Haribhaṭṭa in Nepal: Ten Legends from his Jātakamālā and the Anonymous Śākyasiṃhajātaka

209 Pages·2007·12.21 MB·English

by  Michael Hahn

STUDIA PHILOLOGICA BUDDHICA
Monograph Series
XXII
Haribhatta in Nepal
Ten Legends from His Jatakamala
and the Anonymous Sakyasirphajataka
Edited by Michael Hahn
Editio Minor
Tokyo
The International Institute for Buddhist Studies
of
The International College for PostgraduateBuddhistStudies
2007
Haribhatta in Nepal
Haribhatta in Nepal
Ten Legends from His Jatakamala
and the Anonymous Sakyasitphajataka
Edited by Michael Hahn
Editio Minor
Tokyo
The International Institute for Buddhist Studies
of
The International College for Postgraduate BuddhistStudies
2007
Publishedbythe InternationalInstituteforBuddhistStudiesoftheICPBS:
5-3-23 Toranomon, Minato-ku,Tokyo 105-0001,Japan
©MichaelHahn2007
Firstpublished2007
PrintedinJapan byTakayalna, Inc., Tokyo
Allrightsreserved.
Apartfrom anyfair dealingfor the purpose ofprivate study, research, criticism or
review, no part ofthe book may be reproduced or translated in anyform, by print,
photoprint, microform or any other means without written permission. Enquiries
shouldbemadeto thepublishers.
ISBN978-4-906267-58-3
Correspondence regarding all editorial matters shouldbe sent to the Director ofthe
InternationalInstituteforBuddhistStudies in Tokyo.
Preface
The present editio minor of ten legends from Haribhatta's Jatakamala
(henceforth abbreviated as HJM) is meant to serve a twofold purpose.
First, in its shorter-and less ambitious form ofpresentation, its cost of pro
duction will be moderate and, thereby I hope it may reach a wider read
ership. Second, although aesthetically less pleasing than Devanagari, the
Romanized version will certainly be easier to read for all non-Indian lov
ers of the Sanskrit kavya literature, especially for beginners and interme
diate students, because of its analytic character. In publishing the same
text twice, in an editio maior and editio minor, I follow, and allude to, the
model of Johannes Hertel, who edited another important work of Indian
literature even thrice, the Tantrakhyayika, the oldest available recension of
the Paficatantra.
This edition has a long history. Its forerunner is an abortive attempt
at editing the texts presented here in Nepal in 1979. During my term as
local director of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project I
suddenly saw a unique chance to print the extant portions of HJM in
devanagarl at a comparatively low cost. So I started work on the project in
my spare time, assisted by a young and dedicated Sanskrit scholar from
Nepal, Mahes Raj PANT. That was a most pleasant cooperation and we
completed the text, 136 pages, within a relatively short span of time.
When it came to printing the introduction, the printer informed us that he
had insufficient diacritics. Since Iwished neither to omit the diacritics in a
scientific publication nor to print all words containing diacritics in deva
nagarl, I went to Delhi. Unfortunately, the fonts I had ordered there never
reached Kathmandu. Then my term of office ended. I returned to Ger
many and became totally absorbed in other projects, Nagarjuna's Ratnti
vall (1982), the Mahajjatakamala (1985), Sivasvamin's Kapphi1]tibhyudaya
(1988), and other minor publications. Moreover, the change of my sphere
of activity from Bonn to Marburg in 1988, as well as a very sad event in
my personal life, continued to keep me away from Haribhatta's work.
The only exceptions were the booklet Haribhattas Mrgajtitaka, jointly pub
lished with Konrad KLAUS (Bonn 1983), and the enlarged reprint of my
Preface
11
short monograph Haribhatta and Gopadatta (Tokyo 1992), in which I could
include the texts of four legends (2, 4, 5, and 6).
With hindsight, my failure to publish the text of 1979 proved to be
fortunate, for more than one reason. First, the time had been premature
when, full of enthusiasm, I had started the project, since my edition had
not yet reached its final state. What I had with me in Nepal was little
more than a handwritten transcript done on the basis of two inferior
manuscripts that had to be compared, in great haste, with their archetype,
the oldest manuscript of the Bodhisattvajatakavadanamala and my uncritical
transcript of the Tibetan translation of Haribhatta's work. This revised
manuscript had to be transcribed into devanagarl by Gurushekhara
SHARMA which was then to be used by the printer. Due to the paucity of
types only one forma (= 8 pages) could be composed. After proofreading,
these 8 pages were printed and the next forma was composed. Mistakes
detected afterwards could therefore not be corrected.
Second, despite the joint efforts of the printer, Mahes Raj PANT and
myself, over the years the list of printing mistakes grew to four pages. I
felt that this was too much for the editio princeps of a very important liter
ary work and this was the main reason why I decided to abandon the
Nepalese edition when in 1992 I had finally been able to complete my in
troduction in a neat computerized version. At that time one of my Ph. D.
students, Mr Jtirgen HANNEDER, kindly offered to me to convert my still
imperfect Romanized text into devanagarl by using the TEX program of
which he is an expert. For various reasons, among them technical prob
lems, this attempt, too, was abortive. In 1998 I bought the Devakey pro
gram developed by Mr. Peter HAUNERT. This proved to be an excellent
editor, which permitted me to do the conversion myself with compara
tively little effort. My own contribution was a minor change in the pro
gram that allowed an automatic hyphenation under WordPerfect 8 and
the development of additional conjunct letters that are missing in Mr.
HAUNERT'S devanagarl font. This edition forms the core of the planned edi
tio maior to be published either in the series "Indica et Tibetica" or in In
dia. In the meantime the editio minor will hopefully serve the immediate
needs of interested colleagues and students.
Third, as stated at the end of the introduction, very recently I got
access to another good manuscript of Haribhatta's which permitted me to
check and correct a number of doubtful passages so that the text of the
present edition represents a clear progress over the text as printed in Ne
pal 28 years ago.
Preface 111
A word of thanks is due to all those friends and colleagues who
over the years read the text or parts of it. In the beginning it was Mrs.
Undine PLEWNIA, who in 1975 read the Badaradvlpajataka with me, both in
Sanskrit and Tibetan. In Nepal, Mahes Raj PANT assisted me with the first
edition of the text in deval1tigarl, and later my esteemed friend Kameshwar
Nath MISHRA from Sarnath kindly read the whole text while he was a
Visiting Research Scholar in Marburg, Germany, in 1993, sponsored by
the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. In the late eighties my sons
Matthias and Marek HAHN very diligently converted my original type
scripts of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts into the very first computer files.
My former student Konrad KLAUS not only edited with me the first of the
two Mrgajtitakas, but also proof-read the preceding four legends. Later,
my students Jiirgen HANNEDER and Martin STRAUBE read several stories
and made a number of good suggestions. My friend Peter KHOROCHE
pointed out several typos after I had sent him the uncorrected drafts of
the text. A special word of thanks is due to my former student Albrecht
HANISCH, who compared all but the last two legends against the manu
script. While doing this he was assisted by Mr. Felix OTTER. Last but not
least, I have to thank my wife Mitsuyo DEMOTO-HAHN who reformatted
the whole book in Microsoft Word, which became necessary because the
original word processor in which the manuscript was written (WordPer
fect) does not support Unicode fonts. She also very carefully read the
proofs of the converted text. For correcting the English of the preface and
the introduction I am obliged to my friends and colleagues Jayandra SONI
(Marburg) and Jonathan A. SILK (Los Angeles). Thanks to the careful edi
torial assistance of Mr. Shinichiro HORI (Tokyo) a number of embarrass
ing typos could be corrected in the very last moment. The responsibility
for any remaining mistake is, ofcourse, mine.
I am particularly grateful to The International Institute for Buddhist
Studies of The International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies
for accepting this book for publication in one of its famous series. In this
connection I would like to thank its present director Prof. Dr. Junkichi
IMANISHI, as well as his predecessor, my esteemed friend and colleague
Prof. Dr. Minoru HARA. It gives me a special satisfaction that text of the
ten legends from Haribhatta's latakamala which are preserved in Nepal
appears in the same series in which I gave the first announcement of their
existence thirty years ago.
Amoneburg,10.12.2006
Michael Hahn
Dedicated to the memory
of
MATTHIAS HAHN
(15.2.1968 -17.5.1990),
a gentle young tnan, loving son,
and diligent helper of his father's work
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Introduction 1
The Sanskrit Text 51
2. Badaradvipa 53
4. Sasa 60
5. Candraprabha 68
6. Rupyavati 75
11. Mrga (I) 83
12. Mayura 91
19. Hastin 107
20. Candra 115
22. Mrga (11) 126
32. Siqlha 137
35. Sakyasiqlha 151
Index ofVerses 171
Index ofVerses of the Sakyasiqlhajataka 184
Selected Variant Readings 187
I
I
j .
I