A Philological Study On The Early Stage Of Dunhuang Manuscripts Of Buddhas’ Name Sutra

There are many versions of the Chinese Buddhist scripture Buddha’s name preached by Buddha Sutra (referred to Buddhas’name Sutra in the following text), including both Taoist scripture translated Bodhiruci and some versions assumed to be preached by Buddha, which were actually Chinese apocrypha. Only the Twelve-volume Edition was collected in Dazheng Buddhist, and none of other versions existed in the Chinese published Tripitaka. Thanks to the discovery of Dunhuang documents and the publications of microfilms and facsimiles, an increasing number of excavated manuscripts of Buddhas’ name Sutra have been becoming available for researchers in photographic format. According to my statistical data there are 1017 Dunhuang Chinese manuscripts of Buddhas’name Sutra,66 twelve-volume fragments,102 twenty-volume fragments,648 sixteen-volume fragments, and 201 fragments whose volume is not clear, including 226 unidentified fragments. These manuscripts’ collation is put in the appendix. Due to constrained space, the paper mainly discusses Buddhas’name Sutra in the early period, which contains 168 identified manuscripts and 24 unidentified fragments. This paper explores these manuscripts in three aspects.Chapter one is to expound the content and form of Buddhas’name Sutra in the early period.Chapter two is to respectively classify 21 Twelve-volume Edition fragments into 8 groups,44 twenty-volume Edition fragments into 14 groups, and 219 sixteen-volume Edition fragments into 75 groups, through analyzing both the content and its material manifestation, and corroborates each conclusion with relevant pictures which can provide more clues for further research, e.g. dating. These efforts could improve manuscripts’integrity; they’re beneficial for estimating manuscripts’system, accurately naming the manuscripts, and more precisely judging manuscripts’ information; they also help to explore how to restore the ancient manuscripts.Chapter three is to identify 226 unidentified fragments and renames 203 identified manuscripts mainly sorted in ascending order of serial number. This chapteronly includes 24 unnamed and 34 wrong named early manuscripts. At first it introduces the information of each manuscript in the form of table, then presents the predicate based on the content.These achievements of this paper are of great importance, including the massive collection Dunhuang manuscripts and the assistance of rejoining Dunhuang manuscripts. It also provides rich and reliable materials to collate and record Buddhas’name Sutra. Moreover, the work renamed manuscripts has great significance to compare and analyze different Buddhas’name Sutra versions. This precise and detailed renaming will lay the foundation for further study on Buddhas’ name Sutra.