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By no means doodles or scraps: reading manuscripts IOL Tib J 3 and 218 as bilingual Dunhuang Vinaya works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2022

Channa Li Open the ORCID record for Channa Li [Opens in a new window]
Channa Li*
Affiliation:
Austrian Academy of Sciences – IKGA, Vienna, Austria
*
channa.li@oeaw.ac.at
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Abstract

Under the sway of the dominant “waste” theories on the nature of Dunhuang manuscripts, we tend to default to the conclusion that IOL Tib J 3 and 218 contain independent Chinese and Tibetan texts joined in the process of recycling discarded manuscripts. However, this paper demonstrates that the texts from these two manuscripts constitute coherent Vinaya compositions. The three layers of the handwriting of these two manuscripts were not written randomly, but exhibit clear-cut functions: while the larger Tibetan script, which was produced in a previous project, was used to write Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya commentaries, the smaller Tibetan script and the Chinese script were created as parts of the same bilingual project to provide different textual sources on the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya texts. The Chinese and the Tibetan text in the smaller script, proceeding from the high-level bilingualism of Dunhuang Buddhist communities, display a robust thematic affinity in many cases.

Keywords

Dunhuang manuscriptsMulasarvastivada VinayaChinese Vinaya translationsTibetan Vinaya literatureBuddhism
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 265 - 305
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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Footnotes

The current version of this paper has benefited greatly from Professor Shayne Clarke's meticulous corrections, useful suggestions, and insightful criticism. His more than 20 pages of critical observations and comments spurred me to improve further the still imperfect content of this paper. I am very grateful to Sam van Schaik and Burkhard Quessel of the British Library for access to the high-resolution pictures of IOL Tib J 218. I am also indebted to Jonathan A. Silk, who as always is a patient reader and thought-provoking interlocutor. For the Kanjur versions used in this paper, I routinely use the Derge edition in the main body of quotation, but I also consult the Stog Kanjur (abb. S) when necessary and note the variant readings in brackets. The value of the Stog Kanjur in studying Vinaya texts is discussed in Yao 2012.

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