Abstract
The Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā is a Mahāyāna dharmaparyāya and is the eighth chapter of the great canonical collection of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Mahāsaṃnipāta. The text is lost in the original Indic, but survives in Chinese and Tibetan translations, with several passages of the Sanskrit version preserved as quotations in later commentaries. It has been regarded as an authoritative canonical source throughout the intellectual history of Mahāyāna Buddhism, but scant scholarly attention has been paid to this important text. Thus, this paper aims to provide a concise yet comprehensive introduction of the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā, including its textual history, its basic structure, and its reception in Indian, Tibetan, and East Asian Buddhist traditions. It also examines how the fundamental concepts of Mahāyāna Buddhism, such as emptiness, endlessness, and imperishability, are signified in the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā by the image of the sky (Skt. gagana), the central metaphor of the text.
Highlights
The Gaganagañjaparipr.cchā, which can be translated as “Questions of [the bodhisatva]1 Gaganagañja,” is a Mahāyāna dharmaparyāya2 and is the eighth chapter of the Mahāsam. nipāta
But there are three full-length translations in Tibetan and Chinese. This text has been considered as an authoritative canonical source in the intellectual history of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan
This is documented by the fact that Ggn was translated into Tibetan and at least twice into Chinese, and that it was quoted in various commentaries and exegetical works by Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean thinkers
Summary
The Gaganagañjaparipr.cchā (hereafter Ggn), which can be translated as “Questions of [the bodhisatva]1 Gaganagañja,” is a Mahāyāna dharmaparyāya and is the eighth chapter of the Mahāsam. But there are three full-length translations in Tibetan and Chinese This text has been considered as an authoritative canonical source in the intellectual history of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. The reason for this is that, since the earliest Chinese Buddhist translations, both words, gaganagañja “the treasury of the sky” and ākāśagarbha “the essence of the sky,” have been rendered as the same term xukongzang 虛空藏 by such translators as Buddhayaśas 佛陀耶舍, Dharmamitra 曇摩蜜多, Dharmaks.ema 曇無讖, and Amoghavajra 不空金剛 Visser counts T.397(8) and T.404 in the texts related to the bodhisatva Ākāśagarbha, and Park fails to recognize a quotation from Ggn in his annotated translation of Dasheng qixinlun shu 大乘起信論疏 (cf. T.1844, 202c2-22) since he reads the Xukongzang jing 虛空藏經 as the Ākāśagarbhasūtra (see footnote 64 in Park 1979, pp. 210–11)
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