The Other Great Chinese Trepiṭaka in Japan: Faxian as Translator and Pilgrim in Medieval Japanese Manuscript Canons

要旨

In what we may call the standard Sino-Japanese Buddhist canons of the medieval period in East Asia, two distinct biographies of eminent Chinese trepiakas and pilgrims to India, Xuanzang (Genj, c. 602-664) and Faxian (Hgan, 337-ca. 422), figure prominently. Xuanzang enjoyed considerable repute in Japan since the establishment of Kfukuji in Nara, by the powerful Fujiwara family in the late seventh century. Little attention has been paid, however, to the notoriety of Faxian in Japan, where curious twelfth century copies of eighth century versions of his biography, Gaoseng Faxian zhuan (Z no. 1194, T no. 2085), are preserved within only three of the eight extant manuscript canons (Shgoz , Nanatsudera , Matsuo shrine ). In this paper I investigate the provenance of these early and reliable manuscript editions of the Faxian zhuan, and reveal some of the textual differences between printed, received editions of this account of Faxian's life and travels and these Japanese texts. Through analysis of colophons to Faxian's translations of the Mahyna Mahparinirv-stra (Da bannihuan jing , Z no. 137,

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