The Bodhisattvapitaka: Its Doctrines, Practices, and their Position in Mahayana Literature.

• Author: Prebish, Charles S.
• Position: Review

By ULRICH PAGEL. Buddhica Brittanica, series continua, vol. 5. Tring. Herts.: THE INSTITUTE OF BUDDHIST STUDIES, 1995. Pp. xvi + 478.

The volume under review is a revised version of Ulrich Pagel's doctoral dissertation, supervised by Dr. Tadeusz Skorupski. It is presented in five logically structured and carefully executed chapters, followed by three appendices (the third of which, titled "The Maharatnakuta Collection: A Bibliographical Guide," is an extremely useful research tool), and a very comprehensive bibliography. Pagel confesses in his introduction to the book that he is certainly not the first person to have noticed references to the Bodhisattvapitaka in the post-nikaya Buddhist literature, noting such eminent scholars as Etienne Lamotte, Jean Przyluski, Alex Wayman, and Anthony Warder who have mentioned this source; and to Priscilla Pedersen and Nancy Schuster (in the 1970s) for having explored some of the references in the wider context of Mahayana literature. Nonetheless, it remained for Pagel to explore fully the particular text known as the Bodhisattvapitakasutra (henceforth Bdp).

In his introduction, he cautiously traces the earliest references to this text, a process complicated by the fact that while it exists in Tibetan and Chinese translations, there is no record of a surviving Indic version. Pagel locates the Sutra among the forty-nine texts in the Ratnakuta collection, pointing out that roughly half the texts in this collection focus specifically on the bodhisattva. Pagel concludes: "The longest and most important bodhisattva sutra of the Ratnakuta is the Bdp. In volume, it occupies roughly one-seventh of the whole collection and is specifically dedicated to the paramita practice" (p. 3). Pagel believes, from both internal and external evidence, that the Bdp should be counted among the earliest and most influential texts on the development of the bodhisattva doctrine. Despite the above claim, he also notes that precise information about its history remains a desideratum. On the one hand, he cites Wayman's suspicion (presented in The Ethics of Tibet, 9) that the text is associated with the Mahasanghika school, and Warder's suggestion that it is associated with the Bahusrutiya canon. On the other hand, Pagel mentions Bareau's reference to a Bodhisattvapitaka in the Dharmaguptaka school. These disparities complicate the matter considerably, for, as Pagel points out, this creates the possibility of either a Mahasanghika or...