The Sūtra of the Inquiry of Jayamati

At first glance, the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra (“The Sūtra of the Inquiry of Jayamati”) appears to be a short Mahāyāna sūtra preserved in the Tibetan Kangyurs,1 as well as in a recently published Sanskrit manuscript.2 However, despite appearances, the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra in fact has an intertextual relationship, previously unrecognized, as part of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra (“The Concentration of Heroic Progress”) (Apple 2015).

The Sanskrit version of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra is preserved as the eighth among twenty sūtras contained in a unique, but incomplete, manuscript collection recovered from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The Sanskrit edition is divided into three paragraphs with section numbers. We have retained the section numbers in the following translation of the Tibetan version. The Tibetan version of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra exists in twelve available Tibetan exemplars that date initially from the late eighth to mid-ninth century, beginning with the Dunhuang IOL Tib J 75 exemplar, up through the vulgate editions of handwritten and printed Kangyur versions which date from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The Inquiry of Jayamati is listed in two early ninth century Tibetan catalogs, the Lhenkarma (lhan kar ma),3 and the Phangthangma (’phang thang ma),4 as the Jayamati­paripṛcchā (rgyal ba’i blo gros kyis zhus pa) in eleven ślokas. The late thirteenth century catalog of the Tibetan Kadampa master Darma Gyaltsen (dar ma rgyal mtshan, 1227-1305), commonly known as Chomden Reltri (bcom ldan ral gri), lists the sūtra as the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā (rgyal ba’i blo gros kyis zhus pa) in eleven ślokas.5 A listing of texts appended to the History of Buddhism in India and its Spread to Tibet by Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290-1364) also records the work as the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā (rgyal ba’i blo gros kyis zhus pa) in eleven ślokas.6 These catalog lists match the Tibetan title of the sūtra that is found in a marginal note above the first line of the Sanskrit manuscript of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā as ’phags pa rgyal ba’i blo gros kyis zhus pa’i mdo ste brgyad par rdzogs so.7

However, among vulgate Kangyurs, the Tshalpa (tshal pa) editions of Cone (C), Degé (D), Jangsatham (J), Peking (Q), the independent Kangyurs of Phug brag (F, F2), and the Gondlha (Go) proto-Kangyur give the title as The Mahāyāna Sūtra “Jayamati” (Jaya­mati­nāma­mahā­yāna­sūtra, rgyal ba’i blo gros zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo), while only the Kangyurs of the Thempangma (thems spang ma) line of London (L) and Stok Palace (S), as well as the mixed Kangyur of Narthang (N), give the title, in Tibetan at least, as ’phags pa rgyal ba’i blo gros kyis zhus pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, (The Mahāyāna Sūtra “The Inquiry of Jayamati”). Although this should translate the Sanskrit Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­nāma­mahā­yāna­sūtra, these Kangyurs, too, use the Sanskrit title Jaya­mati­nāma­mahā­yāna­sūtra. None of the available Tibetan editions have a colophon that lists the translators of the sūtra.

Analysis of the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions indicate that they preserve different nidāna or prologues. The Sanskrit version has the Bhagavān residing at Vulture’s Peak in Rājagrḥa with a great company of 1,250 monks, while the Tibetan version has the Bhagavān residing in Śrāvastī, in Jeta’s Wood, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, together with a great assembly of monks and a great multitude of bodhisatvas.8 Vinītā’s study9 also notes that the conclusions of the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions differ. These differences between the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of the introductory settings and formulaic conclusions may well indicate that this brief sūtra was redacted in a manner similar to the Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda rules on “how to make up a sūtra.”10 This is based on the fact that all Tibetan versions of the sūtra give Śrāvastī as the setting, this being the favored location for a redacted text among the Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda according to Gregory Schopen’s recent analysis.11

The other immediately apparent difference in content between the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions is that the edited Tibetan contains nineteen prescriptions rather than the fourteen in the Sanskrit. In the following translation, the third and fourth prescriptions in the Tibetan are in inverse order compared with the Sanskrit. Notably, the eighth prescription in the Tibetan version discusses knowledge, while the Sanskrit version has meditative absorption. Classical philological and phylogenetic textual analysis of the available Tibetan exemplars of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā indicates there are four lines of textual relations grouped within the (I) Tshalpa (C, D, J, N, Q, Y) line, (II) Thempangma (L, S) line, (III) Dunhuang (M) and Phug brag (F, F2) manuscripts, and (IV) Western Kangyur lines (Go). Textual analysis also indicates two recensions of the sūtra, with the Dunhuang exemplar and the two Phug brag exemplars, each containing sixteen prescriptions, representing one textual recension, while the Gondlha proto-Kangyur and vulgate Kangyurs represent another textual recension. The Dunhuang and Phug brag exemplars may represent early, but incomplete, Tibetan translations of the sūtra.

Be that as it may, the doctrinal content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā, including all nineteen prescriptions found among vulgate Tibetan Kangyurs, is actually contained within the much older version of Kumārajīva’s early fifth century Chinese translation of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, the Shoulengyan sanmei jing, 首楞嚴三昧經 (Taishō. no. 642, 15), as well as the later ninth century Tibetan translation of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra. This intertextual relation between the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra and Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra has not been noticed before, either by traditional Buddhist scholars or by modern Buddhist studies scholars.12 Versions in French and English of the corresponding content are located in section 153 of Étienne Lamotte’s translation of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra,13 under the title given by Lamotte, “Why and How to Practice the Heroic Progress.” Kumārajīva’s Chinese version and the Tibetan version of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, translated by Śākyaprabha and Ratnarakṣita, closely match the syntax and terminology found in the Tibetan version of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra, despite several minor differences in wording (Apple, 2015).

Although there is a direct correspondence in content between the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra and this section of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, a significant difference between the two sūtras is the person speaking the prescribed content. In the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra the prescriptions are delivered by the Buddha to the bodhisatva Jayamati. The Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, on the other hand, attributes the prescriptions to Jayamati. After Jayamati proclaims the nineteen prescriptions in the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, the Buddha responds to Jayamati, corresponding to section 154 of Lamotte’s Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra translation,14 with a proclamation advocating the practice of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi, emphasizing how this samādhi encompasses and goes beyond the qualities that the bodhisatva Jayamati had declared.

The correspondence between the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra and this section of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra brings up a number of interesting questions related to philology, intertextuality, and other cultural practices in the study of Mahāyāna sūtras. Based on the analysis of these sūtras, the stemma codicum for the content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra, due to its being incorporated into the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra, pushes the inferred archetype or oldest inferable ancestor of this sūtra back before the fifth century of Kumārajīva.

How do we know this? The content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra was wholly subsumed and inverted from the Buddha’s speech to represent the bodhisatva Jayamati’s proclamation, including all nineteen prescriptions in the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra. This means that the content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra must precede the composition of this section of the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra. Most modern scholars theorize that the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra is one of the oldest Mahāyāna sūtras15 due to its listing in Chinese catalogs as being translated several times before Kumārajīva’s fifth century Chinese version, including the non-extant second century Shoulengyan jing, 首楞嚴經, of Lokakṣema (支讖, 185 c.e.) and the lost third century translation of Zhi Qian (支謙).16 Although we are unable to verify that these early, but lost, Chinese versions included the section that corresponds with the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra, we can still infer that the content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra with its nineteen prescriptions must go back to the fourth century. It is highly probable that the content of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra circulated as a type of subhāṣita or set of well-spoken sayings for monks who took up the vocation17 of Mahāyāna practices.

In sum, the evidence of relationships between the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra and Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra brings a nuanced awareness to the intertextual relationships between Mahāyāna sūtras. This evidence indicates that the authorial communities that composed and compiled “Mahāyāna” texts during the Kuṣāṇa and Gupta eras in South Asia were aware of each other’s work and that there were shared elements between authorial communities of different “Mahāyāna” sūtras. The subsuming of the Jaya­mati­paripṛcchā­sūtra into the Śūraṃgama­samādhi­sūtra also provides a rare glimpse of something more. It points toward the editorial practices utilized by the authors of Mahāyāna sūtras to gain rhetorical advantage over competitors. The shared content demonstrates that the authorial communities of these sūtras were not only borrowing each other’s ideas, stock phrases, and literary tropes, but were actively competing to demonstrate that their vision of the bodhisatva way superseded the practices and motivations outlined by other groups.