[Buddha-l] a question to diamond sutra

[Dan Lusthaus]

Dear Berhard,

Not sure what the question is (different Skt versions? Of course), but as 
to:

> Na sa Subhute bodhisattvo vaktavyo yasya-atma-samjna
> pravarteta, sattva-samjna va jiva-samjna va pudgala-samjna va pravarteta.
>
> And Kumarajiva translates
> 我相 for atman-samjna, 人相 for pudgala-samjna, 眾生相 for sattva-samjna
> and 壽者相 for jiva-samjna.

This may have been obvious to you already, but in case not, the 相 is 
actually and entrenched typo, in a sense. The more standard equivalent for 
saṃjñā is 想, the same character as 相 but with the heart radical 心 below. 
想 and 相 are nearly homophonic (different tones in mandarin). Once the 
substitution has taken place in an authoritative text, like Kumarajiva's 
Diamond Sutra translation, it becomes embedded in the culture -- hence 
reiterated in apocryphal texts like the Perfect Enlightenment Sutra as if 
the 相 were the correct character after all. Just to be clear, the 
substitution of 相 for 想 when the underlying Skt term is saṃjñā is not that 
uncommon, and certainly not unique to this text.

East Asian Buddhism has many examples of entrenched substitutions (for lack 
of a better label), some becoming very significant conceptual foundations 
for East Asian thought -- perhaps the most famous (if unrecognized) example 
being the concept of Buddha-nature, based on substituting 性 (nature) for 姓 
(gotra; clan, family), i.e., buddha-gotra becomes buddha-nature. What would 
East Asian (and a good chunk of Tibetan) Buddhism be without the concept of 
buddha-nature? All based on a misleading substitution. (And there is 
evidence that redactors went through many texts deliberately "updating" 姓 
to 性, very clearly in Dunhuang texts, but also in different recensions of 
Chinese texts where the context demands gotra and not nature is the idea at 
play, and some mss. have 姓 while what became the standardized versions all 
have the incongruous 性.

Whether the Diamond Sutra translation had 相 instead of 想 when freshly done 
by Kumarajiva, rather than having the substitution occur sometime later by a 
"helpful" redactor or sloppy copyist (two of the ways such substitutions 
occur) would be an interesting question. The solution to the discrepancy 
between saṃjñā and 相 is not to be sought in alternate Skt versions, 
however, but by checking various Chinese editions and commentaries to see 
whether any of them use the correct 想 (in which case one may assume the 
substitution is likely post-Kumarajiva). Have you checked the corresponding 
passage in Xuanzang's Diamond Sutra translation (and the other Chinese 
versions)?

Dan