『六十華厳』の章立てに関する考察 : 『華厳経』諸本の章立ての相違を手がかりにして=A Study on Chapter Division in the Sixty-fascicle Huayan Jing : From the Differences in Chapter Divisions in Several Versions of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra
Three translations of the large Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra have been passed down: the first Chinese translation, the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing, by Buddhabhadra, was completed in 421 CE. The second Chinese translation, in eighty fascicles, by Śikṣānanda, was completed in 699 CE. The Tibetan version was translated by Ye shes sde and others in the ninth century CE. Besides these three translations, there is also a Sanskrit version recorded by Zhiyan(智 儼, 602–668). Zhiyan investigated the Sanskrit manuscript of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra that was kept in the Dacien temple(大慈恩寺) at that time, and wrote down the titles of the chapters. While a researcher believe this Sanskrit manuscript was used as the original text for the sixty-fascicle translation of the Huayan jing, other studies indicate that this manuscript is a text belonging to the same tradition as the original Sanskrit text of the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing. If we compare the composition of the three translations of Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra and the list recorded by Zhiyan, there are significant differences in the chapter divisions of these four versions of Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Vairocana Buddha Chapter(盧舍那佛品) of the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing is divided into five chapters in the eighty-fascicle version, whereas there are nine chapters in the Tibetan translation and the Sanskrit version. However, Huiyuan’s(慧苑, 673–743) Kanding ji (刊定記; a commentary on the eighty-fascicle Huayan jing), says “the Sanskrit original of the eighty-fascicle Huayan jing originally had nine separate chapters, but the eighty-fascicle Huayan jing’s translator divided these into five chapters.” If we accept this statement, the Sanskrit original of the eighty-fascicle Huayan jing and the Tibetan version will all be in full agreement, with only the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing differing. In this case, the reason for the difference in one version is likely the same reason that the Vairocana Buddha Chapter in the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing is not divided into nine chapters. Two possibilities can be considered to explain this problem. One possibility is that Buddhabhadra(the translator of the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing) reduced the nine chapters of the original sixty-fascicle Huayan jing to one chapter based on the assumption that the Sanskrit original also had nine chapters. The other possibility is that The Vairocana Buddha Chapter may be a single, undivided chapter in the original Sanskrit version of the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing. In this paper, I examine the chapter divisions of the original Sanskrit version of the eighty-fascicle Huayan jing based on Huiyuan’s Kanding ji, which has not been considered until now, and I explore the relationship between the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing and the Sanskrit version recorded by Zhiyan, while also considering the chapter divisions of the Vairocana Buddha from the sixty-fascicle Huayan jing.
