Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā

Rāṣṭrapāla-paripṛcchā (T. yul ’khor skyong gis zhus pa ཡུལ་འཁོར་སྐྱོང་གིས་ཞུས་པ།; C. Huguo pusahui [jing] 護國菩薩會[經]), or "The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1)," is an early Mahayana sutra that is included in the Ratnakuta collection.

The Princeton Dictionary states:

The Raṣṭrapāla represents a strand of early Mahāyāna (found also in such sūtras as the Kāśyapaparivarta and the Ugraparipṛcchā) that viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation because of their need for constant fund-raising from the laity and their excessive entanglements in local politics. The Rāṣṭrapāla strand of early Mahāyāna instead dedicated itself to forest dwelling (see araññavāsi) away from the cities, like the “rhinoceros” (khaḍgaviṣāṇa), and advocated a return to the rigorous asceticism (S. dhūtaguṇa; see P. dhutaṅga) that was thought to characterize the early sangha.

Text

The Vienna Translation Group states:

The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) is one of the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras and belongs to the Ratnakūṭa collection of the Chinese Tripiṭaka and the Tibetan Kangyur. Among the forty-nine works that constitute this collection, The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) is one of the few texts for which Indian originals are extant. The earliest available complete Sanskrit text is from a Nepalese manuscript dated to 1661, which was edited by Louis Finot and first published in St. Petersburg by the Académie Impériale des Sciences in 1901. The Nepalese manuscript is preserved at Cambridge University. Two other similar manuscripts are held in Paris and Tokyo. In addition, no less than four copies of the original Sanskrit text dated to the eighteenth to the twentieth century have surfaced from the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP).

Beginning in the third century ᴄᴇ, The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) was translated into Chinese at least three times. The earliest extant translation, the Deguang taizi jing (德光太子經, Taishō 170), was prepared by Dharmarakṣa (c. 233–310) and completed in the year 270. In the late sixth century, The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) was translated a second time by Jñānagupta and Dharmagupta under the title of Huguo pusa hui (護國菩薩會, Taishō 310, pp. 457–78). Finally, the text was translated a third time into Chinese in 994 by Dānapāla and given the title Huguo zunzhe suowen dacheng jing (護國尊者所問大乘經, Taishō 321).

In the early ninth century ᴄᴇ, The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) was translated into Tibetan by the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé in cooperation with the Indian scholars Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, and Munivarman. In the Degé Kangyur, this text comprises thirty folios. It was critically edited and compared to the Lhasa, Narthang, and Peking recensions in 1952 by Jacob Ensink in the context of his study and translation of the Sanskrit text.

Historical background

The Vienna Translation Group states:

Based on the extant Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan recensions of the sūtra, at least two strata of the text can be identified: (1) passages that have parallels in Dharmarakṣa’s earliest Chinese translation (270 ᴄᴇ), and (2) passages that are found only in the later Chinese and Tibetan versions as well as the extant Sanskrit translation from the late seventeenth century. About fifty percent of the content of the extant Sanskrit and Tibetan editions is missing in the earliest Chinese translation. The later parts consist of some two hundred forty-eight verses out of a total of three hundred fifty-three, and merely a few passages in prose. They are mostly located at the beginning of the text and focus on the extensive praise of the body of the Buddha in verse form, a typical feature of later Mahāyāna discourses. This challenges the widely-held assumption that in Mahāyāna scriptures, verse tends to be older than prose.

The earlier layer of the text is largely in prose. Only one of the tetrads praising the qualities of bodhisattvas is followed by verses (namely, verses 72–81, which concern things that thoroughly purify the enlightened conduct of bodhisattvas). The short section condemning the conduct of corrupt monks is an even mix of prose and verse. The story of Puṇyaraśmi contains four passages written in verse. By contrast, all passages that were introduced into the text later are written in verse (except for short sections at the beginning of the sūtra describing the assembly and the acts of bodhisattva Prāmodyarāja). Comparing the earlier with the later translation, the following observations can be made:

The older parts of the text feature a number of themes that are considered representative of early Mahāyāna development. There is an emphasis on retreating into the wilderness, engaging in austere discipline, and dedicating all efforts to a correct way of practice, i.e., with the mindset of a renunciant. Such measures reflect a resistance on the part of many early Mahāyāna proponents to the increasing interactions of monasteries with society, which was accompanied by their strong determination to retreat into the wilderness, in order to return to the original path taught and exemplified by the Buddha. Because of the utmost importance accorded to the topic of retreating into the forests in this text, the Sanskrit term araṇya has been rendered literally as “forest” in this translation, although the equivalent Tibetan term is dgon pa, which is normally rendered as “solitude” or “monastery.” In reaction to perceived dangers of worldly interactions, fellow monks, in the earlier parts of the text, are criticized for their pretentious and inappropriate behavior and perfidious intentions, and even more so in some of the parts added later, where these corrupt monks are also held responsible for the decline of the Dharma.

The narrative of Puṇyaraśmi, who is the Buddha in one of his previous lives, forms the largest part of the text and the narrative centerpiece of the sūtra. It also belongs to the older layer of the text, as does its central theme of renunciation entailing abstinence from all kinds of sensual pleasure. The text concludes with a praise of the sūtra itself, underscoring its authenticity and beneficent powers, and describes the immense merit that follows from reciting it, along with severe drawbacks that befall those who reject it.

Supplementing the earlier material, and in some cases contrasting with it, the later additions include a list of bodhisattvas present in the assembly and a long set of verses summarizing most of the Jātakas‍—recounting fifty previous lives of the Buddha and his accumulation of merit as a bodhisattva‍—as well as verses that recount the recalcitrance of certain fellow monks16 and that expose corruption in the monastic community. Many of these parts seem to be responding to hostile reactions toward the Mahāyāna movement and contain sharp exhortations to follow the proper path and the footsteps of the Buddha.

Content

The Vienna Translation Group states:

The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla (1) can be roughly divided into two sections. The first section mainly revolves around the Buddha addressing the questions about the nature of bodhisattva conduct posed by Rāṣṭrapāla, a newly ordained monk who had joined the Buddha’s assembly in Rājagṛha on Vulture’s Peak. In the second section, the Buddha proceeds to provide an illustration of exemplary conduct by recalling an episode in one his former lives, during the time of the Buddha Siddhārthabuddhi. As prince Puṇyaraśmi, the son of the influential and wealthy king Arciṣmān, he renounced his luxurious and extravagant life in his father’s estate to devote himself to the path of the Dharma and practice in the solitude of the forest for the benefit of all beings.

Translation

• Vienna Translation Group (2023), Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā, "Introduction", 84000 Reading Room