The Composition of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2782278 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edward Conze (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1952 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 251-262 |
| Publication date | 1952-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0041-977X • E-ISSN: 1474-0699 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0041977x00083865 |
| OpenAlex | W2273101727 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
TheAṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, like many other Oriental books, is a collective work which has been subjected to additions and alterations in the course of the centuries, to suit the tastes of new generations. In this respect it does not differ from the Mahāvastu, the Lalitavistara, the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, the Suvarṇaprabhãsa, etc., which have all been slowly built up over a long period. If the historical investigation of the doctrinal development within the Mahāyāna is to make any progress, we must learn to distinguish between the different layers in these texts. Some work has been done already on the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Samādhirāja, the Suvarṇaprabhāsa, and the Kāraṇḍavyūha. Without hoping to exhaust the subject, I intend to point out in this article the most obvious accretions to the basic original text of the Aṣṭa°. This, in its turn, must have grown gradually, but in the present state of our knowledge we cannot, I think, trace out its growth. In any case, such analytical studies of ancient writings are tedious to compose and unattractive to read, and when carried too far they threaten to shatter and pulverize the very text which they set out to examine, as we have seen in the case of Homer and the New Testament
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| Citations per year | 0.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1978 - 2012 (35) |
| Highly cited | No |