Works Cited in Vimalamitra’s * Ārya - Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayaṭīkā and the *Ārya-Saptaśatikāprajñāpāramitāṭīkā

Vimalamitra’s (c. 8th cent.) Commentary on the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya (*Ārya-Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayaṭīkā, PHT, D no. 3818) and Commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom in 700 Lines (*Ārya-Saptaśatikāprajñāpāramitāṭīkā, SPT, D no. 3814) remain only in Tibetan. While the former has a colophon, in which the Indian author Vimalamitra is mentioned as one of the translators into Tibetan, the latter has no colophon. Therefore, it is unclear whether the SPT is a translation from an original Sanskrit work, with Vimalamitra as the author and a translator, or whether it was written by Vimalamitra in Tibetan. This paper examines the Tibetan translations of two citations of the sūtras in the SPT and PHT and shows that they diverge from Vimalamitra’s intentions. In particular, I argue that the SPT is a translation from Sanskrit by someone other than Vimalamitra

Art · Colophon · Linguistics · Literature · Perfection · Sanskrit · Theology · Chinese history and philosophy · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies