Acculturation of *Cintamanicakra-guhyakosa-dharani-sutra, from Chinese to Tibetan 345 views

This thesis presents a study of *Cintāmaṇicakra-guhyakośa-dhāraṇī-sūtra (hereafter CGDS) by examining how it was translated into Tibetan from Chinese during the ninth century in Dunhuang. Based on a synoptic edition as well as an annotated translation of the text based upon our current evidence, I demonstrate, among all available versions, that Shicha’nantuo’s, which is the earliest Chinese version named The Divine-spell Scripture of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s Wish-fulling Wheel in Secret Storehouse in the Taishō Tripiṭaka (觀世音菩薩祕密藏如意輪陀羅尼神呪經; T1082), was mainly utilized as the core text in the first known Tibetan translation of the CGDS made by 'Gos chos grub during the ninth century. An intermediate form of the Sino-Tibetan transmission of the CGDS is seen in its Dunhuang manuscripts, which offer some curious non-Indian interpretations of the common Buddhist terminology. Although these Tibetan interpretations should have been justified by Indian knowledge, these pioneering Tibetan translators prioritized or even fully relied on Chinese materials of the Tang Canon in their projects. As I exemplify in ten cases, the primitive understanding and relevant reconstructions of Buddhist lexicons found on the Tibetan side (e.g., J816) are largely Sinicized, and correspondingly, they thus largely originated in relation to surviving the Chinese CGDSs. I concluded by suggesting that the Chinese translation of *Cintāmaṇicakra-guhyakośa-dhāraṇī-sūtra and its Tibetan parallel offer valuable insights into understanding how Tibetan Buddhists in nine-century Dunhuang received the Buddhist texts imported from China.

MA (Master of Arts)

Sino-Tibetan Buddhism; Textual Studies; Translation

English

2024-04-30