Notes on the Book of Zambasta

Extract

The Book of Zambasta is not without importance in the history of Buddhist studies. We know that Khotan was a major centre of Mahāyāna studies when Fa-hsien visited it about a.d. 400 on his way to India, and it had expanded in this direction when Hsüan-tsang in the 7th century spent several months in Khotan on his way back from India to China. Khotan was, if not the cradle, at any rate the stronghold of the Mahāyānist movement. We know of its importance in the transmission of Buddhist teaching to the East. Even the well-known term Zen represents Sanskrit dhyāna “meditation” only through the intermediacy of a Prakrit form such as the Khotanese loan-word jāna. In the Chinese Tripiṭaka we have translations made by Khotanese missionaries such as Devaprajña, Śikṣānanda, and Śīladharma. In the 5th century a certain marquis of An iang hou journeyed to Khotan in his youth to study the Dhyāna. A Chinese catalogue finished in a.d. 515 tells how eight Chinese monks came to Khotan and there heard the stories that later they made into the well-known collection “The Sūtra of the Wise man and the Fool”. The famous monk Jinagupta, who taught the Turks about Buddhist doctrines in the 6th century, had studied in Khotan for many years.