The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary

DETAILS : 

• Author : Osho
  
• Publisher : Divyansh Publications
  
• Hardcover : 422 Pages
  
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9380089376
  
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9789380089379
  
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 600 g 

ABOUT THE BOOK 

After the Torah, the Koran and the Gospels, the Indian literature of "The Perfection of Wisdom" has had the greatest impact on the religious consciousness of mankind. Its composition extended for over seven hundred years, and here we offer the reader the first two works which were composed in South India between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100. These documents are not only indispensable to those who wish to undersand the mentality of the East, they still carry a potent spiritual message; and those who desire to diminish their personal worries by the disciplined contemplation of spiritual truths could make no better choice.

FROM THE JACKET

After the Torah, the Koran and the Gospels, the Indian literature of the Perfection of Wisdom has had the greatest impact on the religious consciousness of mankind. Its composition extended for over seven hundred years, and here we offer the reader the first two works which were composed in South India between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100. These documents are not only indispensable to those who wish to understand the mentality of the East, they still carry a potent spiritual message; and those who desire to diminish their personal worries y the disciplined contemplation of spiritual; thought could make no better choice.

PREFACE 

The Two Versions

In this book the reader finds the same text presented in two versions, once in verse and once in prose. For early Mahayana’ Sutras that was quite a normal procedure. Generally speaking the versified versions are earlier, and in all cases they have been revised less than those in prose. The reason lies in that the verses are in dialect, the prose in generally correct Sanskrit. The dialect is nowadays known as “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit,” a term adopted by Professor F. Edgerton who first compiled its grammar and dictionary.

The Ratnaguna

The verse form of this Sutra is handed down to us under the name of Prajnaparamita-Ratnaguanasamcayagatha (abbreviated as Rgs), which consists of 302 “Verses on the Perfection of Wisdom Which Is the Storehouse of Precious Virtues,” the virtuous qualities being, as the Chinese translation adds, those of the “Mother of the Buddhas.” The text has acquired this title only fairly late in its history, for references to it occur only at XXIX 3 (idam gunasamcayanam) and XXVII 6 (ayu vihara gune ratanam), i.e. in the latest portions of the text. But Haribhadra, its editor, has not made it up from these hints because two verses from it are quoted by Candrakirti (ca 600) under the title of Arya-Samcayagatha.

The Ashta

Now as to the Sutra itself. First its title. Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita (abbreviated as Ashta or A) means “The Perfection of Wisdom in-tight Thousand Lines,” or slokas. A sloka is used to indicate a unit of 32 syllables. The Cambridge manuscript Add 866 of A.D. 1008 gives the actual number of slokas after each chapter, and added together they are exactly 8,411. Religious people are inclined to attribute their holy scriptures to divine inspiration, and they do not like to think of them as a historical sequence of utterances made by fallible men, The faithful in India and the Buddhist world in general assumed that all the PP. Sutras are equally the word of the Buddha, more or less abbreviated according to the faculty of understanding of the people and their zeal and spiritual maturity.’6 The first was that in 8,000 lines, or rather its precursor. This was then expanded into 10,000, 18,000, 25,000 and 100,000 flakes; and after that it was contracted to 2,500,700,500,300 (The Diamond Sutra), 150, 25 (The Heart sutra), and finally into one syllable (“A”). They are all anonymous and date between A.D. 50 and 700.

The Speakers

The Sutras of the Mahayana are dialogues. One must know the conventions behind their presentation, because what matters is not only what is said but who says it. First there are three of the best known of the “disciples” of the historical Buddha, technically known as “auditors” (sravaka, from Sru, to hear), because they have heard the doctrine directly from the Buddha’s lips. They are Subhuti, Sariputra and Ananda.

Relation to Preceding Literature

In its very first sentence the text proclaims itself as a Sutra of the traditional type. “Thus have I heard at one time”—the “I” here is Ananda, who is supposed to have recited also this Sutra soon after the Buddha’s Nirvana. That is, of course, a pious fiction which did not prevent others from taunting the authors of these Sutras with being mere “poets.”29 This is an allusion to a well-known saying in the scriptures of the older schools3° which had contrasted the new-fangled fabrications of “poets,” or “novelists” as we might say, with “the Sutras taught by the Tathagata himself, which are deep, deep in meaning, supramundane, with emptiness for their message.” The scene of the sermons is said to be near Rajagriha, on the Grdhrakuta-parvata, Mount Vulture Peak, a particularly desolate district, all stones and empty air. This location likewise is clearly unhistorical Modern scholars still disagree on the place of origin of the Prajnaparamita Some seek it in the Dravidian South, some in the Northwest and some in the Deccan. But none would look for it on the Vulture Peak in Magadha, the heartland of the old dispensation.