“Foshou Da Anban Shouyi Jing” is very important material to use in a study of the early stages of Chinese Buddhism and Taoist interpreted Buddhism. The hand-written scripture “Anban Shouyi Jing”, discovered at
There is another important issue that arises in the text of “Foshou Da Anban Shouyi Jing.” It is quite difficult to clearly distinguish the “main text” from “annotations”, since the text and annotations are mixed with each other. When trying to make a distinction between the relationship of these two scriptures, it is not only important to examine the corresponding relationship between the vocabularies used, but it is necessary to also closely examine the corresponding relationship between the meanings elaborated in these two scriptures.
The results of this study show that most of the contents that are assumed to be the “main text” of “Foshou Da Anban Shouyi Jing” also appear in the newly discovered “Anban Shouyi Jing”. The corresponding parts of these two scriptures bear a very close resemblance between the meanings elaborated and the vocabularies used. However, it is also true that there are points of terminological difference between the two texts. Therefore, we can infer that “Anban Shouyi Jing” has been interpreted a number of times in its history, and between the original version of “Foshou Da Anban Shouyi Jing” that has not yet been “paraphrased” (with paraphrases added) by Chen Huei, and the newly discovered version of “Anban Shouyi Jing, an “intermediate version” of “Anban Shouyi Jing” should be identified. This “intermediate version” of “Anban Shouyi Jing” can be identified in the form of the newly discovered “Anban Shouyi Jing.” It is also very likely that the contents of this version also include the “plain and explicit” interpretations by An Shigao himself.
Keyword:
An Shigao; Da Xiao Anban Jing; Jing (text); Zhu (annotation); ṣaṭ-kāraṇa