Informed Textual Practices? A Study of Dunhuang Manuscripts of Chinese Buddhist Apocryphal Scriptures with Colophons

Abstract

Taking Buddhist texts with colophons copied at Dunhuang (4th–10th century C.E.) as a sample, my dissertation investigates how local Buddhists used Chinese Buddhist apocrypha with respect to their contents, and whether they employed these apocrypha differently than translated Buddhist scriptures. I demonstrate that not all of the practices related to Buddhist scriptures were performed simply for merit in general or that they were conducted without awareness of scriptures’ contents. Among both lay Buddhist devotees and Buddhist professionals, and among both common patrons and highly-ranking officials in medieval Dunhuang, there were patrons and users who seem to have had effective approaches to the contents of texts, which influenced their preferences of scriptures and specific textual practices. For the patrons that my dissertation has addressed, apocryphal scriptures did not necessarily meet their needs more effectively than translated scriptures did. I reached these arguments through examining three sets of Buddhist scriptures copied in Dunhuang manuscripts with colophons. In Chapter One, I explore the relationships between colophons for, and the contents of, three Chinese Buddhist apocryphal scriptures. In Chapter Two, I focus on a bhikṣuṇī local to Dunhuang and her commissioning of a set of Buddhist scriptures (including both apocryphal and translated scriptures) for her aspirations to become a man, and to achieve Buddhahood. Lastly, in Chapter Three, I concentrate on a prince, who had control over Dunhuang, and his commissioning of the Scripture of Perfection of Wisdom for Humane Kings as well as other Buddhist texts at different occasions, in order to explore his rationale for invoking the Heavenly Kings by employing these Buddhist texts for his own aspirations.