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Tanaka, ‘Nāgabodhi’s *Samājasādhanavyavasthālī II’ (2011)

田中 公明 「『秘密集会』の身体曼荼羅論 : Nāgabodhiの安立次第論』第2章サンスクリット写本ローマ字化テキスト」 『東洋文化研究所紀要』 第160冊 2011.12

Tanaka, Kimiaki. ‘Nāgabodhi’s *Samājasādhanavyavasthālī: The Tibetan Translation and Sanskrit Text of Chapter II’ [in Japanese]. Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo kiyō 160, 2011, pp. 324(313)–338(299). [URI / PDF]

From the Abstract

“In this article I have transcribed the Sanskrit text of Chapter II of the Vyavasthālī. This chapter mainly explains the body-maṇḍala theory of the Guhyasamāja-tantra. For further details, reference should be made to pp. 333-324.”

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Nepalese Script in Unicode, 1: JTC1/WG2 N4184 Open Thread

Your comments are invited on a proposal to encode the script ‘prevalent’/’in vogue’ (pracalita) in Nepal since the late fourteenth century, and which since the Shah period has continued in use in the scribal and print culture of the Newars. The proposal under discussion was submitted a month ago by Anshuman Pandey to the international standards body for character sets, WG2 under JTC1 of the ISO. Download it here:

Anshuman Pandey. ‘Proposal to Encode the Newar Script in ISO/IEC 10646’. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 proposal N4184 [PDF]. January 5, 2012. [Supersedes N4038, ‘Preliminary Proposal to Encode the Prachalit Nepal Script’]

Anyone can submit a proposal for consideration by WG2. However, this is not a trivial process; documents need to comply with the group’s requirements, and if I observe correctly, there are very few competing complete proposals for historic scripts. No proposal has come from the Nepalese government, Newar culture having little, if any, official status in the Shah and post-Shah nation-state. The proposal under discussion (hereafter “N4184”) is that of a private individual, in collaboration with the Script Encoding Initiative at Berkeley. Mr. Pandey has graciously agreed to consider informed feedback on his proposal, which I hope will be incorporated into future documents submitted to WG2. It is in this constructive spirit that your feedback is requested; anyone may add comments via the form the end of this post.

1. Intended scope of these comments: focus on repertoire

The present discussion should focus on the completeness and accuracy of the glyph repertoire represented in the present proposal. Matters such as the proposed name and classification of the script, the description of interaction between glyphs (e.g. conjunct formation, §4.8.1), issues related to other Nepalese or Indic scripts (except where strictly relevant) and so on should notbe discussed here. If there is sufficient interest, these matters can be addressed in separate posting(s). Here I will offer some of my own preliminary, informal feedback on the proposal, on which comments are also welcome.

N4184 aims to “encode a core set of Newar characters” (p.17). This invites the question of how “core” should be defined. I will not discuss this in depth, other to say that the standard should include those characters which are most common and most useful in this form of writing. Specifically, I propose that the characters depicted in Figs.6 and 7 below should be part of the standard. This is the repertoire proposed in N4184:

Pandey 2012:24, Fig.1

Continue reading “Nepalese Script in Unicode, 1: JTC1/WG2 N4184 Open Thread”

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Fan, ‘Advayasamatāvijaya: the Sanskrit MS in Tibet’ (2011)


范慕尤 (作者) 《梵文写本《无二平等经》的对勘与研究》
梵文贝叶经与佛教文献系列丛书②  中西书局 2011.12

Fan, Muyou. Advayasamatāvijaya: A Study Based upon the Sanskrit Manuscript Found in Tibet. Series of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature 2. Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company. 10+356+13 pp. 2011. ISBN 978-7-5475-0303-4. [English introduction]
(Via RISM)


Nice to see this new publication. Pardon me, though, if part of it seems just a little too familiar. Compare page 4ff of the front matter, on the parallels between the opening of the Advayasamatāvijaya (missing in Fan’s Sanskrit MS) and the STTS, presented as the author’s own work:

with the beginning of a document prepared for Dr. Fan in 2008:

Sincerely flattered, I am.

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Steinkellner, ‘News from the Manuscript Department’ (2011)

Old news for most:

Steinkellner, Ernst. ‘Opening speech: News from the manuscript department.’ In Krasser, Lasic, Franco & Kellner (eds)., Religion and Logic in Buddhist Philosophical Analysis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Dharmakīrti Conference, Vienna, August 23–27, 2005. Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens Nr. 69. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011, pp.xvii–xxi. [PDF]

Briefly: the author of the Hetubinduṭīkātātparyavyākhyā (2d, p.xx), “a certain Jayabhadra (?)” is quite unlikely to have been “a scholar belonging to Nepalese royalty”; this would be unprecedented. At least one tantric commentary by an ācārya called Jayabhadra was preserved in Nepal, and I suppose it is not out of the question that this person had access to Bhaṭṭa Arcaṭa’s commentary, but I am unaware of any reference to him holding the post of rājaguru (a title which was not unknown in India).

Locating the original material doesn’t seem to be high on the agenda: “as of September 2007 the result has been: Nothing. (By the end of 2010: still no changes)” (p.xxi n.9). This is a surprising statement. On the one hand, the collaborators are accused, implicitly, of ineptitude; on the other, it is an admission that ‘our side’ cannot improve anything. Time to end the monopoly and hand the baton to someone who can get the job done.

Then there is the mention of several (Sanskrit?) pramāṇa texts on “Bhutanese paper”, p.xx, which also sounds weird.

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Wakahara, ‘Buddhist Sanskrit MSS in Bangladesh’ (2011)

若原雄昭 「バングラデシュ国内に保存されるサンスクリット仏教写本 , 他」 龍谷大学アジア仏教文化研究センター

Wakahara, Yusho. ‘Sanskrit Buddhist Manuscripts Preserved in Bangla Desh’. Ryukoku University Research Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia, Working Paper 1, 2011. [PDF]

Kudos to Prof. Wakahara for getting some good photographs of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts out of Bangladesh. So in future reports on these manuscripts there should be no problem with providing full transcriptions of the colophons, including all the information about their Nepalese (and Tibetan, in one case) transmitters and users.

Karunapundarika and Karandavyuha
Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka and Kāraṇḍavyūha.
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‘Cambridge to study ancient Sanskrit texts’ (2011/11/08)

Someone in England is studying the sources of the South Asian Buddhist mainstream?

“The project, which is led by Sanskrit-specialists Dr Vincenzo Vergiani and Dr Eivind Kahrs, will study and catalogue each of the manuscripts, placing them in their broader historical context, a university release said.

So far, so good.

“In the 1870s, Dr Daniel Wright, surgeon of the British Residency in Kathmandu, rescued the now-priceless cultural and historical artefacts from a disused temple, where they had survived largely by chance.”

Oh dear. Still, this sounds better:

“Most of the holdings will also be digitised by the library and made available through the library’s new online digital library (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/).”

Let’s hope the cameras get to those masterpieces of Nepal and the Pāla Dynasty before the local twits [see final sentence], eh?

(‘Cambridge to study ancient Sanskrit texts.’ Deccan Herald, Nov 8, 2011.)

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Liland, ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra’ (2009)

Fredrik Liland. ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra: The history, diffusion, and influence of a Mahāyāna Buddhist text’. M.A. thesis, Universitetet i Oslo, 2009. [official site/PDF] Supervised by Jens E. Braarvig.

From the Abstract

The thesis is concerned with the 7th Century Mahāyāna Buddhist text Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA) and its significance as a vehicle for cultural exchange. We trace its history in India and beyond, from its proposed author Śāntideva’s hand, its contemporary influence in India, and its impact in the lands—Nepal, Tibet, China, Mongolia, and beyond—and languages—Sanskrit, Newari, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, and others—where it travelled. The nature of its influence has varied with the times and places where it has found itself, but in all instances it received a prominent place of canonical status, and was mostly revered.
[…]
The BCA has received quite a lot of attention in modern scholarship since the first publication of a critical Sanskrit edition by Minayev in 1889. A large number of new manuscripts of the text have surfaced since then, and a separate chapter is dedicated to philological concerns and the dire need for a new and updated version that will take into account also the new knowledge we now have of the text[‘]s history. A mostly unnoticed commentary, the Bodhicaryāvatāra-ṭippaṇi, also receives i[t]s long overdue attention in this chapter.

Liland’s thesis presents a long over due bibliographically-oriented update to scholarship on the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Two other scholars are said to have been recently working on a critical edition of the text: Daniel Stender and Richard Mahoney. I do not know whether either are proceeding.

One stand-out feature of Liland’s thesis is the attention it pays to Nepalese sources and translations in the Newar (“Newari”) language, which, as regular readers know, are routinely neglected in Buddhist studies, notwithstanding the fact that they originate in direct contact with the Sanskrit original in a South Asian Buddhist setting. Despite this unusual but welcome development, I can point to at least three areas of further improvement:

  1. “Ratna Bahādur Vajrācārya (1893-1955), of whom not much is known” (p.92): in fact, at least four (mostly short) biographies of this outstanding figure are in print, including a dedicated and independently published treatment by Manish Shakya.
  2. No mention of (the many) translations into South Asian vernaculars; here’s one in Nepali. Not all such translations were done from Sanskrit, but some have been.
  3. No reference to manuscripts in private or recently documented collections.

Continue reading “Liland, ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra’ (2009)”

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Liu, ‘dhyānāni tapaś ca’ [Kāyabhāvanāsūtra] (2010)

Liu, Zhen. *Meditations and Asceticisms: On the discovery and study of Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts. Shanghai Guji Publishing House, 2010. 299 pp., 58 yuan. ISBN 9787532556670. [WorldCat]

刘震（著）《禅定与苦修—关于佛传原初梵本的发现和研究》上海古籍出版社

This book, as far as I am able to tell from internet gleanings (I’ve not seen it at the time of writing), is a revised and expanded (修订、增补) version of Zhen Liu’s PhD dissertation on a unique Sanskrit manuscript of the Kāyabhāvanāsūtra 《修身经》 of the Dīrghāgama submitted to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Further information can be found in this startlingly rich Chinese writeup by an editor at a Chinese publishing house:

Xu, Wenkan（徐文堪）. ‘The Inspiring Results of Research on the Gilgit Manuscripts’（吉尔吉特写本研究的可喜成果）, Dongfang Zaobao 《东方早报》, March 20, 2011.