T'an Ching (Platform Scripture)

by Carl Bielefeldt and Lewis Lancaster
Philosophy East and West
vol.25, no. 2
P 197- 212
(C) by University Press of Hawaii

P197

The T'an ching,(a) or Platform Sutra, has been a
volume of immense popularity among the Ch'an
Buddhists of East Asia for many centuries. Purported
to be the teaching of the Sixth Patriarch of the
Southern School of Ch'an, it has achieved the
highest status possible for a Buddhist text by being
awarded the title of ching(b) (suutra), which places
it on equal ground with the words attributed
directly to the Buddha. In the latter half of the
T'ang dynasty, when the various schools of Chinese
Buddhism began to be amalgamated and absorbed into
one another, the importance of Ch'an increased; and
as it became the dominant school in China, the T'an
ching rose to the prominent position it has
continued to hold right up to the present day. In
the West as well, partly because of the writings of
D. T. Suzuki and the international impact of
Japanese culture, Ch'an and Zen have become
extremely popular; and it is not surprising,
therefore, to find the T'an ching ranking as one of
the best known of all Buddhist texts. Because of its
significance for Asia as well as for the West, the
book has received much attention from both
researchers and translators. The following comments
will attempt to provide a summary of the work that
has been done on the text by surveying some of the
major textual and historical scholarship and
evaluation the various English translations.

For the past 500 years the T'an ching, known and
studied in China, has been a version of the text
included in the Ming dynasty edition of the Buddhist
canon (1440).(1) This version represents the work of
a Yuan dynasty monk named Tsung-pao(c), who produced
a new edition of the text in 1291 on the basis of
three different manuscripts.(2) In 1900 another
version of the text was discovered in the famous
Buddhist cave library at Tun-huang(d). The exact
date of this manuscript is unknown but it is
considered by scholars to be a work of the last
years of the T'ang dynasty.(3) Thus, it is the
earliest extant copy of the T'an ching, dating back
perhaps to within a century-and-a-half of the death
of the Sixth Patriarch (713) . Naturally, the
discovery of this ancient text created great
excitement in the scholarly world, and precipitated
a thorough reevaluation of the history of the work.

The Tun-huang manuscript, however, is by no
means a perfect copy: it contains a number of
obvious corruptions of various sorts. Consequently,
the text cannot be read without considerable
editing. Fortunately, two other early copies related
to the Tun-huang manuscript were discovered in Japan
in the 1930s. One is known as the Koshoji text(e), a
Northern Sung printed copy probably derived
ultimately from an edition, no longer extant, done
in 967. The other, known as the Daijoji text(f), is
a handwritten manuscript traditionally attributed to
the Japanese Soto Zen patriarch Dogen(g)
(1200-1253) . The exact historical relationship
between these two is not clear; in general, however,
they are quite similar and appear to represent a
textual tradition not too different from the

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Tun-huang text. Hence, they are of great value in
determining the reading of the Tun-huang
manuscript.(4)

A comparison of the text discovered at Tun-huang
with the version published in the Ming canon reveals
the extent to which the T'an ching changed over the
course of more than four centuries. The Ming canon
edition is almost twice the length of the earlier
work; adding much new material and omitting certain
sections, it also considerably rearranges the order
of the content, and in general refines and
elaborates the text. These changes do not
necessarily originate in the Ming canon text itself;
some can be traced to earlier versions. Moreover,
the possibility remains open that there were other
versions of the T'an ching in circulation even at
the time when the Tun-huang text was copied. This
means that the precise historical relationship
between the earliest and latest versions of the work
now known to us cannot be determined exactly. Still,
the discovery of the other early texts such as the
Koshoji and Daijoji has made it clear that the Ming
canon edition represents the final stage in a long
and gradual process of textual development.(5)

Despite their many differences, the Tun-huang
and Ming canon versions do not seriously conflict in
basic doctrinal content. Yet certain of the
differences are significant in that they reflect
changing attitudes toward the text and its message.
For example, the Tun-huang version devotes
considerable space to emphasizing the correct
transmission of the T'an ching. In these sections
(38, 47, 55-57) a description of the complier
Fa-hai(h) and his lineage is recorded, and the
transmission of the text itself is said to verify
the transmission of the dharma. These sections have
been entirely dropped from the Ming canon edition,
suggesting that the status of the text changed, over
the years, from that of an esoteric document to be
handed down from master to disciple as a sign of
initiation into the true understanding of the
doctrine, to that of a popular religious treatise
available to all the interested.

The Tun-huang text also emphasizes the
importance of the "Formless Precepts." The title
itself refers to these precepts, and the structure
of the Tun-huang version is clearly organized around
the ceremony in which they are given. The text
(sections 20-23) not only outlines this ceremony but
includes instructions for those who participate in
it. The word "platform," (t'an(i)), by which the
text is known, probably refers to the ordination
platform (chieh-t'an(j)) especially constructed for
this ceremony. (6) Little is known of the details of
such rituals, but they appear to have been an
important element in the T'ang dynasty religious
life. Some scholars have felt that the Formless
Precepts of the Tan ching represent a major
innovation in the interpretation of the ritual, and
that the teaching of this new interpretation was a
primary concern of the original work.(7)

The Ming canon edition, while retaining a
somewhat different version of the ritual, drops all
reference to the Formless Precepts in the title and
reorganizes the text in such a way that the
centrality of the ceremony is obscured. The section
dealing with the Formless Precepts (Chapter VI) is
placed at the end of

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the main body of the text. The teaching of the
praj~naapaaramitaa and the following question-and-
answer period (I and II), which in the Tun-huang
versions represented the final stage of the
ceremony, intended for those who had taken the
Formless Precepts, is shifted to the beginning of
the sermon. In this way, the Ming canon edition
emphasizes the sermon and relegates the ritual to a
secondary position, suggesting the early ritual
features of the T'an Ching were later overshadowed,
and that the text came to be valued more for its
teachings of wisdom and mediation than for the
Formless Precepts.

Whatever the interpretation of the specific
textual changes which occured in the historical
development of the T'an ching, the existence of this
developing textual tradition is of considerable
interest for the study of Buddhist texts. Few of the
major texts of Chinese Buddhism have been subject to
the same kind of development.(8) Although there do
exist widely differing versions for many works,
these are the result of different translations from
Sanskrit texts, many of which were themselves in the
process of development. Once put into Chinese,
however, a given translation has been handed down
with remarkable fidelity. Consequently, the number
and variety of ancient texts of the T'an ching offer
the scholar a rare opportunity to witness the
historical growth of a Chinese Buddhist text.

The fact that the T'an ching existed in a
variety of versions has inevitably raised the
question of the nature of the original text. Certain
features of the Tun-huang text suggest that this
version may represent a composite put together from
several sources. The text purports to transmit a
sermon delivered by Hui-neng(k) and recorded by his
disciple Fa-hai. This sermon, however, and the
ceremony which it accompanies constitute less than
half of the total text (sections 1, 12-37); the
remainder is devoted to Hui-neng's biography (2-11),
to interviews with various monks and laymen and to
warnings about the transmission of the suutra itself
(38-57). Many scholars, analyzing these various
sections of the Tun-huang text, have felt that the
sermon section probably represents the original
nucleus, to which the other material was later
affixed.(9) But there is serious doubt among
scholars as to whether this sermon actually records
the teaching of Hui-neng.

In the cave library at Tun-huang where the T'an
ching was discovered there were also a number of
texts(10) recording the sayings of Hui-neng's
disciple Shen-hui(l). A comparison of these with the
T'an ching reveals similarities too close to be
accidental.(11) It is possible, of course, that as a
disciple Shen-hui had before him a copy of the T'an
ching, but nowhere in his recorded sayings does he
mention it. Other sections of the suutra indicate
that the text was strongly influenced by Shen-hui or
his school. Section 49, for example, seems clearly
to predict the date of Shen-hui's famous attack on
the Northern School of Ch'an. Moreover, the earliest
reliable reference to the T'an ching, an inscription
by Wei Ch'u-hou(m) (d. 828) contains a passage
which, though its exact interpretation is the
subject of dispute, definitely indicates that
Shen-hui's school

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played an important role in the early development of
the work.(12))From such evidence scholars agree that
the Tun-huang version including the core sermon must
be considered in part, at least, the work of
Shen-hui's school, There is little question that the
T'an ching existed in some form prior to the version
discovered at Tun-huang. A great deal of scholarly
work has been done in an attempt to determine the
nature and authorship of the earliest form of the
text. Three major theories have been advanced on
this issue.

The first, advocated by the reknown Japanese
scholar Ui Hakuju, has been in general supported by
the late D. T. Suzuki and many other scholars in
Japan.(13) Ui held that the earliest T'an ching was
made up of Hui-neng's sermon, including the
biographical sections, as recorded by his disciple
Fa-hai. To this was added material from the latter
half of the Sixth Patriarch's life, probably by
Fa-hai himself. Subsequently, the book fell into the
hands of the Shen-hui school, was reworked, and a
text similar to the Tun-huang versions resulted.

In an attempt to reconstruct the probable form
of the original text, Ui tried to eliminate those
sections he felt had been added.(14) In doing this
he removed, for example, all of the material dealing
with the transmission of the suutra; more
importantly, he also excluded all references to the
struggle between the Northern and Southern schools
of Ch'an, attributing them all to Shen-hui's
tradition. Such sectarian disputes, Ui felt,
represented later battles within Ch'an which had no
place in the original T'an ching. In this way he
eliminated some forty percent of the text, including
such important sections as the famous poem exchange
with Shen-hsiu(n) (sections 4-8), the criticism of
the Northern school's teaching regarding meditation
(in section 14), the attack on gradual enlightenment
(16), and the definition of the Threefold Training
(40-41).

A second theory on the original text was
advanced by the famous Chinese scholar Hu Shih, and
is favored today in Japan by, among others, the
Ch'an historian Sekiguchi Shindai.(15) Hu Shih, who
devoted much of his career to the study of Shen-hui,
came to the conclusion that it was he who had almost
singlehandedly created the Southern school of Ch'an.
Similarities, therefore, between Shen-hui's
teachings and those of the T'an ching could easily
be explained: there was no original Hui-neng sermon
and no original Fa-hai text; rather, the entire T'an
ching was the creation of Shen-hui himself, or as Hu
Shih later thought, of Shen-hui's disciples. Though
the Tun-huang text is not the earliest form of the
work, this earliest form taught, as does the
Tun-huang version, the doctrine of the Southern
school of Shen-hui, and was intended from the outset
to be a refutation of the Northern tradition of
Shen-hsiu.

The most recent, and in some ways the boldest,
theory has been proposed by Yanagida Seizan of
Hanazono University.(16) Yanagida agrees with Ui
that there was an original text independent of
Shen-hui's school; but he also concurs with Hu Shih
that Hui-neng never taught the T'an ching. He points
out that a careful comparison of the Tun-huang text
with the sayings of Shen-hui reveals that, while
much of it is identical, certain doctrinal conflicts
are evident. For

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example, Shen-hui taught a tradition of thirteen
Ch'an patriarchs, (17) whereas the T'an ching
(section 51) gives a list of seven Buddhas and
thirty-three patriarchs. Again, Shen-hui's
sayings(18) contain a definition of the threefold
training which the T'an ching (section 41)
specifically rejects as the doctrine of the Northern
school.

Yanagida argues that such discrepancies are
explained only by the influence of a tradition
separate from Hui-neng and from Shen-hui's Southern
school, but at the same time opposed to Northern
Ch'an. The answer to this problem may lie, he
suggests, in the Niu-t'ou(o) or "Oxhead" school. It
was this school, he claims, which must have taught
the patriarch list appearing in the Tun-huang text;
and it was this school which emphasized the Formless
Precepts and the doctrine of the threefold training
found in the T'an ching. He goes on to suggest that
the attribution of the T'an ching to Fa-hai may
originally have been a reference, not to a disciple
of Hui-neng, but to Ho-lin Fa-hai(p), a disciple of
Hsuan-su(q) (668-752), the Sixth Patriarch of the
Niu-t'ou school.(19)

On the basis of such arguments Yanagida
constructs the following theory: the earliest
version of the T'an ching probably taught the
Formless Precepts and the doctrine of the
praj~naa-samaadhi, as well as the thirty-three
patriarchs, all of which can be traced to the
Niu-t'ou school.(20) Sometime around the death of
Shen-hui (762) the work was taken up by his school
and attributed to Hui-neng. Hence, Fa-hai was made
Hui-neng's disciple, and the biography of the Sixth
Patriarch of the Southern school was added, along
with the material from Shen-hui's teachings. The
Tun-huang version was. then, the result of a process
of assimilation and borrowing, attaining its final
form sometime during the last two decades of the
eighth century.

At present there is no way of determining which
of these theories is correct, but they are of
considerable interest because of their differing
interpretations of the background of the T'an ching.
It was Hu Shih who first introduced the teachings of
Shen-hui to modern scholarship and revealed the
extent of his role in the establishment of the
Southern tradition. Under the impact of this
revelation the early history of Ch'an Buddhism has
been rewritten, with Shen-hui at the very center as
the true founder of the school of sudden
enlightenment and the creator of the legend of the
Sixth Patriarch. Hui-neng himself has slipped into
the background, becoming a barely preceptible figure
about whom virtually nothing is known, either of his
life or his teachings.

Hu Shih saw in Shen-hui a great revolutionary
teacher and a major figure in the development of
Chinese Buddhism(21); Ui Hakuju, on the other hand,
saw him to be a petty politician, who had used the
name of the Sixth Patriarch to destroy his enemies.
Ui acknowledged Shen-hui's importance as the major
factor in the rise of the Southern school, but he
accused Shen-hui of having achieved that importance
by slandering his Northern opponents and distorting
Hui-neng's position. Shen-hui's attack on the
Northern school Ui felt to be justified neither
historically nor doctrinally: it was purely a
political power

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play. Writing in prewar Japan, Ui was particularly
critical of the way in which Shen-hui, who had once
studied under the Northern master Shen-hsiu, had
subsequently turned on his former teacher and fellow
disciples in the North. This was treachery; and the
early demise of Shen-hui's Ho-tse(r) school was the
karmic consequence.(22)

Yanagida's appraisal of Shen-hui is somewhat
different, for he sees him as but one feature in the
complex landscape of eighth-century Buddhism, and
his teaching as but one stage in the development of
T'ang dynasty Ch'an toward its full expression in
Ma-tsu(s) and his Hung-chou(t) school. Shen-hui was
a revolutionary figure, but like so many
revolutionaries his understanding ultimately
belonged to the system he attacked. Alongside him
there were others, in the Niu-t'ou tradition and
elsewhere, who were also in rebellion, and whose
teachings played at least as important a role as his
own in the growing and changing Ch'an movement.(23)

Thus, there is a sense in which the Shen-hui
tradition seems to be repeating in twentieth-century
scholarship its original meteoric rise to prominence
and subsequent rapid decline. More important,
however, is the fact that this continuing scholarly
reevaluation of Shen-hui and of the T'an ching
represents only one aspect of a larger process of
"demythologization'' of Ch'an history. Textual
discoveries, particularly those at Tun-huang, have
provided a great deal of early material with which
to check and reassess the traditional Ch'an
histories. The scientific approach to the evaluation
of such materials has provided a method for
analyzing and tracing the development of the Ch'an
movement. This has meant that the thousand-year-old
tradition of the Bodhidharma school--a tradition
which took centuries to build--has suddenly
crumbled.(24) At the same time, and as a direct
result, there have appeared a great many important
new questions on the history of Ch'an, all of which
bear directly on the T'an ching. What was, for
example, the real teaching of the so-called Northern
school, and in what sense can it be said to have
advocated gradual enlightenment? What was the
relationship between the various schools of eighth
century Buddhism--Ho-tse, Niu-t'ou, Pao-t'ang(u),
Hung-chou, and others--all of which claimed descent
from Bodhidharma? What was the relationship between
these schools and the major doctrinal schools such
as T'ien-t'ai(v) Hua-yen(w), and San-lun(x)? All
these questions and more have been discovered in the
debris of the Ch'an legend and have become the
subject of scholarly research and debate.

The historian's destruction of the legendary
raises more than just questions of history; it also
raises the sort of philosophical problems not
unfamiliar to modern Christians. Buddhist doctrine,
of course, does not rest on an historical message;
and to that extent it is undamaged by any attack on
its traditional view of history. Yet, it is a fact
that the Ch'an and Zen schools, in particular, have
placed great emphasis throughout their history, on
the importance of the actual transmission of the
dharma from Saakyamuni through Bodhidharma to

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the present living teacher. In the Zen monasteries
of Japan this lineage of transmission is still
recited daily. The historian's research raises the
question of how that transmission is now to be
understood; or, put more broadly, it raises the
question of the meaning of history for Buddhism.

Yet the historian too might be asked to explain
his understanding of history. After the legends have
been exposed and a factual account of Ch'an
presented, what sort of Ch'an is it? Does this Ch'an
of history have relevance for an understanding of
the essential Ch'an teaching? This question was once
put forcefully to Hu Shih by D. T. Suzuki in the
pages of this journal.(25) To Hu Shih, Ch'an was a
Chinese philosophical school to be understood in
terms of intellectual history; to D. T. Suzuki, the
essential nature of Ch'an was an inner experience,
and as such could never be discovered in the bare
facts of history. We do not have to agree with
either party in this dispute; but the question
remains: What was the point of the Ch'an myths and
legends? Why were they created, and what did they
intend to teach?

Modern research on Ch'an Buddhism has been going
on in China and Japan for half a century or more,
yet it remains a fact that very little of this work
has found its way into Western scholarship, and
still less into ordinary educated discourse. A
similar situation prevails, of course, not only for
Ch'an but for Far Eastern Buddhism in general: it is
particularly striking, however, in the case of
Ch'an, which has enjoyed widespread popularity and
has inspired a steady flow of literature, not all of
it bad. Despite their considerable number, the works
on Ch'an and Zen presently available to the English
reader give, with very few exceptions, almost no
indication of the recent scholarly advances in the
field. For better or for worse, the Western view of
Ch'an and Zen remains largely mythological; and this
state of affairs is reflected in most of the
translations of the T'an ching available in English.

The pioneer translation was made in 1930 by Wong
Mou-lam from the Ming canon edition.(26) This
version was later incorporated into Dwight Goddard's
anthology, A Buddhist Bible (1932).(27) For three
decades this was the translation known and read by
Westerners; and it became a key document among the
small following attracted to Zen Buddhism in the
1930s, and particularly among the larger post-World
War II groups which took up the practice of the
religion. Although the new and exciting textual
discoveries were published and discussed in Japan
prior to the war, there was a long delay before this
material filtered into Western publications, caused
in part by the tragic consequences of the war and
the long period of recovery. Indeed, it was not
until 1960 that Wing-tsit Chan brought out a
translation of the Tun-huang edition, using the
Koshoji print to make editorial changes in the
text.(28) D. T. Suzuki in the same Year published a
partial translation in his Manual of Zen
Buddhism,(29) based on his edition of the Tun-huang
in which he also relied heavily on the readings of
the ancient Japanese manuscripts. This was the
beginning of a revival of interest in the T'an
ching, and two years later Charles Luk produced a
new translation

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of the Ming canon edition in Ch'an and Zen
Teaching.(30) In 1964 Paul and George Fung
retranslated the Ming canon edition.(31) Yampolsky
capped this renewed interest of the 1960s with a
scholarly study and retranslation of the Tun-huang
text (1967).(32) Added to this list of publications
has been yet another translation by Heng Yin of the
Ming canon edition, including an interesting
commentary by the contemporary Ch'an master Hsuan
Hua (1971).(33)

Two general statements might be made about these
English translations of the T'an ching, First, it is
apparent from a perusal of these works that their
general level of scholarship and application of
scholarly skills is by no means on a par with works
of scholars such as Ui, Hu Shih, and
Yanagida--Yampolsky's translation being the major
exception to this statement. Consequently, for the
reader of the translations there is little available
to correct the distortions of legend and tradition.
Second, though certain of the translations are
clearly more worthy of our attention than others,
taken as a whole they present a fascinating spectrum
of the translator's art. A major religious document
such as the T'an ching, central to a spiritual
tradition and popular throughout the entire culture,
naturally attracts the attention of the translators.
It is not surprising, therefore, nor is it
inappropriate, that we should have a considerable
number and variety of English versions of the T'an
ching. Yet it should be noted that, while
translation from the Chinese inevitably involves
much interpretation, the T'an ching does not present
the kinds of problems that one faces in such
classical philosophical works as the Tao-te ching,
or in many other Ch'an writings. Compared to such
texts the style of the T'an ching is remarkably
clear and straightforward. Consequently, differences
in translation here tend to depend more on the
translator's attitudes toward, and abilities in,
their art rather than on serious differences in
their interpretation of the content of the text.

In part, the style of translation in these
volumes depends on the purposes for which they have
been made. Wong, Luk, and Heng Yin are apologists
for the teaching and for the traditional
interpretations; therefore, they undertake the task
of translation out of a desire to make the ideas and
doctrines available to the general reader.
Yampolsky, on the other hand, falls into the
category of translators whose interest is purely
scholarly, and whose work is intended to provide a
study based on the philological and historical
evidence. Wing-tsit Chan may be called a cultural
"informant" in that he has spent a long and
productive career engaged in the introduction of the
classical culture of China to the West. D. T.
Suzuki, in his English publications, belongs in part
to this "informant" classification, but since there
is no real separation in his writings between his
Japanese heritage and his Buddhism, he functions
both as a cultural "informant" and an apologist for
the ideas. For translators such as Wong, Luk, chan,
and Suzuki, all educated in and knowledgeable of the
tradition about which they write, one can sense a
freedom in translation style which, on the one hand,
provides the reader with a smooth and flowing text.

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but on the other, has the danger of departing from
the original so as to distort its meaning. At times
this freedom of style represents an unacknowledged
reliance on the traditional commenatries, and the
translation of a term may be the commentary's remark
rather than a literal equivalent for the text.

In Wong, we often find this kind of gloss in the
text. For example, where he gives the expression,
"You should know the merit for studying this
sutra..." (p. 29) the Chinese has no character for
"studying" and this addition has, in fact, changed
the meaning of the sentence. Another example of this
sort of translation, as well as of Wong's free use
of poetic license can be seen in the lines from a
verse:

A Master of the Buddhist Canon as well as
the teaching of the Dhyana School
May be likened unto the blazing sun sitting
high in his Meridian Tower (p. 33).

The first line seems to be from a commentary and has
no direct resemblance to the Chinese text. In the
second line the translator has added the colorful
adjective "blazing," and made the mundane word,
"space," into "Meridian Tower," while the locative
indicator has become "sitting high." When Luk deals
with this same stanze he translates it more
literally as:

Real Knowledge of the Teaching and of the Mind
is like the sun in space (pp. 36-37).

Wong's version may be an attempt at poetry, but it
is his own poem and no longer expresses the form or
style of the original Chinese. This freedom of style
includes abbreviation as well as elaboration. A line
which Luk gives as.

He who is awakened to the Dharma (of the mind)
without a thought, thoroughly knows all
Dharmas (p. 36)

becomes in Wong's translation:

Those who understand this way of "thoughtlessness"
will know everything (p. 32).

Christmas Humphries in his preface to the 1953
edition remarks that Wong has made use of "somewhat
quaint phraseology," (p. 5) and this can be noted in
one sentence which also holds a key to his principle
of translation:

But if you do not interpret my words literally,
you may perhaps learn a wee bit of the meaning
of Nirvana (p. 74).

Luk's translation is in many ways an improvement
over the earlier one by Wong. He is a translator who
is not generally given support by the academic
community and his work is attacked for being too
free in interpretation and for containing glaring
errors. These censures are partly deserved, for
there are

P206

places where one finds careless errors, even of
grammar. A phrase he translates "All Sumeru mounts,"
(p. 31) can only be "Sumeru and all the mountains."
His choice of equivalents is also sometimes
unfortunate and misleading, as in the line, "does
not contain a single dharma" (p. 31). Here he has
used "contain" for the character te(y) thereby
obscuring an important Mahaayaana doctrine. The
equivalent generally used is "attain," and this
attainment or nonattainment of dharmas is a key
point discussed in detail in the
praj~naapaaramitaa.(34) These small criticisms, when
taken one by one, may seem pedantic; however, when
the number of questionable passages mounts over the
entire work, the translation cannot be accepted
without serious qualifications.

D. T. Suzuki, another of these free translators,
has aimed his work at a popular audience and uses no
footnotes or other obvious scholarly apparatus. When
we compare this translation of the Tun-huang text
with Yampolsky or Chan we get the following results:

Suzuki: "You are equal to the Buddha" (p. 83).
Yampolsky: "Your Dharma body will be the same as the
Buddha's" (p. 148).

Suzuki: "If there were not people in the world" (p.
86).
Yampolsky: "If we were without this wisdom" (p.
151).

Suzuki: "All sutras and writings are said to have
their existence because of the people of the
world" (p. 86).
Yampolsky: "All sutras exist because they are spoken
by man" (p. 151).

Suzuki: "All objects without exception are of
Self-nature" (p. 82).
Chan: "All dharmas are nothing but the self-nature"
(p. 71).

These differences do not imply that Suzuki has
mistranslated the passages, but they are an
indication of the importance of the edition work he
has done. In these examples, Suzuki has relied on
the Koshoji and Daijoji texts, and the result is a
translation closer in some ways to these documents
than to the original Tun-huang manuscript.

The most negative aspect of Suzuki's short
selection is his treatment of section 48, where a
segment of the Tun-huang text is omitted without a
single indication of this fact (p. 87). The result
of such discoveries is a growing mistrust of the
translation and a constant doubt as to whether it is
a faithful or even adequate picture of the original.

Suzuki shares with the other free translators a
tendency to employ equivalents for the Buddhist
technical terms that are not in general use. In his
version, fa(z) (usually dharmas) has become
"objects" (p. 82) , and hsing(aa) (usually
"practice") is rendered "live" (p. 83). Whatever
merit such translations may have in a given context,
they tend to hide the fact that the terms in the
T'an ching are to be found, for the most part, in
general Buddhist usage, and therefore to produce a
translation which artificially separates the text
from the mainstream

P207

of Buddhist published works. The vocabulary and
concepts of this Ch'an text belong to the tradition
of Mahaayaana Buddhism; and this is an important
feature of the work, which should not be lost in
translation. Only when Ch'an texts are treated as
Buddhist documents will we begin to see Ch'an
thought as a part of, rather than an aberration of,
basic Mahaayaana doctrine.

Despite these objections to Suzuki's translation
it must be pointed out that he is one of the most
successful writers in the field, and his work has
proved by its popularity and influence the
importance it holds and undoubtedly will continue to
hold in Buddhist studies. It is interesting to note
that Suzuki's work in English is in many ways very
different from his Japanese publications, in which
he has established himself as a leading scholar,
producing editions of Sanskrit and Chinese texts,
making indices and studies not intended for a
popular audience. Thus, his image in Japan is not
the one he has chosen to show to the English reader.

In contrast to these free-style translators, we
have the example of a Westerner, Heng Yin (her
dharma name) who is caught in an over literal
interpretation of the Chinese. This literalness
results in awkward phrasing and often fails to make
the meaning clear for the English reader. Thus we
find the sentence, "Just then suddenly return;
obtain the original mind" (p. 133), which in English
syntax implies an imperative. Luk reads this as,
"Instantly the Bhiksus obtained a clear
understanding and regained their fundamental minds"
(p. 35). Richard Robinson has translated the same
passage in the Vimalakiirtinirde'sa as, "Immediately
they wholly regained their original thought."(35)

This type of translation style employed by Heng
Yin results in some unfortunate compounds which
carry little meaning for the reader: "Nature Dharma
Door" (p.145), "responding function" (p. 164) ,
"still extinction" (p. 272), and "dust fatigue" (p.
196). Translation must be more than a mere matching
of equivalents between the original and target
language: it must employ the artistry of combining
accuracy with a pleasing style; and it must above
all communicate to the reader the meaning of the
original.

The two most important translations are both of
the Tun-huang text, those by Chan and Yampolsky:
they are the most accurate of the translations, and
provide us with a complete version of the text as
well as annotations and study. Their approach to the
same material is very different, and this gives some
insight into the way in which a translator by his
choice of terms and his exercise of editorial
license can give the material a totally new impact.
Consider some of the following comparisons:

Chan: "Calmness in which one realizes that all
dharmas are the same" (p. 47).(36)
Yampolsky: "The samaadhi of oneness" (p. 136).

Chan: "That is the meaning of taking absence-of
character as the substance" (p. 51).

P208

Yampolsky: "Therefore, non-form is made the
substance" (p. 138).

Chan: "The transfiguration of the assembly depicted
in the Scripture about the Buddha entering into
Lanka"(37) (p. 33).
Yampolsky: "Pictures of stories from the
Lankaavataara-suutra" (p. 129).

Chan: "Give the discipline that frees one from the
attachment to differentiated characters" (p.
57).
Yampolsky: "Transmitted the precepts of
formlessness" (p. 141).

In these examples Yampolsky's handling of the text
is more literal than Chan's; but of more importance,
it is often truer in style and meaning to the
original Chinese. There are, however, a few places
where one might choose Chan's translation over
Yampolsky:

Chan: "He wishes to transmit the robe and the Law to
someone" (p. 39).(38)
Yampolsky: "If they wanted to inherit the robe and
Dharma" (p. 131).

or where one can question Yampolsky's editing as in
his line "purifying our mind" (p. 128).(39)

The positions taken by Luk, Chan, and Yampolsky
with regard to the nature of the T'an ching clearly
represent three stages in the development of
scholarship on the text. Luk ignores all of the
recent research of scholars and chooses to translate
the Ming canon edition because the Tun-huang is
shorter and, he concludes, "therefore incomplete."
In this assumption he is following the traditional
Chinese solution to the problem of variation in
length and content between different versions of the
same text. As missionaries came into China over the
centuries bringing with them everexpanding versions
of the Mahaayaana suutras, these larger and more
elaborate forms of the text were received with
pleasure,(40) for it was assumed that the longer
version of a suutra was the complete and therefore
earlier one, while the shorter was thought to be a
later abbreviation and hence of less value.(41)
Thus, Luk's assertion is in line with a
well-established tradition in China.

Chan's preliminary remarks to his translation
represent an advance over the uncritical approach of
Luk, for while he provides a description of the
wellknown legend of the development of Ch'an, he
admits to his discussion the research of his fellow
countryman Hu Shih, which clearly accepts the fact
that the text has undergone changes over the
centuries. Willing to go this far, Chan chooses to
translate the Tun-huang edition in order to make
available the form of the T'an ching that is closer
to the teaching of Hui-neng. While he has rejected
the identification of the Ming canon edition with
the original text, he still holds uncritically to
the idea that the T'an ching records the words of
Hui-neng (p. 23).

Yampolsky, following the lead of Hu Shih and the
recent Japanese scholar-

P209

ship, gives space to the new and more radical
approach of questioning whether Hui-neng has a
central place in the T'an ching or whether he has
any role in it at all. It is this last approach
which promises to have far-reaching implications for
Buddhist studies as well as for religious studies in
general.

If we can assume that the many translations of
the T'an ching represent trends in the style of
translation, then we are moving in the direction of
a more literal equation of the English with the
original. This in turn has meant a greater use of
borrowed words as technical terms; so that in
Yampolsky's volume we find such Sanskrit words as
Dharma (p. 129), praj~naa (p. 149), bodhi (p. 131),
suutra (p. 149), nirmaankaaya(p. 142). Also the
titles of literary works, so carefully translated by
earlier writers are left in their transliterated
forms, as for example, Ching-ming ching(ab) (p. 136)
and Lankaavataara Suutra (P. 130). This suggests
that there is now more sophistication among readers
and a greater willingness to handle foreign words
and names.

For those who read the volumes under
consideration one disapointment may come from the
lack of evaluation and analysis of the content and
message of the T'an ching. True, Heng Yin gives the
exegesis of Hsuan Hua, but none of the translators
provides an overview of the thought or an attempt at
comparison and analysis. Yampolsky does devote one
chapter to the content, but it is by far his weakest
section and does not make the same scholarly impact
as do his other chapters on the historical aspects
of the text.

A review of the studies and translations of the
T'an ching reveals that, while we have made
considerable progress on the text itself, there
remains much work to be done in understanding the
sources for, and position of, the text in early
Ch'an history. In translations, although there is
still no entirely adequate English version of the
Ming canon edition, we now have in Yampolsky's work
a careful, generally accurate translation of the
Tun-huang which takes into account the full range of
modern scholarship on the subject. The scholarship
itself, while it has not--and undoubtedly
cannot--solve all the mysteries surrounding the T'an
ching, has revealed much about the circumstances in
which the text was created and developed. Yet these
revelations, as with most additions to knowledge,
have raised as many questions as they have answered.
And it is probably on these questions, rather than
on the T'an ching itself, that scholarly work is now
most needed. Further real progress in the study of
the text can be expected only when we have a broader
and more detailed understanding of the Ch'an
movement as a whole.

In general, serious scholarship on Ch'an has
tended to lag behind the work done on most of the
other major schools of Indian and Chinese
Buddhism.(42) Nevertheless, Japanese scholars in
particular have produced important studies on Ch'an
and Zen; and this material ought to be made much
more widely known in the West. One immediate need,
therefore, is for translations of the major
secondary materials already available in Japanese.
Along with this, we must begin to have scholarly
translations and studies of many other important

P210

Ch'an documents, most of which reinain almost
completely unknown in the West. This kind of work is
well under way in Japan, (43) and the Western
translator can surely profit greatly from the modern
Japanese translations.

In addition to translations there is a very real
need for a general history of the Ch'an school.
Heinrich Dumoulin's Work, (44) the only Western
attempt at such a history, is so limited and so far
out-of-date that it represents more of a hindrance
than an aid to the understanding of the subject.
What is needed is a work of the sort that Yampolsky
has begun in his introduction to the T'an ching, a
detailed and careful study based on both the primary
sources and the results of Japanese scholarship.
Once this has been done we can begin to bring the
Ch'an and Zen tradition into proper perspective, and
to undertake serious study of its teaching. This
study should correct many of our present notions of
the uniqueness of Ch'an doctrine, and reveal its
true place in the broader tradition of Mahaayaana
Buddhism.

NOTES

1. Liu-tsu ta-shih fa-pao t'an ching(ac), T.
2008. Full bibliographic references for this and the
other editions of the T'an ching can be found in
Philip Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth
Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press,
1967), p. 191 (hereafter cited as The Platform
Sutra).

2. See Tung-pao's postface, quoted in Ui Hakuju,
Zenshuu shi kenkyuu(ad), II (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1941), p. 2.

3. Nan-tsung tun-chiao tsui-shang ta-ch'eng
mo-ho-pan-jo po-lo-mi ching: Liu-tsu Hui-neng
ta-shih yuu Shao-chou Ta-fan ssu shih-fa t'an
ching(ae), T. 2007. On the date of the manuscript,
see ibid., p. 67;and Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra,
p. 90.

4. The Taisho daizokyo(af) edition contains many
errors. A more satisfactory edition was published by
D. T. Suzuki and Kuda Rentaro in Tonko shutsudo
Rokuso dankyo(ag) (Tokyo, 1934) . This edition's
division of the text into 57 sections has been
followed by most scholars, and will be used here in
referring to the T'un-huang text. For other
editions, see Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu, pp. 117-171;
and Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra, pp. 212 ff.

5. For a discussion and comparison of the
various texts, see Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu, pp.
1-74.

6. See ibid., pp. 101-02.

7. See D. T. Suzuki, Zen shiso shi kenkyuu(ah),
II (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1951) p. 317. Yanagida
Seizan has particularly emphasized this point. See
"Daijo toshite no Rokuso dankyo(ai)," IBK, XXIII
(1/64), pp. 65-77; and Shoki zenshuu shisho no
kenkyuu(aj)(Kyoto: Hozokan, 1967), p. 148 ff., p.
254 ff (hereafter cited as "Daijo kaikyo
toshite...").

8. The scarcity of variant readings in the
footnotes of the Taisho is one simple indicator of
how few textual differences exist for most works.

9. See, for example, Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu, p.
103; Suzuki, Zen shiso shi kenkyuu, p. 315.

10. The major texts can be found in Hu Shih,
Shen-hui ho-shang i-chi(ak) (rev. and enlarged ed.;
Taipei: Hu Shih Chi-nien Kuan, 1970) . For a
bibliographic discussion of Shen-hui's works and
their translations, see Yampolsky, The Platform
Sutra, pp. 24-25, n. 67.

11. For some examples of these similarities, see
Hu Shih, pp. 77 ff.

12. Hsing-fu ssu nei tao-ch'ang kung-feng ta-te
Ta-i ch'an-shih pei-ming(al), quoted in Ui, Zenshuu
shi kenkyuu, p. 111.

13. See Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu. pp. 100-14;
Suzuki, Zen shiso shi kenkyuu, pp. 310-319.
14. Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu, pp. 74-100.

P211

15. Hu Shih, Shen-hui ho-shang i-chi, pp. 73-90;
Sekiguchi Shindai, Zenshuu shiso shi(am) (Tokyo:
Sankibo Busshorin, 1964), pp. 153-166.

16. Op. cit., pp. 148-212, 253-78.

17. Shen-hui yu-lu(an) (fragment 3), in Hu Shih,
Shen-hui ho-shang i-chi, p. 179.

18. Nan-yang ho-shang tun-chiao chieh-t'o
ch'an-men chih-liao-hsing t'an yu(ao), in Hu Shih,
shen-hui ho-shang i-chi, pp. 228-29.

19. Yanagida, "Daijo kaikyo toshite...," p. 189.

20. Ibid., p. 253.

21. Hu Shih, Shen-hui ho-shang i-chi, p. 90.

22. See Ui, Zenshuu shi kenkyuu, I (1939), pp.
210-29.

23. See Yanagida, "Daijo Kaikyo toshite...," p.
125. Also see his treatment of Shen-hui in Yanagida
and Umehara Takeshi, Mu no tankyuu: Chuugoku zen, in
Bukkyo no shiso(ap), VII (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten,
1969), pp. 115-144.

24. Yampolsky's discussion (pp. 1-57) of the
early history of Ch'an offers probably the best
summary in English of the historian's view of Ch'an.

25. See "Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih," III, 1
(4/53), pp. 25-46.

26. The Sutra of Hui Neng (4th ed.), in The
Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng (Berkeley:
Shambala Publications, 1969), pp. 76-114.

27. Sutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch, in op.
cit. (Thetford, Vt.: Goddard, 1938), pp. 497-558.
Also published in Bilingual Buddhist Series: Sutras
and Scriptures, Vol. I (Taipei: Buddhist Cultural
Series, 1962).

28. The Platform Scripture (New York: St. John's
University Press, 1961).

29. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), pp. 82-89.

30. Series Three (Berkeley: Shambala
Publications, 1973), pp. 19-102.

31. The Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch on the
Pristine Orthodox Dharma (San Francisco: Buddha's
Universal Church, 1964). This translation has not
been included in the evaluations.

32. Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra, pp. 123-183.

33. The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform
Sutra and Commentary by Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua
(San Francisco: Sine-American Buddhist Association,
1971).

34. See Richard Robinson, The Buddhist Religion
(Belmont, Ca.: Dickenson Publishing Co., 1970), p.
38; also T. Stcherbatsky, The Cultural Conception of
Buddhism (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), for
a general discussion of this doctrine.

35. R. Robinson, "The Suutra Of Vimalakiirti's
Preaching" (manuscript), p. 25.

36. Chan's translation is based on a
commentorial statement and not on the characters in
this phrase. His translation of "calmness" for
samaadhi is very weak and destroys the thrust of the
argument.

37. This is taken from Wong's translation and
represents an interpretation of the characters which
Yampolsky's footnote 25 (p. 129) explains.

38. This seems to be the import of the sentence,
with the Patriarch as the subject.

39. The use of the original character ch'eng(aq)
"to present for inspection," fits the meaning of the
sentence and is used in the following paragraph 6,
so that the the editorial change is questionable,
even with the reading of the Koshoji.

40. See Tao An's(ar) thoughts on this in T.
2145-52 b and c, where he attacks what he considers
to be abbreviation.

41. For the significance of this to Japanese
scholars, see R. Hikata, Suvikraanta-vikraami-parip.
scholarsraj~naapaaramitaa-suutra (Fukuoka, 1958), p.
xxiv.

42. This is certainly true for the difficult and
complex history of the school after the T'ang
dynasty, about which far too little is known.

43. See. for example, the find annotated
translations in the series. Zen no goroku(as), now
being published by Chikuma Shobo.

44. A History, of Zen Buddhism (New York: Random
House, 1963).

P212

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T'an Ching (Platform Scripture)

by Carl Bielefeldt and Lewis Lancaster Philosophy East and West vol.25, no. 2 P 197- 212 (C) by University Press of Hawaii

by Carl Bielefeldt and Lewis Lancaster
Philosophy East and West
vol.25, no. 2
P 197- 212
(C) by University Press of Hawaii