Schwanfrau und Prinz. Die chinesische Frühform einer Divyāvadāna-Legende by Li Wei 李煒 (review)

Abstract

LI WEI 李煒. Schwanfrau und Prinz. Die chinesische Frühform einer Divy avad anaLegende . East Asia Intercultural Studies/Interkulturelle Ostasienstudien, vol. 7. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. xvii, 257 pp. J54.00 (pbk). ISBN 978-3-44706637 -2 The book, written in German, is the seventh volume published in the series East Asia Intercultural Studies edited by Konrad Meisig, professor of Indology at the JohannesGutenberg -Universität Mainz, Germany. It continues a series of studies in Chinese translations of Buddhist texts originating from a research and study group at Mainz University. The title of the book may be translated as ‘‘Swan Woman and Prince: The Early Chinese Version of a Legend from the Divy avad ana.’’ The Chinese names of the female and the male heroes of the story discussed, Yueyi 悅意 (Skt. Manohar a) and Shancai 善財 (Skt. Sudhana), are added on the cover. The book consists of a short introduction (‘‘Textkritische Einleitung,’’ pp. ix– xiii); a comparative edition and translation of the text with some commentarial notes (‘‘Synopse mit fortlaufendem Kommentar,’’ pp. 1–160); a glossary of Chinese words, terms, and names and their German translation and Sanskrit equivalents (‘‘Glossar Chinesisch-Deutsch-Sanskrit,’’ pp. 161–249), including a brief list of character variants in the Taish o edition of the Chinese canon and the Korean Tripit ˙ aka (pp. 250–251); and a bibliography (pp. 253–257). Throughout the book all Chinese words are given in modern Pinyin transliteration (with the four tones indicated), which potentially makes the Chinese text quite useful for teaching or reading with students. The introduction contains a short discussion of the different versions of the narrative of Sudhana, mainly focusing on the relation between the Divy avad ana, the extant Sanskrit version of the Vinaya of the M ulasarv astiv adin (MSV) from the Gilgit manuscript finds, and Yijing’s 義淨 translation of the same Vinaya. Li assumes that the Chinese version goes back to a version (‘‘Divy[ avad ana]Fru ̈hform’’) earlier than 300, which is different from all the other versions and would have been the source for them. This can, however, hardly be more than a working hypothesis since it still has to be proven by a detailed analysis of the whole textual corpora that the Vinaya of the MSV has indeed taken its material from a Divy avad ana-like collection of legends. It does not become entirely clear in the introduction why Yijing’s translation of the story in the Vinaya of the MSV, dated by the author to ca. 710, should represent an earlier recension (‘‘Frühform’’) than the one found in the extant Divy avad ana, or how and why the stemma (p. xviii) of all the texts given—which includes the modern print texts of the Divy avad ana of Cowell and Neil10 and Vaidya11 —was established. One of the problems seems to be that the reconstructed stemma of the one legend presented here is not necessarily identical with the stemma of complete texts like the Divy avad ana and the different versions of the Vinaya of the MSV; to draw conclusions from one to the other obviously distorts and tends to simplify the complex text-traditional situation of both the Divy avad ana and the Vinaya. 10 E. B. Cowell and R. A. Neil, Divy avad ana: A Collection of Early Buddhist Legends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1886). 11 P. L. Vaidya, Divy avad ana (Darbhanga: Mithilāvidyāpı̄t ˙ hena, 1959; Buddhist Sanskrit Texts 20). BOOK REVIEWS 67 The synopsis presents the reader in one column with Yijing’s Chinese text according to the Taish o print edition, accepting its readings and punctuation, with Pinyin transliteration and German translation, and in the second column with the Sanskrit text of the Divy avad ana with German translation. The commentarial notes contain philological explanations and variants of the Sanskrit found in the Gilgit version of the Vinaya of the MSV. Since philological interpretations involve a great deal of speculation, and translation cannot be judged simply according to a clear cut line of false–true, I will forego a discussion of select cases for which I have doubts or am in disagreement with the author’s renderings. This, however, does not mean that...