The Research On Three Kinds Of Dunhuang Nestorian Manuscripts Professional Discipline: Religion Studies

Academic circles have never ceased the researches on the Nestorian Documents which were first discovered in Dunhuang. Great achievements have been made, though many problems still remain unexplained and unsolved. The year of 2003 witnessed the publication of Researching on Nestorian of Tang Dynasty Again after Mr. Lin assembled his articles related to the study of Nestorian. Before researchers in academic circle began studying it, Mr. Lin kept on his work. He put forward several new views in another of his book, the Analysis of the three Alien Religions in the Middle Ages"published in 2005. In the two books, Mr. Lin has raised doubts about several documents of Nestorian. So far, some of his views have been affirmed, while others have been still in doubt.The aim of this research is to discuss some confused and unsolved problems raised by Mr. Lin as well as problems which existed long time ago.At the very beginning, the author set about studies about Hsu Ting Mi-Shih-So Ching and I Shen Lun. In this essay, two forms are concerned: the original books and the transcribed books.First, the author made a thorough inquiry to find out the causes which developed the original books. Researching the church ceremony of the Nestorian, the name of Hsu Ting Mi-Shih-So Ching and the interpreted scriptures history, a conclusion has been drawn that the two transcribed were neither those that were just translated according to the original ones nor the bundle of the translation but the preaching records by Nestorian clergies. However, the records in the two books contained many problems, such as words leaking, miswriting sentences reversing, inelegant and disunion translated terms that are difficult to collate. There are some reasons leading to such problems, for example, lack of understanding of religious culture, language barrier, effectiveness of the preaching on the spot. Meanwhile, the author strove to find out how the handwritten copies appeared, according to the system under which the scriptures were written and religious activities that were adored by the Nestorian. The author believe that these transcribed scriptures appeared because people at that time believed in religious, so that some people who were called professional scripture editors copied these books. But because of lack of understanding of religious culture, the original books had some mistakes which were difficult to identify. And different professional scripture editors had different purposes while copying the original scriptures. So many problems need to be solved. Firstly, why the writing and the content of the books did not match; secondly, the mistakes in the Hsu Ting Mi-Shih-So Ching should be corrected; thirdly, why there is no consistency among the three parts of the I shen lun and why it has not been collated.Because it is difficult to understand the content and we can find there are many mistakes in the Hsu Ting Mi-Shih-So Ching and the I shen lun, this essay investigates the words confusing us according to the content and context to form some particular opinions based on proofs; furthermore, the author tries to make the scriptures understood easily with the help of those proved words and sentences. Of course, more puzzles in the scriptures need more efforts.As to The chih-hsuan-an-lo-sutra, the author fortunately gets the original version from Japan publication with the help of which the author respectively proofread the disagreements between Mr. Yutan and Mr. Saeki; and at the same time, the author's own transcribed version is presented to solve some records problems. Besides, this essay analyzes the religious thought in the Hsu Ting Mi-Shih-So Ching using the way of methodology and the ontology. Meanwhile, the essay compares the results with the thoughts of Buddhism and Christianity. This essay believes the religious thought of The chih-hsuan-an-lo-sutra does not have the same core characteristics as Christianity, but rather similar to Buddhism and the Taoism. As an outcome of that age, The chih-hsuan-an-lo-sutra is in awkward because it neither refused the alien religious thoughts nor turned them down.