Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka by Isshi YamadaReview by: Leon HurvitzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1969), pp. 651-654Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/596642 .

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Reviews of Books 651

Chinese Buddhism in all of its aspects. At its best, this wish would have condemned the work to disunity. The wish was not at its best, however. For the author simply could not keep his cate- gories straight. There is thus a disunity not only in the book as a whole but in almost each and every individual chapter. The general impression is rather that of a hodgepodge.

The fact remains, in spite of anything said above, that for its time (1879) the book was a landmark. Whatever the motive or motives, the mere willingness of a member of the China mission to deal with Buddhism, in the face of a mandarin resistance ranging from indifference to hostility, was in itself a remarkable thing. The range of topics covered bears witness, if not to a meticulous sense of category, then at least to an all-encompas- sing zeal. Appearing when it did, the book prob- ably created a stir, and rightly so.

The book's time, however, was 1879, nearly a century ago. As said above, the only valid motive for reprinting a book, other than a creation of belles-lettres, nearly a hundred years old would be historical. This would mean, in the present case, providing supplementary annotation indicating what the world has learned about all these matters in the intervening period. Such annotation, which would swell the book to at least four times its present size, would scarcely be worth the time and effort involved, and the result of these labors would not make any bookseller a penny richer. The Paragon Book Company is not to be con- demned for not following this particular course of action. A practical alternative would have been to reproduce the 1893 edition without change, as has in fact been done, but to provide it with a well- reasoned preface, one that would place the nine- teenth-century work in its historical context and that would, at the same time, indicate to the reader, being specific and yet not going into too much detail, what the world has learned of the subject since the book made its appearance. An undertaking to be specific without going into too much detail is by any standard an ambitious one, but by no means impossible. If a publisher is reluctant to do even that, it is still not too much to ask of him that he exercise a more judicious

choice of what to reprint. If he himself cannot, one has a right to expect that he will consult someone who can. The Paragon Book Company has done none of these things. On the contrary, it has re- produced without change or comment a book that has no relevance for our times and that, if read by the unadvised, can lead to enormous misunder- standing. The price that it asks is, in the context, exorbitant. One would like to hope that the practice may not become habitual.

LEON HURVITZ

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Karuiapu,44arika. Edited with introduction and notes by ISSHI YAMADA. Vol. 1, pp. 287; Vol. 2, pp. 420 + 22. London: SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, 1968. 6 pounds 6 shillings.

The text in question is a Mahdydna scripture obviously of importance outside India as well, to judge from the fact that, apart from its appearance in the Bka' 'gyur, it was translated into Chinese four times, four translations of which only two survive. To oversimplify, it is a narrative, but perhaps not in the usual sense of the term. It con sists of the following elements: (1) Description by kkyamuni of buddhaksetras other than his own. (2) Tales of how the Buddhas in those several lands became what they are and came to occupy their respective lands. (3) Predictions (vyakaranya) of the future attainment of buddha- hood on the part of certain beings presently in 8dkyamuni's retinue. (4) Vows (praaidhana) on the part of these and other beings to devote themselves fully to the salvation of all animate beings in the universe. (5) Incantations (dharani).

The first volume is introductory. After a Pref- ace, in which the editor tells of how the K. marks the transition of kkyamuni to the status of an object of worship, on the model of Amita and Maitreya, he proceeds to list the Sanskrit MSS on which his own edition (romanized typewritten) is based, six MSS in all, of which only one is still in India, another in France, and two each in

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652 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.3 (1969)

England and Japan. In the space of three pages, he gives all the pertinent bibliographical informa- tion on these MSS. Two Tibetan versions were also employed, the Peking and Snar.thafi prints. (One regrets that no Sde.dge print was available, particularly in view of the inferiority of the Peking block.) There is equally detailed biblio- graphical treatment of them as well. There follows treatment of the Chinese versions, lost as well as extant, making full use of the indigenous Chinese catalogues, which, of course, have no analogues either in India or in Tibet. Next comes a tentative reconstruction of the textual transmission, con- firming the expectation that, of the texts as we now have them, the Chinese are the oldest, the Tibetan next, the Sanskrit the youngest. Next, in turn, come ten pages of minute description of the Skt. MSS.

The next fifteen pages (vol. 1, pp. 43-58) are devoted to what seems -to this reviewer, at least

-the core of the problem, viz., how to sort out the materials available and to produce from them a reasoned text. It should be borne in mind, or so it seems, that edition is one thing, restoration another. Mr. Yamada appears to fluctuate be- tween the two. It goes without saying that, when dealing with materials as old as the text in ques- tion, one is obliged to make use of everything available, which Mr. Yamada has done. Still that does not give an editor the warrant to reject all of the MSS evidence, questionable as it un- doubtedly is, to conjecture a restoration to some- thing totally different on the strength not of another Sanskrit version but of a Tibetan or, worse yet, of a Chinese translation, whose underlying original is a matter of conjecture. Mr. Yamada meticulously indicates in his unexceptionably de- tailed footnotes (in vol. 2) what he is doing and why, but that does not obviate the objection that he appears to be vacillating between edition and restoration. The alternate course, in this reviewer's opinion, would have been to edit one text con- sistently, then indicate all the variants (Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese) in the annotation. Since, however, in the total context this is a trifle, to which too much space has already been devoted, it is surely time to move on to other things.

The last six pages of the section just mentioned is devoted to proper names, always a major textual problem in undertakings of this sort. Next in order come three concordances, admirable in their thoroughness. Pp. 63-120 have a summary of the scripture's contents, followed by a number of problems regarding the history of Mahayana doctrine.

1) From the beginning, apparently, the Bud- dhists had the notion that Sdkyamuni was not the only Buddha, but one in a series. The Mahayana (the best-known example being the Saddharma- puad.arika) developed the idea that the real Buddha is the dharmakdya, all other Buddhas being mere emanations, or even apparitions. Thus, though 8&kyamuni is in nirvana, the number of Buddhas is potentially infinite. In good Buddhist fashion, these are divided into "past, future, and present" (atitanagatapratyutpanna) and these are considered respectively in turn. In a tradition shared by the K., the present kalpa, bhadrakalpa by name, will have a total of a thousand Buddhas, of whom kkyamuni is the fifth.

2) Sdkyamuni is commonly regarded as having got his vyakarana from a Buddha named Dlipam- kara, who in turn got his from a Buddha named Ratnagikhin, and he from Ratnagarbha. The latter also appears in the K., where his function is to give vyakararx to many, including 8dkyamuni and Amitqbha.

3) Three pages are devoted to the question of the bodhisattva and the commonly accepted notion of his possession of the standard perfections (pdramita). The history of these latter and of their number is gone into.

4) There follows a summary, covering eleven pages, of the vyakarana literature as a whole. It is difficult to see, however, what conclusions Mr. Yamada is trying to draw.

5) Next in order is a very interesting passage, entitled Development of Praaidhana. The argu- ment is as follows: The verb vyakaroti or byakaroti, as it occurs in the Pali texts, means "to answer a question." From this, the Vyakarana comes specifically to be a prediction of the future based on a knowledge of the causal heritage of the past. Then it comes "to denote specifically the predic-

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Reviews of Books 653

tion given by a teacher-Buddha to a bodhisattva who has made certain vows (pranidhlina).... The Pranidhana. . includes a bodhisattva's determination to attain buddhahood (bodhicittot- pada), his intention to carry out the altruistic practices of the Pdramitds, and his wish to es- tablish an ideal buddha-land in order to save other beings. Thus, when the emphasis shifted from the vyakarana to the pran. idhana, the former became merely a certificate or a reconfirmation by the teacher-Buddha of what the bodhisattva had stated in his pran.iidhanas." The ultimate develop- ment, at least in the tradition represented by the Sukhavativyiha, was a vow to be reborn in a "pure land." The striking difference in the case of 8dkyamuni is his choice of an impure land, namely this one. The K. explains this in terms of his pra~zidhana, i.e., by saying that he chose of his own free will to be reborn in this world of filth and defilement, and that out of purely altruistic motives. "In this way, the KP succeeded in plac- ing kkyamuni Buddha above all other buddhas in the pure buddha-lands without refuting the system of Pure Land Buddhism, and in restoring him once more as the central object of worship."

6) From the above-mentioned Chinese cata- logues, Mr. Yamada culls the titles of twenty scriptural writings which in his opinion bear on the K. He does not say that they were incor- porated, in whole or in part, into the K. AS TEXTS,

but he does hold that the K. was inspired by their idea content. In particular, he stresses the con- nection between the K. and the Ratnakfita series.

7) In conclusion, Mr. Yamada tentatively dates the K. somewhere between 200 and 400, but certainly no later than 419, the year of Dhar- maksema's Chinese translation.

8) Next in order come fourteen pages dealing with Amitabha/Amitqyus. There is an enormous amount of textual citation, but no conclusion ap- pears to be drawn. The same may be said of one of his epithets, which appears now to have been Amitaguddha, now Amrtaguddha.

9) As the bodhisattva Dharmakara, Amita in the Sukhavativyiiha took a number of vows (tradi- tionally numbered at forty-eight in the Far East). This, in our translator's opinion, lies at the base

of Aranemin's vows in the K., which are arranged in two groups, of 35 and 11, respectively. These are then given a most detailed treatment (pp. 197- 234). In particular, the eleventh vow uses the word avaivartika 'non-retrogressive', which furnishes an occasion for the translator to compare the various traditions of the ten stages of the bodhisattva.

10) Finally, a similar, albeit shorter, treatment is given to the pranidhdna of Akaobhya, a Buddha who occupies the pure land of Abhirati, situated to our east.

The first volume concludes with fourteen passages in which the Tibetan and Chinese, both cited in full, differ pronouncedly from the Skt. as we now have it. In some cases, a reconstruction of the putative original is attempted. At the very end of this section is a discussion of the Tib. suffix &ig.gu (usually appearing as ziq.gu) and the ap- parently synonymous Oam.ge.

The bulk of the second volume, consisting of 420 pages, is taken up with the romanized Skt. text of the K., equipped with a most meticulous ap- paratus criticus. Except for the stricture expressed earlier, there can be no objection to this presenta- tion of the text. In fact, one cannot but bow down in admiration before the industry to which this edition bears witness. The verses, as may be ex- pected, are the least certain portion of the whole text. In very many of them, the editor cites the Tibetan and both Chinese versions, to say nothing of all the variant readings.

The second chapter of the K. contains fifteen dhranils, identical with those contained in the Sarvajniatakaradharagi, the full text of which is given in an appendix to volume 2. There is an introduction of five pages, telling us, among other things, that the edition given here is based on two MSS, one kept in London, the other in Tokyo. The edition is characterized by the same meticu- lous attention to detail that characterized the K. itself, the only difference being that here there is no reference to Chinese or Tibetan material.

The work under review is a welcome contribu- tion to the as yet all too slim corpus of Mahaydna scriptual works available in Sanskrit. It is all the more welcome in that it is so carefully edited, which cannot be said for many. An unfortunate

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654 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.3 (1969)

feature, hopefully to be put right in time, is that it is a printed typescript. One would like to be able to look forward eventually to a properly printed text, but that does not gainsay the value of the present edition. A more serious deficiency, unhappily, is that all of the explanatory material is in an English that is far from what it should be. One would be pleased to think that-in the birth- place of the English language!-those charged with reading such a work before publication would also have taken upon themselves the charge of presenting the public with a work in faultless English. This, of course, is the fault of the SOAS, not of Mr. Yamada.

LEON HURVITZ

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Economic Trends in Communist China. Edited by ALEXANDER ECKSTEIN, WALTER GALENSON, and TA-CHUNG Liu. Pp. 757. Chicago: AL- DINE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1968. $17.50.

Economic Trends in Communist China consists of an introduction and eleven essays on different aspects of Chinese economic development since 1949 that were originally presented at a conference held in 1965 at Carmel, California. Despite the time lag, the volume taken as a whole still reflects the current state of our best knowledge of the Communist Chinese economy inasmuch as ex- tremely little additional statistical information has become available since then (in fact, since 1960). Inevitably, almost all of the studies are based on data pertaining to the 1950's and hence may not be directly relevant to current develop- ments in Communist China.

Given this perspective, however, this book must be regarded as a landmark in the study of the Chinese economy, for never before has there been a collection of essays so comprehensive in scope, so thorough in depth and prepared by such a distinguished panel of scholars.'

1 One must also mention the volume prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the U. S. Congress, An Economic Profile of Mainland China, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, New York, 1968, which has since also become available.

Several general remarks are in order before specific comments are addressed to the individual essays. First, this book by its very nature is not intended for the general reader. Some basic knowledge of the Communist Chinese economy is required even for a superficial understanding. Secondly, as there has been a deluge of estimates on almost every item of general interest in Com- munist China, a great deal of research effort, pos- sibly more than is worthwhile, goes into the rec- onciling of these various estimates. Such exercises tend to diminish the effectiveness of the essays and may be better relegated to either the ap- pendices or the prospective individual mono- graphs. Thirdly, most of the essays are relatively long, with an average length of more than sixty pages. Consequently, considerably more than a cursory interest may be necessary to sustain a reader through the book.

The introductory essay, by A. Eckstein, W. Galenson and T. C. Liu, is a summary of the contents of the other eleven essays.

The second essay, "The Economic Heritage," by A. Eckstein, provides an overview of the Chinese economy in the century or so before 1949. Though by necessity sketchy in parts, this essay is valuable in putting all the other essays in the proper historical perspective.

T. C. Liu, in his "Quantitative Trends in the Economy," gives first an excellent and concise description of the statistical system. The second part is devoted to a comparison of various avail- able estimates of national income and related con- cepts. The last part of his essay consists of a highly imaginative application of advanced econometric techniques to the estimation of the net domestic product for the years 1958-1965. Although the statistical level of significance of these "predic- tions" must be low, such an approach merits further development as it employs a unified and consistent set of assumptions for the whole economy rather than a conglomerate of piecemeal ad hoc assumptions for individual sectors and industries as the basis for estimation.

J. S. Aird's "Population Growth" contains a detailed analysis of the reliability of the 1953 national population census in Communist China. The issue is of course far from closed. Sets of

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