On Authorship of the Platform Sutra

Abstract

The Platform Sutra has long been regarded as a major canonical piece of work of Buddhism in China, and its wide circulation has testified that it is worth a pivotal piece of Buddhist work. There have long been variants on versions in circulation among Buddhist followers and the intelligentsia. In 1925, however, a Japanese scholar found a unique version of the Platform Sutra in Sir Aurel Stein's Tun-huang Discoveries. This Tun-huang version (T-version), considerably different from the popular versions in text, along with a more conventional Hui-hsin version (H-version) was incorporated into the Taisho Edition of the Buddhist Tripitaka as a standard Buddhist canon. The prominent Chinese scholar Dr. Hu Shih conducted a series of research on the issue and published three articles on it. Dr. Hu propounded the authenticity of the H-version because T-version text was less tampered and better than that of the H-version. Moreover, the H-version did not include the passages which recorded the interactions between the 6th Patriarch Hui-neng and his disciple Shen-hui. The similarity in styles and wording of the T-version of the Platform Sutra and Shen-hui-yu-lu (神會語錄Thus Spake Shen-hui) induced Dr. Hu to assume that the original author of the Sutra was none other than Shen-hui. As the authorship of the Platform Sutra undoubtedly had a significant well-established belief of the rightfulness of the patriarch lineage of the Zen school of Buddhism in China, Dr. Hu's findings caused not a small shock on the international literati. Many distinguished Japanese Buddhist scholars, such as D.T. Suzuki, Takakusu Junjiro, and Iliya Yoshitaka held sincere discussions with Dr. Hu about whether the author of the Sutra was Shen-hui. A Japanese scholar Yanagida Seizn collected all the argumentative articles of the discussions in a book entitled 胡適禪學案(Hu Shih's Thesis Papers and Letters on Zen) and published it in Taiwan and Japan, respectively. In 1969, the issues of the Platform Sutra also caused many a frenzied discussion among Taiwanese scholars. The present article is an observation of this event.