bees gathering honey from various flowers — the flowers indeed are difi'erent, but the honey is the same.'^ This mode of illustration is evidently the result of an entire ignorance of the original, and is therefore worthless for any critical pur- poses. "Wu-tsing-tsze, in the preface to his work, calls attention to the opinions of various writers on the subject of the com- mon asrreement of the three relio^ious sects in China.^ o o ^^Liu-tseu-hau," he says, "long ago remarked that the words of Buddha (Feou-tho) are in strict agreement with the Tih-King, and the Lun-yu.'''' Again he remarks, ^'^Lu-shun- yang declares that the teaching of the three sects is not difier- ent ; the catholic-minded" man regards them as embodying the same truths. The narrow-minded man observes onij their difierences." So, again, he remarks, Lu-shuh-kien said, "The common stand-point of the three sects is simply this: that they all insist upon the banishment of selfish-desire, and that is all.