A Philological Study Of The Dunhuang Manuscripts Of The Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra

Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra, as one of Mahayana, has been translated into three systematic version successively by Buddhabhadra of Eastern Jin Dynasty, Siksananda of Tang Dynasty and Hannya of Tang Dynasty, which can all found in Taisho Tripitaka. Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra is an important Buddhism sutra which has a wide range of believers. There are 377 pieces of documents in Dunhuang literatures, including 299 pieces of Buddhabhadra’s,76 pieces of Siksananda’s and 2 pieces of Hannya’s.The article is divided into six parts, including a comparatively comprehensive research on the description of documents, the cohering of broken documents, the discrimination of subsection, the denomination of documents, the study of suspected documents, the proofreading between variant readings.Chapterl:introduction, which describes the situation and research status on Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra in Dunhuang manuscripts.Chapter2:description, which combs 377 pieces of Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra in Dunhuang manuscripts one by one, including the completion, the hangkuan, the beginning and the end, the inscription, the institution,the corresponding page and denomination to the Taisho Tripitaka.Chapter3:cohering, using Photoshop piecing 104 pieces documents into 41 groups, which can provide later researchers better materials.Chapter4:discrimination of subsection, investigating in the 50 volumes version and other versions of Jin Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra, and surveying the subsection of the early versions of Jin Great Means Expansive Buddhas Flower Adornment Sutra by documents marked with ages.Chapter5:denomination, which points out undefined names, false names, not completely correct names, and gives them accurate reliable new names.Chapter6:the study of two suspected documents. One suspected document is collected by Mitsui library in Japan; another one is written by Qian Shu calligrapher Wang kai, but mistakenly included into GuoTu. The article studys their authenticity and attribution after combing text messages and collectibles meticulously.