Introduction

i.1Questions on Selflessness consists of a dialogue between a group of followers of the Mahāyāna tradition and a group of tīrthika philosophers, who call upon the Buddhists to explain and defend their doctrine of selflessness. In the exchange that follows, the proponents of the Mahāyāna point out some of the problems with categorically affirming or denying the existence of a self, and they go on to clarify several related Buddhist doctrines, such as the distinction between relative and ultimate reality, the illusory nature of perceptions, and the emptiness of all phenomena. A passage of dialogue in prose is followed by a set of verses that describe the causes of suffering and the continuous transmigration in cyclic existence, as well as the liberation one attains by engendering the mind of awakening and the perfection of insight. The structure of the text deviates notably from the standard sūtra format, in which a description of the setting and the audience of the discourse is presented, followed by the delivery of the discourse itself and a conclusion extolling the benefits of the teaching. Rather, the text has neither a description of the setting nor the conclusion extolling its benefits, and its content consists not of the words of the Buddha himself but of those of the anonymous followers of the Mahāyāna.

i.2A Sanskrit manuscript of this sūtra, written in Newari script, is preserved in the National Archives of Nepal. It was edited, introduced, and translated into French by Lévi (1928). Another edition was prepared by Vaidya (1961) and recently a revised edition was published by the Nairātmaparipṛcchā Study Group (2019). For our translation, we have compared the Tibetan text with this most recent Sanskrit edition by the Nairātmaparipṛcchā Study Group, and mention of the Sanskrit in the notes refers to this edition.

i.3There are also two Chinese translations of this sūtra (Taishō 846 and Taishō 1643), both of which contain some notable differences from the Tibetan and the extant Sanskrit sources. In the earliest Chinese translation (Taishō 846, 外道問聖大乘法無我義經, Wai dao wen sheng dasheng fa wuwo yi jing), which was prepared by Fa Tian (d. 1001) in the year 986, the sūtra begins rather differently than it does in the Tibetan. Here the text starts with the usual opening phrase, “Thus did I hear at one time,” and we are moreover told that the Buddha is present in the assembly and is the one to whom the questions are posed. The other translation (Taishō 1643, 尼乾子問無我義經, Ni gan zi wen wuwo yi jing), which was prepared by Ri Cheng (1017–78) in the year 1063, has the same opening content as the Tibetan and Sanskrit sources, but instead of employing the general designation tīrthika , the translation uses the more specific category of nirgrantha­jñāti­putra (尼乾子), which usually designates the Jains. This specification only exists in this later Chinese translation; otherwise, this translation is quite close to the extant Sanskrit. The translator also attributes the text to Aśvaghoṣa and categorizes it as a treatise (śāstra), rather than a sūtra.

i.4According to the colophon to the Tibetan translation, it was prepared by the Indian scholar Kamalagupta and the great Tibetan translator Rinchen Sangpo. We can therefore assume that it was undertaken in the first half of the eleventh century, when these two scholars flourished. The first translation of this text from the Tibetan into a Western language was the French translation by Feer in 1883. The translation presented here is based on the Tibetan version in the Degé Kangyur, the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur, and the Stok Palace manuscript.