Sanskrit Excerpts from Vasubandhu’s <i>Daśabhūmikasūtra</i> commentary

Abstract

Vasubandhu’s Daśabhūmikasūtra commentary is preserved in Chinese and Tibetan translations, but its Sanskrit original has not yet been found. The present paper provides excerpts from this work (focusing on the first bhūmi) in its original language, which were found in the Sanskrit text of Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra (12th cent.). Since Vaubandhu’s sūtra commentaries are hardly preserved in Sanskrit, these excerpts will shed a new light on his style of writing in this genre. The Munimatālaṃkāra is an encyclopedic compendium of Buddhism dealing with doctrine, soteriology, and Buddhahood, and contains a number of citations and excerpts from various scriptures. The Daśabhūmikasūtra commentary appears in this work in two forms, i.e., cited passages and reused passages. In the citations, the title of this work is mentioned as Daśabhūmivyākhyāna and Daśabhūmikavivṛti (according to the Tibetan translation, Daśabhūmikavyākhyāna). In the reused passages, the Munimatālaṃkāra fols. 145r2–150v4 utilizes passages of the Daśabhūmikasūtra commentary (Tib. Tōhoku No. 3993, fols. 112r1–143v3; Taishō vol. 26, pp. 127b–143b), where Abhayākaragupta extracts core passages of the original sentences, so that he effectively represents Vasubandhu’s explanations in a concise manner.