The Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra and the Buddhacarita in the Tridaṇḍamālā

Abstract

The “Tridaṇḍa” is a ritual sūtra or sūtra used for the purpose of liturgical chanting, in which āgama-sūtras are sandwiched between Aśvaghoṣa’s verses. Researchers have so far believed that only the Anityatā-sūtra, which Yijing translated into Chinese, is the Tridaṇḍa. The Sanskrit manuscript of the Tridaṇḍamālā preserved at sPos khang monastery in Tibet, however, contains forty Tridaṇḍa sūtras. With the discovery of this manuscript, it has been proven that the Tridaṇḍa does not indicate the Anityatā-sūtra only, but rather the entire forty texts as a whole. The Anityatā-sūtra is the eleventh among those forty Tridaṇḍa texts. In this presentation, I analyze the eighth Tridaṇḍa, the Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra, and provide the entire Sanskrit text of the Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra, a famous sūtra often quoted in numerous Abhidharma treatises, fully retrieved from this manuscript for the first time. Furthermore, I was able to identify that the verses presented before and after this sūtra are from Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita. It is especially noteworthy that I was able to retrieve fifteen verses on non-self (anātman) from Canto 16 of the Buddhacarita, the Sanskrit version of which had been missing until now. Finally, I have thus far collected 123 verses, corresponding to the missing verses from the Buddhacarita Canto 15 or later from this Tridaṇḍamālā manuscript.