In early medieval China, texts made up of quotes of other texts, in Chinese, were common - I call them "digest texts" based on the traditional Chinese term. Hundreds of them were in circulation (giving librarians a headache, but otherwise very popular).
The Heart Sutra is clearly one of these digest texts. And we know to within 16 years when it was made (645-661).
But I have now shown that the Sanskrit version of the Heart Sutra is a forgery. It was made and presented to make a Chinese digest text look like an authentic Indian Buddhist text, when it really wasn't.
It may be the only time such a caper was pulled off. Whoever did it was a clever and sneaky person (so I kind of admire them). But they were not very good at Sanskrit, so even with modern critical methods of restoring the "original", the basic text is full of mistakes.
This also more or less proves that the author or redactor was not the one who translated it into Sanskrit (unless they could not read their own writing).
But a lot of my work to date has been on how to fix the mistakes in the Sanskrit text. Modern mistakes are still obviously in need of correction, but what about the ancient mistakes?
Should I continue to restore a forgery? In particular, should I be bothering to show how they could have done a much better job of it? Or should I just call "bullshit" and leave it at that?
Not forgetting that millions of people around the world worship this text. So far, the millions seem quite unhappy about the effort to show that their worship is based on false pretenses. They are like, "Just piss off, we hate you". Making sure that all the evidence is presented seems like a good thing in the face of this attitude.
The Heart Sutra is clearly one of these digest texts. And we know to within 16 years when it was made (645-661).
But I have now shown that the Sanskrit version of the Heart Sutra is a forgery. It was made and presented to make a Chinese digest text look like an authentic Indian Buddhist text, when it really wasn't.
It may be the only time such a caper was pulled off. Whoever did it was a clever and sneaky person (so I kind of admire them). But they were not very good at Sanskrit, so even with modern critical methods of restoring the "original", the basic text is full of mistakes.
This also more or less proves that the author or redactor was not the one who translated it into Sanskrit (unless they could not read their own writing).
But a lot of my work to date has been on how to fix the mistakes in the Sanskrit text. Modern mistakes are still obviously in need of correction, but what about the ancient mistakes?
Should I continue to restore a forgery? In particular, should I be bothering to show how they could have done a much better job of it? Or should I just call "bullshit" and leave it at that?
Not forgetting that millions of people around the world worship this text. So far, the millions seem quite unhappy about the effort to show that their worship is based on false pretenses. They are like, "Just piss off, we hate you". Making sure that all the evidence is presented seems like a good thing in the face of this attitude.
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