A Philological Study Of The Dunhuang Manuscripts Of Daoye’s Two Commentaries On The Vimalakirti Sutra

The two commentaries on the Jingming jing(淨名經)(the Vimalakirti Sutra), namely Jingming jing jing guanzhong shu(淨名經集解關中疏) and Jingming jing guanzhong shichao(淨名经經關中釋抄), are written by Daoye (道液), a Buddhist monk of Tang Dynasty, on the basis of earlier commentaries on the Vimalakirti Sutra. Without an appearance in any edition of Chinese Tripitaka, these two works were supposed to have already been lost until they were discovered in Dunhuang manuscripts. Later, they were included in Volume85of the Taisho Revised Tripitaka basing on some Dunhuang manuscripts collected in Britain and France. Yet, the number of Dunhuang manuscripts the Taisho Revised Tripitaka referred to is only13, and numerous mistakes were generated during the emendation.The Dunhuang manuscripts of these two commentaries on the Vimalakirti Sutra were widely distributed in libraries in different countries all over the world. According to our systematic investigation on the Dunhuang manuscripts which have been published, there are119segments of Jingming jing jijie guanzhong shu(浄名經集解關中疏) and46segments of Jingming jing guanzhong shichao(淨名經關中釋抄) in total. Among them,10segments are complete visions, while the others are all damaged to different extents, especially the segments from Volumes after Volume10of Dunhuang Manuscripts Collected in the St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Russia and the segments numbered after6981from the Stein collection at the British Library. This paper names more than41unnamed segments and renames12misnamed segments, pieces together more than82fragmentary manuscripts with image processing software as well as composes a catalogue for each manuscript. From the point of Chinese Philology and textual criticism, all the manuscripts are sorted into4categories and subdivided into26recensions. Then, this paper conducts a philological and textual study on the formations and developments of15groups of discrepancies between different recensions. Eventually, a table is made to compile and arrange the popular character forms found in these manuscripts.