Kashmir, Tamilnadu, Panini, Abhinavagupta, etc.

[Petr Mares]

Dear Mr. Madhuresan
>
> Is there a manuscripts and "received" tradition on P'u t'o island
> from sixth century AD? You made us well aware of the problem in
> Xuan Zang passages. The manuscript and received tradition evidence.

I have been looking into British Library that contain thousands
Buddhist manuscripts from Centarsl Asia discovered in 1907 by
Aurel Stein in DunHuang and found there at least two copies of
XuanZang geography. (Similiar collections are in Paris collected by
Pelliot, Tokyo, Beijing and St. Petersburg) (look at http://idp.bl.uk)
They were cerstainly not available at the time of the Waters and
Beal's translating and they may be the reason why there is doubt
about the authenticity of the 10-12th chapter of XuanZang XiYuJi
currently. The other reason may be than some older manuscripts
simply do not contain the 10-12 chapter (which speaks of South
India). There is enourmous number of Manuscripts of Avatamsaka
found in DunHuang that may differ from the received version. I can
send the Stein numbers through which the manuscripts are
refenced. I did not see them.


> Please tell whether there is a manuscript or received tradition
> on P'u t'o island, especially from 6th to 9th centuries AD in China?

Basically I do not know who wrote about this island. There are tens
of thousands of Buddhist manuscripts from 6th to 10th century
stemming from the Central Asian Buddhist caves that may contain
a lot. All are accesible now to scholars, but it will be a lifetime to
find the right ones. There may be somebody working on it, but that
is not me :-) I do not even know what texts in their received
versions discuss Potalaka as the cult of Guan Yin (avalokiteshvara)
is very far from what I study. It is a matter of the Chinese "Pure
Land" school of whic I know nothing except the trivia.

I only read one Chinese Buddhist  travelogue written by Buddhist
monk Yi4 Jing4 who traveled in Tang dynasty shortly after Xuan
Zang to what he calles South Seas to study vinaya for more than
20 years. He wrote enourmous number of books there are 70 in
Taisho collection, he wrote sanskrit chinese glossary  two books
that I know which are econcerned with Malaya and India.
One is :

nan2 hai3 ji4 gui1 zhuan4  (T2125) in 4 fasciculi
"Chronicle mailed back from the southern seas"
and the other
xi1 yu4 qiu2 fa3 du4 gao1 seng1 zhuan4 in 2 fasciculi
Which speaks of Chinese monks who went to Western Countries
to request Dharma ( I do not know the details) but there is more
than 20 chapters each about one monk - dharma teacher

One of them was translated by Japanese called Takakusu into
English, I did not read the translation and do not know the name.

I believe he spent more than 15 years in Malaya. But his Malaya I
think was the Malayan peninsula in today Malaysia. The other
traveler that traveled to India much earlier was Fa3 Xian3 in the
Eastern Jin4 dynasty and he left the travelogue in one fasciculi, he
traveled as far as Ceylon and Indonesia but did not wrote much
about the southern area in his Gao1 Seng1 Fa3Xian3 Juan2 (Fo2
Gu2 J4i) except the notice.

Sincerely

Petr Mares
Petr Mares
Lengqie Research
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