A Study On The Transcription Of The Annotations On Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra Collected By Dunhuang Academy

The transcription of the long lost The Annotations on Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra (維摩詰經注), which is in Dunhuang Academy's collections, is a hand copy done in NorthernDynasties. Nine pieces of paper of the transcription are in existence and each of them arenumbered375,066,247,248,067,249,250,251,252. For a long time the annotatoris unknown and there is no collation which has been published yet. There are texts writtenon the reverse side of this transcription and they were done by the same person who wrotethe transcription, which is on the obverse side. These texts are named as An annotation ona Sutra in Duhuang Documents collected in Gansu. The contents and the annotator ofthese texts are to be examined. So far such studies have only been done by Yuan Deling,who introduced and discussed the state of preservation of the transcription, source, naming,style of annotation, etc. Yuan's studies are meaningful but some of his viewpoints allowconsiderations though. Based on a detailed proofreading, for the first time I shall publishthe collation of both two sides of the transcription and launch a monographic study on thetranscription and variants form of Chinese characters appeared in it.I conduct a thorough discussion on the transcription including it's source, naming,style of annotation, annotator, etc. This transcription has nine pieces of paper totally someof which were found in a temple, some used to belong to some collectors, and some aredonations. Though they have different sources, they are written in same formation. Theywere written by the same person and were all hidden in the cave in Dunhuang and scatteredin various places. On the obverse side of the transcription, the key words of the sutra iswritten in bigger sized Chinese characters followed by annotation in smaller sized Chinesecharacters. The annotation style is called danzhu (single annotation), not Zimuannotation style or a variorum edition. According to things such as the time when thetranscription was unearthed at the temple, handwriting style, paper and words or phrasesavoided as taboos, I consider that this transcription was from Northern Wei Dynasty(386-534) and was quite probably written in the middle period of the fifth century.Besides, there is no prefatory note found in the transcription. In this dissertation, forthe first time I studied the annotator. The transcription does not mention Seng Zhao (僧肇)or other disciples of monk Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什). However, the word拾公(same asthe word什公, Kumārajīva) appears three times in the transcription, includingKumārajīva's one comment on sutra written in Sanskrit. The explanation of the sutra從癡有愛,則我病生appeared in the transcription is consistent with Kumārajīva's explanation emptiness (空), but different with Dao Rong (道融) and Seng Zhao's explanationkaruna (悲). There are three annotations which are questions raised and answered byKumārajīva himself in the transcription. Based on these facts, the author assumes that theannotator was closely related to the famous monk Kumārajīva and highly possible to beone of the monk's advanced students. According to Gao Seng Zhuan (高僧傳, Biographiesof Eminent Buddhist Monks) written by Hui Jiao (慧皎) in the Liang dynasty, theannotator of the transcription is likely to be Sengdao (僧導), a disciple of Kumārajīva.Also for the first time, I launched a research on the texts written on the reverse side ofthe transcription. I found that the texts on the reverse side of the transcription is acomplementary to what is on the observe side and is recommended to be named as Acomplementary annotation of Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra. I regard both sides of thetranscription of The Annotations on Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra were written by the sameperson and are complement to each other. Therefore, they can be taken as a whole. As anearly copy of the annotation of Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, it has high academic value interms of studying about the thoughts of monk Kumārajīva and his disciples.This transcription is rather well preserved. It is comparatively long and contains a lotof Chinese characters in nonstandard forms. It is a very good material for studying Chinesecharacters in nonstandard forms in the Dunhuang MSS written in early period. I did athorough monographic study on the Chinese characters in nonstandard forms. Based on thedifferent size of the written characters, I came to a conclusion that the person who did thetranscription ought to have had the intension to correct the Chinese characters innonstandard forms. In the dissertation, I have listed all the Chinese characters innonstandard forms appeared in the transcription and compared them with the characters inbooks such as Libian (a dictionary includes official scripts from inscriptions) andShuowenjiezi (a book contains seal character). Basically I have verified the source of theChinese characters in nonstandard forms and how they have changed. The fact the most ofthe Chinese characters in nonstandard forms are similar with the official scripts on theinscriptions in Han Dynasty means that these nonstandard Chinese characters evolved fromseal characters. These nonstandard Chinese characters were not created randomly. Many ofthese nonstandard Chinese characters can not be found in dictionaries or books. I compliedand made philological studies of them. By doing so, I have two purposes. One is to make iteasier for further proofreading of Dunhuang MSS and another is to provide conveniencefor compiling large-sized dictionaries.