History of Buddhism (Chos-hbyung) by Bu-ston. Part 1. The Jewelry of Scripture

Abstract

To European readers Tibetan historiography is known from Tārānātha’s History of Buddhism in India, translated by two members of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, W.P. Wassilieff into Russian and A. Schifner into German. But this is not the only work of this kind which the Tibetan literature contains. There are many others. Among them The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet by the great scholar Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub-pa (pronounced Budon Rinchendub), also called Budon Rinpoche, is held in great esteem by Tibetan and Mongolian learned lamas. It is distinguished from the work of Tārānātha by the plan of its composition. It consists of three parts. The history proper is preceded by a systematical review of the whole of Buddhist lietrature so far as preserved in Tibet, and it is followed by a systematical catalogue of works, authors and translators of all the literature contained in the Kanjur and Tanjur collections. The first part of an overwhelming scientific value. It represents a synthesis of everything which directly or remotely bears the stamp of Buddhism, that synthesis which is also the ultimate aim of the European investigation of that religion. The whole of its literature, sacred and profane, is here reviewed as divided in periods, schools and subject-matter. No one was better qualified for such a task than Budon, for he was one of the redactors of the Kanjur and Tanjur great collections in their final form. As a matter of fact his History is but an introduction and a systematical table of contents to the Narthang editions of the Kanjur and Tanjur. His work has not failed to attract the attention of European scholarship. Wassilieff quotes it in the first volume of his Buddhism, Sarat Candra Das has translated some excerpts out of it. I myself have published a translation in French, in the Muséon 1905 (Notes de littérature bouddhique. La littérature Yogācāra d’après Bou-ston), of the part devoted to the literature of the Yogācāra school, and, in English, of the part dealing with the Abhidharma literature of the Sarvāstivādins, included in Prof. Takakusu’s work on the Abhidharma literature of the Sarvāstivādins. In the years 1927 and 1928 I have interpreted the work to my pupil E.E. Obermiller making it the subject of our seminary study. He then has made an English translation which was revised by me and is now published, thanks to the kind attention accorded to it by the Heidelberg Society for the Investigation of Buddhist Lore and by its president Professor M. Walleser.