A Study Of The Dunhuang Manuscripts Of The Golden Light Sutra

The Suvarnaprabhasa Stura(The Golden Light Sutra)is one of the five Buddhist scriptures which have the largest amount in the Dunhuang documents.It has three Chinese translations that existed.They are the Dharmaksema translation,the Baogui translation,and the Yijing translation.Most of the Suvamaprabhasa Stura manuscripts in the Dunhuang documents belong to these three versions.In all the published Dunhuang documents,this paper find 255 manuscripts of the Dharmaksema translation(43 are newly identified),144 manuscripts of the Baogui translation(66 are newly identified),1926 manuscripts of the Yijing translation(440 are newly identified).And there are other 178 manuscripts(158 are newly identified),we cannot tell which transition they belong to,but we are sure they are the Suvarnaprabhasa Stura.Based on a comprehensive survey of the Dunhuang documents,this paper discusses the manuscripts of the Suvarnaprabhasa Stura from three aspects.The first aspect is dividing the version system,and the second is naming and identification of the manuscripts,and the last one is the patching up of the fragments.The article is divided into two parts.The first part includes the Introduction and four chapters.The introduction introduces the collections of the Dunhuang documents,the Dunhuang manuscripts of the Suvarnaprabhasa Stura,and the previous research of them.The first chapter discusses the writing system of the manuscripts.In the Dunhuang documents,there are some manuscripts which not belong to the three existing versions.They are different with the existing version on division of the volumes,and on the texts.According to our research,the Dharmaksema translation has 6 versions besides the existing version,and the Baogui translation has 2 versions different from the existing version.The second chapter is on the methods and evidence of naming and identification.This chapter discusses the previous research on naming of the Suvarnaprabhasa Sturam,the mistakes of previous research,and how to correct these mistakes.This chapter also tells the ways to identify the fragments with no titles.The third chapter is on the patching up of the fragments.This chapter discusses the 58 groups of patching up of the Dharmaksema translation system(48 groups are newly discovered)and the 280 groups of patching up of the Yijing translation system(236 groups are newly discovered)from three aspects:the previous research,the new research findings,and the characteristics of the patching-ups.The forth chapter is on the nature of the Dunhuang documents.This chapter analyzes the 280 groups of patching-up of the Yijing translation.As most of the Dunhuang documents are fragments or small pieces,we can discuss why the documents were torn through analyzing the patching-ups.And then we can seek the nature of the Dunhuang documents.Another part of this paper includes three sections.The first section is on the practice of naming and identification.In this section,we correct the name of 54 manuscripts,and list the 707 manuscripts which are newly discovered.The second section is on the practice of patching-up.This section tells the details of the newly found patching-ups,among which 48 groups belong to the Dharmaksema translation.system,and 280 groups belong to the Yijing translation system.This section also lists all the patching-ups of the Suvarnaprabhasa Stura for the convenience of readers.The last section is the manuscript list of the Suvarnaprabhasa Stura in the published and named Dunhuang documents.Some manuscripts were named as Suvarnaprabhasa Stura and are not published yet,the section also lists them on a separate list.