Articles by alphabetic order
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 Ā Ī Ñ Ś Ū Ö Ō
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0


Sūtra Commentaries in TibetanTranslation

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search






by Jeffrey D. Schoening


From Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, pp. 111-124.


Reproduced with permission from the author under the THL Digital Text License.


Sūtras and Buddhist Sūtras


[page 111] Tibetans translated into Tibetan more than one hundred sūtra commentaries. In this essay, we shall make observations about this genre of literature and give some indication as to its value and significance to the Buddhist tradition. For specific examples, we shall refer primarily to the three Indian commentaries to the Śālistamba Sūtra (SJD). We shall limit our observations to commentaries translated into Tibetan, largely excluding from consideration those written by Tibetans, with the exception of a few of historical importance from ancient Tibet. The sūtra genre itself will be mentioned here primarily to contrast Buddhist sūtra commentaries with ritual and grammatical sūtra commentaries in India. Information derived from this contrast will help us to appreciate the relation of sūtra commentaries to sūtras in the Buddhist tradition.

In India, Buddhist and Jain sūtras formed a distinct genre of literature. This can best be seen by contrasting them with ritual, grammatical, and philosophical sūtras. The latter types of sūtras, often called "aphorisms," are a prose literature characterized by conciseness of formulation, mnemonic arrangement, and the fact that they are descriptive in nature. They are intended to present succinctly the rules or tenets of a discipline. Because of these sūtras'[page 112] conciseness, commentaries are generally required to make sense of them. Sūtras and their commentaries probably began as part of an oral tradition of learning and were later written, though the question is undecided (Gonda: 648). Ritual and grammatical sūtras also had rules of interpretation called paribhāṣā, which, along with the careful ordering of the sūtras, contributed to their brevity. Finally, this literary genre is recognized to be unique to India.

Buddhist and Jain sūtras may be called "discourses." Leaving aside the Jain sūtras, those of the Buddhists bear little resemblance to ritual and grammatical sūtras. Although there do exist philosophical aphorisms in the Buddhist tradition, these are for the most part not known as sūtras. Instead, sūtras, or in Pāli, suttas, are considered by the Buddhist tradition to be the discourses of the Buddha, or at least inspired by the Buddha. These sūtras can and do mix verse with prose and, with the development of the Mahāyāna vaipulya sūtras, can be vast in size. Each Mahāyāna sūtra typically has four parts: a prologue (nidāna, gleng gzhi) with an opening formula that gives the time, place, and retinue of the Buddha when the discourse was spoken; an introduction of the topic of the discourse; a discourse or narration containing the bulk of the sūtra; and a formulaic conclusion. Because, unlike the ritual and grammatical sūtras, Buddhist sūtras are not exceedingly concise nor composed primarily for their mnemonic value (though they do contain features suggestive of an oral tradition—formulae and repeating structures), they do not require commentaries, but are more or less in the language of everyday discourse. They are meant as authoritative teachings of Buddhist doctrine that were spoken on a particular occasion, not as systematic summaries of a discipline. Thus, they are intended to be intelligible by themselves.

Therefore, whereas the ritual and grammatical sūtras are considered to have had commentaries from their beginning, the same cannot be said for Buddhist sūtras. Gonda observes that most ritual sūtras have commentaries and that their origin derives from "direct personal instructions of teachers who lived in close community with their pupils"(648). Compare this situation to Vasubandhu's urging anyone who wishes to comment upon a sūtra to greatly study, base oneself on study, and to accumulate learning (29a).1 Vasubandhu, who wrote in the fourth or fifth century C.E., seems to be urging the would-be commentator to become broadly knowledgeable in Buddhist doctrine before writing any[page 113] commentaries to sūtras. In that case, the sūtra commentary would not be based upon specific instructions about the sūtra passed down from teacher to student, but upon knowledge the commentator has been able to acquire through study, whether in an oral or written tradition, or some combination of both. In such a scenario, the commentary to a sūtra could be written any time after the sūtra came into existence, but would not accompany the sūtra from its origin.

Given the difference between the ritual and grammatical sūtras on the one hand and the Buddhist and Jain sūtras on the other, we well may wonder how the two literary genres could have the same name. Renou suggests the Buddhist use of the term sūtra may derive from the brief phrases that announce a dominant thesis, which is expanded upon and returned to in the large Buddhist sūtras (174). For example, the SJD begins with Śāriputra asking Maitreya the meaning of the following sūtra (and Śāriputra does indeed call the following statement a sūtra [mdo]) spoken by the Buddha: "Bhikṣus, he who sees dependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda, rten cing 'brel par 'byung ba) sees the Dharma. He who sees the Dharma sees the Buddha" (116a). The rest of the SJD is devoted to answering Śāriputra's question, with primary emphasis on describing dependent arising. In this way the SJD, when taken as a whole, can be seen to combine a sūtra, the Buddha's brief enigmatic statement, with its commentary, Maitreya's response to Śāriputra's question.


Notes

[1] The Tibetan word translated as "study" and as "learning" is thos pa, which literally means "to hear." Nowadays scholars generally translate thos pa as "to study," which suggests to the modern reader the image of reading books and not the image of an oral tradition. It is not clear to which form of communication Vasubandhu was referring.


[[1]]