An Old Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscript of the Avaivartikacakrasūtra (original) (raw)

This philological study presents a collation of Old Tibetan Dunhuang fragments of the Avaivartikacakrasūtra compared against a text-critical edition of Tibetan Kanjurs. The Avaivartikacakrasūtra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist discourse that describes how bodhisattvas become irreversible (avaivartika) from perfect Buddhahood and how they achieve irreversible bodhisattva status, a prestigious attainment among Mahāyāna Buddhist movements in South, Central, and East Asia. Although previously unstudied, this prominent scripture is one of the most influential of Mahāyāna sūtras in Buddhist culture, preserved and transmitted in South, Central, and East Asia over many centuries. Analysis of the Old Tibetan Dunhuang Avaivartikacakrasūtra provides a number of valuable contributions to the study of the formations of Mahāyāna Buddhism, to the understanding of Old Tibetan language, and to the systematic study of Tibetan Kanjurs. Enhancing the scholarly knowledge of the transmission history of the Tibetan collected teachings of the Buddha (Kanjur), this monograph contributes to the philological study of Tibetan Buddhist canonical texts and traces the genealogical development of the Tibetan language in translating Indian Buddhist canonical texts.