Challenges in the Translation
Although the translation is based on the Degé edition, and the numbers of the xylograph Degé folios are included within the translation, it is the Comparative Edition of the Degé that has proved invaluable, as it contains detailed annotations of the discrepancies with other editions of the Kangyur, often revealing errors in the Degé. Some of these errors are evidently the result of the copyist mishearing a word being dictated by a reader. The sūtra existed only in handwritten copies for five centuries before the first woodblock printing (the Yongle edition made in China) in 1410. Not included in the Comparative Edition but consulted for this translation is the Stok Palace Kangyur, which belongs to another group of Kangyurs and has occasionally been alone in preserving the correct spelling, for example, rnyi (“snare”) translating the Sanskrit jāla (“net”) while all other available Kangyurs have snying (“essence” or “heart”).
The Sanskrit often provides a witness as to which Kangyur has the correct spelling. Sanskrit manuscripts are themselves just as subject to corruption, and surviving Sanskrit manuscripts date to a later period than the Tibetan translation. At times the Tibetan is evidently translating from a word similar to that in the presently available Sanskrit, and therefore it may have been translated from a manuscript in which particular words were not yet corrupted, or it could be translating from a manuscript that contained an error. The Chinese translations are the earliest witness to the condition of the sūtra in Sanskrit; at times the Chinese agrees with the Tibetan and at times with the available Sanskrit. The work of our Chinese consultant, Ling Lung Chen, has been illuminating in this respect. An example of where the Tibetan and the Chinese are correct and the present Sanskrit is not is where mukha (“gateway”) has been misspelled as sukha (“bliss”). There are also cases where the Classical Sanskrit meaning of a word has been incorrectly adopted for the Tibetan translation instead of the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit meaning. Another problem is inadvertent omission of words, particularly in lists, which may have occurred in the Sanskrit manuscript being used or early in the process of manuscript copying in Tibet. These missing words are included in the translation, even though the meaning would not be affected by their omission.
The Sanskrit has also been helpful when the meaning in Tibetan translation is vague and open to interpretation or seems dubious in its accuracy. Another challenge particular to this sūtra is the repetition of long descriptive compounds that are not stock phrases and are meant to be overwhelming, describing qualities beyond the grasp of the ordinary mind. The meaning of words in this context and their interrelationship is open to a wider interpretation than usual; for example, if sarva (“all”) begins a compound, it has been open to interpretation as to which part of the compound it refers to. Generally, however, in this translation the Tibetan interpretation is followed unless there appears to be an egregious (and noted) error or an inadvertent omission. Instances of discrepancies among the Tibetan, the Sanskrit, and the Chinese are included in the notes.
Tibetan does not have the precise cases that Sanskrit has; therefore, the Sanskrit has been invaluable in indicating singular or plural as well as where in long passages the compounds change case, such as from nominative to instrumental in the long passage describing Sudhana at the beginning of chapter 56.
Also, when Sanskrit compounds are translated into Tibetan, it is not always clear where one compound ends and the other begins. This is sometimes indicated by the shad, the vertical line in Tibetan orthography, but as the Tibetan editor’s colophon indicates, the placement of the shad is at times arbitrary and confusing, the likely result of the process of copying, as some of the errors are evidently transcription errors from listening to the text being read. The Vaidya Sanskrit edition in Roman letters has added punctuation that does not always agree with the Tibetan interpretation of the structure of the sentence. The Suzuki edition of the Sanskrit has also been useful for finding transcription errors in the Vaidya. Tibetan also tends to translate the prefixes of Sanskrit words, while a direct translation from Sanskrit into English would choose a word from the more extensive English vocabulary. This translation tends to follow the latter approach rather than the translation of prefixes. Words can be multivalent in Sanskrit, their meaning altered according to context, and can even be interpreted as having more than one meaning simultaneously. There are Sanskrit poems written with a carefully chosen vocabulary to create verses that can be read as having two different meanings. There are some terms in this sūtra where a choice of translation necessarily means rejecting another possible meaning; for example, vajra can refer to a thunderbolt or a diamond, and these two can be seen in that culture as identical. In particular, however, there are two prominent terms in this sūtra that present such a problem: dharmadhātu and samantabhadrabodhisattvacaryā.
The word dharmadhātu is a compound made of two elements: dharma and dhātu. Dharma has a great number of meanings, from “the Buddha’s teachings” to “law,” “justice,” “qualities,” “nature,” “phenomena,” and so on, while dhātu can indicate a realm, an element, or a constituent and can be used to mean sensory elements, the relics from an enlightened being’s cremation, and so on. In the term lokadhātu, used over and over in this sūtra, dhātu can mean “realm,” as in “world realm” or “a realm of worlds.” The term dharmadhātu has been used to mean “essence or true nature of phenomena,” such as emptiness, and so the Chinese title, which could be translated as Entering the Dharmadhātu, has been translated by Carré as l’Entrée dans la dimension absolue (Entry into the Absolute Dimension) and by Cleary as Entry into the Realm of Reality. Osto has used the more literal “realm of the Dharma,” which has in certain contexts been used in this translation. However, often the meaning appears to be “the realm of phenomena” when something is said to spread everywhere, and occasionally it could mean either, or simultaneously both.
The ambiguity of samantabhadrabodhisattvacaryā is reflected in differing translations. It is a compound used repeatedly in the sūtra, and the question is whether samantabhadra (“completely good”) is an adjective for bodhisattvacaryā (“bodhisattva conduct”) or whether it means the conduct of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra. The sequence of the words in the compound (this is not evident in Tibetan) would appear to signify the former meaning, but its use in the Samantabhadra chapter appears to indicate the latter. At times it could mean both simultaneously.
Neither the Tibetan nor the Chinese—nor therefore the Sanskrit from which they were translated—had a division of the Gaṇḍavyūha into chapters. The later Sanskrit has a division into fifty-six chapters, and because this will make the reading of the sūtra much easier and more accessible for the reader in English, that chapter division has been adopted for this translation.