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A Record of the Buddhist Religion, As Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (a.d. 671–695) - Max Muller, 1896 - Complete Book

English

Patafgalitis actually called Kdrvikara by Bhartréhari, who himself commented on Patazigali’s Mahabhashya. This Bhartrzhari also, a Buddhist of the Vidyamatra sect, died, as I-tsing tells us, in about 651-652 A.D. Among his contemporaries is mentioned Dharmapala, and this Dharmapala would seem to have been the teacher of Silabhadra, the same who received Hiuen Thsang at Nalanda in 635 A.D... Other works of Bhartréhari mentioned by I-tsing are the Vakya-discourse and Pei-na. The former contains 700 slokas, and its commentary 7,000 slokas. As it is a grammatical work, we can hardly be wrong in taking it to be Bhartvzhari’s VAkyapadiya*. As to the Pei-na, Professor Bihler has proposed a very ingenious conjecture that it may stand for Beda, a boat, i.e. a commentary ®, Such a name, however, never occurs with reference to any work of Bhartrzhari. 1 Below, p. 176, note 3. : 2 Mahabhashya, ed. Kielhorn, vol. ii, p. iii, p. 21. > Below, p. 178, note 2. 4 Cp. Kielhorn, Indian Antiquary, xii, p. 226. TO MR. J. TAKAKUSU. xv I need not repeat what I have written in my ‘India, what can it teach us +?’ about the remaining grammatical works, the book on the so-called Three Khilas, the Dhatup&¢a, and the Si-t'an-chang, mentioned by I-tsing. Some difficulty still remains as to the nature of some of these works, but this, I hope, will be cleared up in time. All those who know how few certain dates there are in the history of Indian literature will welcome a text, such as I-tsing’s, as a new sheet- anchor in the chronology of Sanskrit literature. We have as yet only three such anchors, as I have pointed out in my Introduction to the Amitayur-dhydna-stitra ? :— 1. The date of Kandragupta (Sandrokyptos) as fixed by Greek historians, and serving to determine the dates of Asoka and his inscriptions in the third, and indirectly of the Buddha in the fifth century, before our era. 2. The dates of several literary men as supplied by Hiuen Thsang’s travels in India (A.D. 629-645). 3. The dates supplied by I-tsing in the latter half of the seventh century (A.D. 671-695). The most important of all the dates given by I-tsing are those of Bhartrihari, Gayaditya, and their contemporaries. They serve as a rallying-point for a number of literary men belonging to what I called the ‘ Renaissance period of Sanskrit literature.’ Let me now congratulate you on the completion of your translation, which realises a wish long entertained by me. Your work will be a lasting memorial of my dear departed pupil Kasawara, who began it, though he was not allowed to finish it. It will show what excellent and useful work may be expected from Japanese scholars. If I have gladly * The rst edition, 1883, pp. 343-345- 2S, B. E., vol. xlix, translated by Takakusu. See my Introduction, p. xxi. xvi LETTER FROM PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER. given my time and help to you as formerly to Kasawara and Bunyiu Nanjio, it was not only for the sake of our University, to which you had come to study Sanskrit and Pali, but in the hope that a truly scholarlike study of Buddhism may be revived in Japan, and that your countrymen may in time be enabled to form a more intelligent and historical conception of the great reformer of the ancient religion of India. Religions, like everything clse, require reform from time to time; and if Buddha were alive in our days he would probably be the first to reform the abuses that have crept into the Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan, as well as of Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. <A reformed Buddhism, such as I look forward to, would very considerably reduce the interval which now separates you from other religions, and would help in the distant future to bring about a mutual understanding and kindly feeling between those great religions of the world in place of the antagonism and the fiendish hatred that have hitherto prevailed among the believers in Christ, in Buddha, and Mohammed—a disgrace to humanity, an insult to religion, and a lasting affront to those who came to preach peace on earth, and good will toward men. Your sincere Friend, F., MAX MULLER. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. Arrer the introduction of Buddhism into China, a.p. 67 ', Fa-hien was the first to make a pilgrimage in India, the holy land of the Buddhists. His journey, which lasted about sixteen years (a.p. 399-414), was detailed in his Fé-kue-ki®, Next followed the travels of Sun-yun and Hwui-seng, a.p. 518; unfortunately, however, their narrative® is very short, and not to be compared with that of the other travellers. Much later, in the T’ang dynasty, the Augustan age of Chinese Buddhist literature, we have first the famous Hiuen Thsang, of whom we know so much through his work, Si-yu-ki, the Record of the Western Kingdom‘. His travels in India covered some seventeen years (a.p. 629-645), and anything that came under his notice was fully recorded in the said work, which is an indispensable text-book for Indian history and geography. : Soon after Hiuen Thsang’s death, another, by no means less famous, Buddhist, I-tsing by name, started for India, a.p. 671, and arrived in Tamralipti, at the mouth of the Hooghly, a.p.673. He studied in Nalanda, the centre of Buddhist learning, at the east end of the Ragagrzha valley, for a considerable time, and collected some 400 Sanskrit texts, amounting to 500,000 slokas. On his way home he stayed * This is the date of the arrival of the first Indian Sramamas, K4syapa MAtahga and Bharana (or Dharmaraksha), who were invited by the Chinese Emperor Ming-ti (a. D. 58-75), and it is the historical beginning of Buddhism in China, though there are some traces of it in the earlier literature. . ? Fa-hien’s Fé-kue-ki, by Rémusat, 1836; by Beal, 1869 and 1884; by H. A. Giles, 1877 5 a notice by T. Watters in the China Review, 1879 and 1880; lastly by Professor Legge, 1886 (Clarendon Press). * A translation in Beal’s Fa-hien, pp. 174-208. * Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, by Stan. Julien, 1858; the Records of the Western Kingdoms, by Beal, 1884; Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen Thsang, by Julien, 1853; the Life of Hiuen Thsang, by Beal, 1888. . c xviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION. in Sribhoga (Palembang, ’ in Sumatra), where he further studied and anes Buddhist books, either Sanskrit or Pali. From Sribhoga, I-tsing sent home his work, which is here translated, a.p. ‘ba: through another Chinese priest, T'a-ts'in, who was then returning to China. The book is therefore called ‘ Nan-hai-chi-kuei-nai-fa-ch'uan,’ a ‘Record of the Inner Law sent home from the Southern Sea‘,’ the islands which lie off the Malay peninsula being then known as the islands of the Southern Sea. Our author returned home a.p. 695, and was well received by the ruling empress, Wu-hou of Chou (as the period of her reign was called). Thus his stay abroad covers, roughly speaking, a period of twenty-five years (a.p. 671-695), though we must allow a few months’ stay at home after his chance return to China, about which we shall have to speak presently. After 695 he was at home engaged in interpreting Buddhist texts with some nine Indian priests, Siksh4nanda, fsvara, and others, He completed fifty-six translations in 230 volumes, a.p. 700-712; besides, there exist five works of his compilation 2, among which the chief is our Record here given. , Now as to our knowledge of this book. 1. Mons, Stanislas Julien made use of our Record in collecting the specimens of the Chinese transcriptions of Sanskrit terms, as may be seen in his Méthode pour déchiffrer etttranscrire les Noms Sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les Livres Chinois (Paris, 1861). 2. Prof. Max’Miiller first recognised the importance of the contents of this work. His earliest notice about the grammatical works mentioned by I-tsing appeared in the Academy for September 25 and October 2, 1880; the next in the Indian Antiquary for December, 1880 (p. 305). A portion of the translation prepared by the late Kenjiu Kasawara, a Japanese Buddhist and pupil of the Professor, was published in ‘India, what can it teach us?’ 1883, pp. 210-213 and 343-349°. 3. Mr. Samuel Beal’s notice of I-tsing’s work appeared in the Indian Antiquary, 1881, p. 197. Some matters contained in it were discussed by him in the Academy for September 9, 1883. He gave also a short abstract of the Record as well as the Memoirs in his Life of Hiuen Thsang, 1888, pp. xxxii-xxxvi. . 4 Prof. W. Wassilief published a Russian translation of chapter ix of our Record in the Memoirs of the Historico-Philological Branch of the Academy, 1 Nanjio’s Catalogue of the Chinese Buddhist Books, No, 1492. 2 Loc. cit., Nos. 1491, 1506, 1507, 1508. 2 See pp. 183, 296 ff., in Prof. Cappeller’s German translation, Indien in seiner weltgeschicht- lichen Bedeutung, Leipzig, 1884. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. xix St. Petersburg, for October 24, 1888. I have carefully compared his translation with mine, with the help of Dr. Grusdef of Moscow. Both agree on the whole, while there are many insignificant points in which we differ from each other; but Iam glad to say that there was nothing to necessitate an alteration of my trans- lation, which was already printed, when I received a copy of the Russian translation through the kindness of Prof. Serge d’Oldenbourg. 5. Mr. R. Fujishima, a Japanese priest, translated into French two chapters of the forty in the Journal Asiatique for November—December, 1888, entitled ‘Deux Chapitres des Mémoires d’I-tsing,’ pp. 411-439. The points of difference between his renderings and mine have been carefully noted in the present work, for these chapters (xxxii and xxxiv) are of special importance, inasmuch as they contain the names and dates of several literary men of India, the account of an eye-witness, which cannot be obtained from any other source. Mr.