The Lineage of Scroll 79 of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra: With Reference to the Discovery of Omitted Passages by Heian Period Scholar Monks

Abstract

The *Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra was translated by Xuanzang （602-664）, who employed three variant Sanskrit texts and took great care to avoid mistakes. However, over the centuries, discrepancies in the Chinese characters occurred in different editions, and this continues to necessitate the collation of variant readings today. It should be understood that this kind of collation work had already begun during the period of manuscript production, which pre-dated the era of woodblock printing. This paper examines the collation project of scroll 79 of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra carried out by Japanese scholar-monks in the Heian period. I demonstrate that the achievements of this project were significant and should be consulted in our modern collation work. Based on the omitted passages in scroll 79 identified by these early scholar-monks, I suggest that the scroll’s lineage could be divided into the following three branches: （1） the Nanatsudera issaikyō edition, Fangshan Stone-carved edition, and the Dongchan monastery edition; （2） the Kongō-ji issaikyō and the Kōshō-ji issaikyō editions; and （3） the Second edition of the Korean canon, the Zhonghua dazangjing, Sixi canon, Qisha canon, Puning canon and the Jiaxing canon edition.