The Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra in Tibet
The Buddhāvataṃsaka as translated into Tibetan is composed of forty-five chapters and 115 fascicles, with the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra still retaining its position as the last of the chapters. According to the Degé Kangyur, the entire Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, including the Gaṇḍavyūha, was translated into Tibetan by Yeshé Dé, Jinamitra, and Surendrabodhi, which would have been during the reign of King Senalek (r. ca. 800/804–15) or King Ralpachen (r. 815–36). Yeshé Dé and Jinamitra had been working at Samyé Monastery since the reign of King Trisong Detsen (r. 742–98), but Surendrabodhi appears to have come to Tibet after Senalek, Trisong Detsen’s youngest son, became king. Senalek was in turn succeeded by his son Ralpachen, the end of whose reign also saw the end of state-sponsored translation. Therefore, this translation appears to have been made sometime between 800 and 836, but it may incorporate even earlier translation work, particularly in the case of the Gaṇḍavyūha.
By the time of the sūtra’s translation into Tibetan at the beginning of the ninth century, the number of chapters in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra had increased from thirty-nine to forty-five. But this is primarily because of the division in Tibetan of what is the Chinese chapter 5 into chapters 5 through 9, with some additional material, and the additional chapters 11 and 32. This Tibetan translation provides the earliest indication of when the forty-fifth chapter was named Gaṇḍavyūha.
According to Tashi Wangchuk, who wrote the colophon to the eighteenth-century Degé edition, and also according to the historian Ngorchen Könchok Lhundrup (1497–1557), the Buddhāvataṃsaka is composed of seven sūtras or sections, while Pekar Zangpo divides the first of these into two, making eight sections.
Whereas the Chinese version of the Buddhāvataṃsaka retained the traditional beginning of the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra as an independent sūtra, commencing with “Thus did I hear…” and so on, the version translated into Tibetan omits it, as do the surviving Sanskrit versions.
The Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra, which in Tibetan is interpreted to mean, ambiguously, The Stem Array Sūtra, is the forty-fifth and last chapter in the Tibetan version of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, which is made up of four volumes as found in the Degé Kangyur. This chapter is by far the longest, beginning halfway through the third volume and occupying the entire fourth volume of the Buddhāvataṃsaka. It is composed of 72 of the 115 fascicles that make up the entire sūtra, beginning with fascicle 44 (the twenty-fourth in volume Ga). Fascicles refer to the bundles of pages in the original Sanskrit manuscripts, usually joined up through two holes in the center of each page. In this translation the beginning of a fascicle is simply marked with the letter B (from the Tibetan for fascicle: bam po) and a number, for example, [B24].
The quality of the Tibetan translation differs from the rest of the Buddhāvataṃsaka, either because of scribal corruption or choices of translation. The Tibetan has peculiarities not shared with all other parts of the Avataṃsaka. For example, it retains the archaic spelling of myi and myed instead of mi and med. The translation is less reliable than usual, as it contains frequent, possibly inadvertent omissions and misspellings that must have occurred early in the scribal transmission, as some of these errors in the sūtra are found in all Kangyurs.
It also exhibits a certain idiosyncrasy of translation, in that the terms may not match what was established in the Mahāvyutpatti (bye brag tu rtogs par byed chen po) and Madhyavyutpatti (sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa), the early ninth-century Sanskrit–Tibetan dictionaries produced within the same state-sponsored translation project responsible for the translation of this sūtra. For example, vyūha is regularly translated as rgyan (“adornment”) instead of bkod pa (“array”), even in the title of the sūtra, in spite of its being generally known in Tibetan as sdong po bkod pa. These and other variations of the title are touched upon in the Avataṃsaka’s editorial colophon in the Degé Kangyur (c.10).
According to that colophon, this edition of the Avataṃsaka was prepared in 1722. This was eight years before the eighth Tai Situpa Chökyi Jungné (1700–1774) began his work as chief editor of the Degé Kangyur. He states in his account of the creation of the Kangyur: “I began in the Iron Dog year,”32 which was 1730, and the carving and printing of the Degé woodblocks did not begin until 1737 and was completed in 1744. It was nevertheless done under the command of the Degé King Tenpa Tsering (1678–1738), as was the entire Degé Kangyur, and therefore may be an earlier edition that Situ incorporated into his edition of the Kangyur. The colophon also states that it was based on the Lithang Kangyur, also known as the Jangsa Tham Kangyur. The creation of this Kangyur took five years, from 1609 until 1614. The Lithang was the second printing of the Kangyur, which otherwise only existed in manuscript form. The first printing was the Yongle in 1411.
The colophons of the Narthang, Lhasa, Stok Palace, and some other Kangyurs ascribe the editing, or perhaps revision, of the Buddhāvataṃsaka to a Vairocanarakṣita: “Lotsawa Vairocanarakṣita was the chief editor and established the text.” The great Sakya master Ngorchen Könchok Lhundrup also mentions Vairocanarakṣita’s involvement.
The long note by the Degé editor after the colophon states, “It is taught that Surendrabodhi and Vairocanarakṣita acted as chief editors for a Chinese translation.”33 As the Indian master Surendrabodhi came to Tibet during the reign of King Senalek (ca. 800/804–15), the identity of this Vairocanarakṣita is a mystery, as he could not be the eleventh-century translator Vairocanarakṣita, nor could he be the eighth-century Vairocana. Tashi Wangchuk adds, “I have not seen any histories or texts that recount translation work done by lotsawas or paṇḍitas other than those listed in the colophon here,” thus apparently rejecting the attribution of Vairocanarakṣita as the editor.