Introduction

i.1The Questions of the Kinnara King Druma is a scripture that belongs to the general sūtra section of the Tibetan Kangyur. The sūtra presents a series of teachings focusing on the doctrine of emptiness and the bodhisattvas’ perfections, presented in a rich narrative framework in which Druma, the king of the kinnaras, is the protagonist. Kinnaras are mythological beings found in both Buddhist and Hindu literature, where they are portrayed as creatures half human, half animal (usually half bird). They are also usually depicted as highly skilled celestial musicians. King Druma is himself a well-known figure in canonical Sanskrit sources, where he frequently appears, albeit mostly in minor roles, offering musical worship to the Buddha. For example, King Druma appears in such a role in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (Toh 113) where he is one of four kinnara kings (the other three are Mahādharma, Sudharma, and Dharmadhara) attending the Buddha’s teaching. He is also included in the Samādhirājasūtra (Toh 127) where he arrives with his queens to make an offering of his music to the Buddha.

i.2The title of this text is actually somewhat misleading since the questions that bring forth the sūtra’s doctrinal content are not in fact posed by Druma, but instead by the bodhisattva Divyamauli, who is the primary interlocutor throughout this sūtra. As such Druma assumes the role of the teacher who over the course of the text displays a profound understanding of the doctrine of emptiness. The Buddha accordingly commends him for his grasp of the truth and extols Druma as a great bodhisattva whose level of realization far surpasses that of any hearer or solitary buddha. Toward the end of the teaching, the Buddha also prophesies Druma’s future awakening in great detail.

i.3Music plays a central role throughout this sūtra. As Paul Harrison has noted, music is presented in several episodes as a metaphor for the ungraspable nature of reality‍—emptiness‍—as it serves as the basis for Druma’s teachings to Divyamauli and the rest of the assembly. In one remarkable episode, the power of Druma’s music is such that even the accomplished elders among the monks lose control of their bodies and start to dance helplessly to the tune of Druma’s lute, while only those who have reached the bodhisattva levels are able to remain seated.

i.4The sūtra elaborates on a variety of general themes associated with the Great Vehicle. As well as the doctrine of emptiness, discussed at various points in the text, it gives special attention to the six perfections and in particular to the mastery of skillful means. It also contains a lengthy teaching on the ways in which women can be reborn with a male body‍—something that, according to several Great Vehicle sūtras, is a prerequisite for attaining awakening as a buddha.

i.5In terms of traditional scholarship, several citations from this sūtra appear in the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa, an influential work attributed to the “tantric” Āryadeva. The sūtra is also briefly cited in the Subhāṣitasaṃgraha, an anonymous anthology of tantric works. While no Sanskrit manuscript of The Questions of the Kinnara King Druma appears to be extant, we do have translations of this sūtra in both Chinese and Tibetan. Two Chinese translations are available: one produced by Lokakṣema (T.624) and the other by Kumārajīva (T.625). Lokakṣema was born around 147 ᴄᴇ in Gandhāra and is one of the earliest known translators to have produced Chinese translations of the Great Vehicle Buddhist sūtras from Sanskrit. The date of his translation is unknown, but Harrison suggests that it must have been completed while he was residing in the Han capital of Luoyang during the years 170–190 ᴄᴇ. Lokakṣema’s version is therefore of great historical importance since it represents one of the earliest literary sources for the Great Vehicle available to us today. The second Chinese translation was produced by the renowned translator Kumārajīva (334–413 ᴄᴇ), who completed the translation in the early fifth century, toward the end of his life, as he resided in the then Chinese capital of Chang’an. According to Harrison, the two Chinese versions are very similar, and they do not differ substantially in content from the Tibetan.

i.6The Tibetan translation was completed in the early translation period and is listed in the early ninth-century Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) catalogue. According to the colophon to the Tibetan translation, the sūtra was translated into Tibetan by the prolific translators Kawa Paltsek (ska ba dpal brtsegs) and Palkyi Lhünpo (dpal gyi lhun po), both of whom participated in numerous translation projects in Tibet during the early translation period when the majority of Indian sūtras were translated into Tibetan (late eighth to early ninth century). Kawa Paltsek was also one of the initial seven Tibetans to be ordained during the founding of the first Tibetan monastery of Samyé (bsam yas). He translated numerous canonical texts, both sūtra and tantra, and became one of the most active translators of his time. Some Tibetan translators, including Palkyi Lhünpo, are known to have translated certain Indian texts without the help of Indian teachers, and this may well have been the case with The Questions of the Kinnara King Druma, as no Indian scholars are mentioned in the colophon.

i.7Our translation work benefited greatly from the work of Paul Harrison (1992), who published a full critical edition of the Tibetan text based on nine available witnesses‍—Stok Palace MS, London, Tokyo MS, Degé, Lithang, Peking, and Narthang, as well as the Phukdrak MS independent Kangyur and extant portions of a Dunhuang manuscript. In his work, the different versions of the text are grouped under two recensions, representing the Thempangma (them spangs ma) and Tshalpa (tshal pa) lines and respectively referred to as “Recension A” and “Recension B.” Stok Palace MS, London, and Tokyo MS are grouped under Recension A and Degé, Lithang, Peking, and Narthang under Recension B. According to Harrison’s findings, the Phukdrak MS version of the text mostly agrees with the texts of the Thempangma line while the Dunhuang manuscript mostly corresponds with those of the Tshalpa line. He observes that these groups of versions belong to distinct “recensions” in that they reflect major “recensional variation”‍—significant editorial changes such as extensive alterations to the wording of the text and systematic substitution of different terminology‍—and not just “transmissional variation.” Those groups of texts are indeed quite different in ways that cannot be accounted for by scribal error or casual emendation. Harrison subsequently discovered while sifting through the damaged and disheveled Tabo Kangyur that about 13% of this text is preserved there too. Upon collating this with his existing edition, he observed that it is not a Thempangma copy, “but bears a version derived independently from the revision process which produced Recension A of the text, which on the whole it reproduces with remarkable fidelity.”

i.8Harrison’s critical edition is a reconstruction of Recension A, which he takes to be “a fair but possibly later reflection of the fully revised translation produced at the beginning of the ninth century.” He argues that the texts included in Recension A seem closer to standard revised translations than the texts included in Recension B, since they accord more with the Mahāvyutpatti. Yet his conclusion, in the light of his analysis of the available witnesses of the text, is that “no representative…, no matter how venerable, may be given priority or regarded as invariably the ‘best text.’ This means that variants between genuine witnesses … must be isolated and assessed on a case-by-case basis.”

i.9For this translation into English, which is, as far as we are aware, the first translation into any European language, we relied on the Degé blockprint, the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and Paul Harrison’s edition. The Degé is the most widely circulating Kangyur. It primarily belongs to the Tshalpa line but also incorporates readings from the Thempangma Kangyurs. Since it mostly reproduces Recension B, it often accords with the earliest witness, the Dunhuang manuscript. It therefore preserves earlier readings, much less altered by the great revisions of the imperial period, than those in Recension A, which reflect those revisions. We concluded that reading the Degé text in close consultation with Harrison’s edition was a reasonable way to approach the translation of this text and to gain a fairly robust picture of the transmissional and recensional issues associated with it. We have revised the sigla used in Harrison’s edition (1992) to match those used in the University of Vienna’s Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies, which were derived in large part from Harrison and Eimer (1997).