The earliest text of Ch'an Buddhism : the long scroll

Abstract

This thesis aims to present a translation of the work that is usually considered to be the oldest source for Chinese Ch'an. I have titled it the Long Scroll rather than the Erh-ju ssu-hsing lun or Ta-mo lun because these latter titles are confusing and ill-defined. Long Scroll is a translation of the name Suzuki Daisetsu gave it. This name is the most appropriate for we do not know what its original title was. Moreover, a complete copy of it has not been found or identified. There is a work that is sometimes said to be older than the Long Scroll as a source of Ch'an. Sekiguchi Shindai has tried to prove that.the Ta-mo ch'an-shi lun was a work by Bodhidharma. However, Nakagawa Taka has put forward a more plausible argument that this work was written by Tao-hsin or a member of his group. The Ta-mo ch'an shih lun was probably the first Ch'an book of precepts or Vinaya, and in my opinion was for beginners, whereas the Long Scroll was for 'qualified Buddhists. Other authors have asserted that the 'wall-contemplation' and 'entry via Principle' that is unique to the theory attributed to Bodhidharma in the Long Scroll had its origin in the Chin-kang san-mei ching. However, Mizuno Kogen has shown that the sutra is a forgery that was written between 649 and 665A.D. The chapter of the Chin-kang san-mei ching in which 'wall-contemplation' appears also has terms created by Tao-hsin and Hung-jen, so it was probably written to give a scriptural basis for the theories preached by all the earlier Ch'an patriarchs. Therefore it is my opinion that the Long Scroll is definitely the oldest Ch'an text in existence. It has been long forgotten, and only attracted the attention of a modern scholar for the first time in 1935, when D.T.Suzuki discovered a manuscript of it that had been unearthed at Tun-huang. He found that the first half of it corresponded to the Erh-ju chung. that is in the Korean collection, the Ch'an-men ts'o-yao. In 1936 he published the first edition of the Long Scroll. This was accompanied by background information and some comments on the contents. It was revised with the aid of another manuscript, Stein 2715, and was printed in the Zenshisoshi-kenkyu II in 1951. In 1965 Tanaka Ryosho discovered three fragments of Tun-huang manuscripts. that corresponded to parts of the Long Scroll that had been identified by Suzuki. Show more