Eine buddhistische Kritik der indischen Gotter: Samkarasvamins Devatisayastotra mit Prajnavarmans Kommentar. Nach dem tibetischen Tanjur herausgegeben und ubersetzt.

• Author: Pecchia, Cristina
• Position: Book review

Eine buddhistische Kritik der indischen Gotter: Samkarasvamins Devatisayastotra mit Prajnavarmans Kommentar. Nach dem tibetischen Tanjur herausgegeben und ubersetzt. By JOHANNES SCHNEIDER. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, vol. 81. Vienna: Arbeitskreis FUR TIBETISCHE UND BUDDHISTISCHE STUDIEN UNIVERSITAT WIEN, 2014. Pp. viii + 195. 18 [euro].

This publication presents a critical edition and annotated German translation of Samkarasvamin's Devatisayastotra, "Praise of the (Buddha's) superiority over the gods," a hymn of twenty-one stanzas, and Prajnavarman's commentary on it, in their Tibetan versions. In the introduction, Johannes Schneider discusses philological, literary, and cultural aspects of the texts. His presentation of the textual witnesses is followed by a careful assessment of their relationships, also represented in a stemma. In the appendices, Schneider offers a new edition of the Sanskrit text of Samkarasvamin's hymn, which Norbu Shastri first edited and translated into English and Hindi in 1990, and Michael Hahn re-edited and translated in 2000 (for bibliographical references, see the book under review). The appendices also contain the indices of words and names in the hymn and the commentary in their Tibetan versions and a list of Sanskrit names with Tibetan equivalents, which makes it possible to best use the preceding indices when one consults the Sanskrit text of the hymn. All Tibetan entries, wherever possible, also include the Sanskrit equivalents.

With the present book, Schneider again takes up an early Buddhist hymn, as apologetic in nature as Udbhatasiddhasvamin's Visesastava and similar to the Devatisayastotra commented upon by Prajnavarman, of which Schneider provided the critical editions and German translations in 1993 (Der Lobpreis der Vorzuglichkeit des Buddha. Bonn: Indica et Tibetica Verlag). Just like the Visesastava, the Devatisayastotra appears in the Tanjur at the very beginning of the bstod tshogs volume. Information about the author is provided by Prajnavarman and the Tibetan historiographer Taranatha, who state that Samkarasvamin was Udbhatasiddhasvamin's younger brother and both were Brahmins converted to Buddhism. Taranatha places them in Magadha, in Kaniska's era (second cent.). Based on an inscription in Phanigiri, Schneider does not exclude the possibility that the hymn was composed at the beginning of the fourth century. A terminus ante quern for Prajnavarman's work is given by...