Introduction

–Vasubandhu

“The instructions found in Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings are for the purpose of analyzing the dharmas, since without the sūtras’ instructions a disciple cannot analyze the dharmas. Analyzing the dharmas is for the purpose of pacifying the afflictions; pacifying the afflictions is for the purpose of attaining the ultimate state.”

–Vīryaśrīdatta

i.3Vīryaśrīdatta (fl. eighth century ᴄᴇ), the Nālandā master who commented on this sūtra, explains the expression distinctly ascertaining the meanings as a synonym of analyzing the dharmas , or classifying entities, so as to see directly both their unique traits and their shared features. This analysis constitutes a path to the realization that everything produced by assemblages of causes and conditions is impermanent, that everything leading to mental defilement is suffering, and that nothing whatsoever is or has a permanent and independent self‍.

i.4According to a well-established tradition, having the right view is to recognize impermanence, suffering, selflessness, and that nirvāṇa is peace. This liberating vision vanquishes the mind’s poisons of attraction, aversion, and confusion. The mind then turns toward the virtues of merit and wisdom, gradually giving way to the peace of nirvāṇa.

i.5Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings is a step-by-step contemplation of all facets of reality and freedom from suffering. It starts with the five aggregates that constitute the common basis of defilement and purification and goes through the teachings on selflessness, the path to realize selflessness, and the higher stages of realization, and it culminates in the special features that belong exclusively to a fully awakened buddha. This invaluable archive of Buddhist terms and ideas is to be well absorbed and remembered, so as to make all other teachings easier to comprehend.

i.6Masters of the great monasteries of ancient India such as Nālandā, Vikramaśīla, and Odantapurī are likely to have held this text in high regard as an authoritative outline of the Dharma. The sūtra’s detailed and accessible commentary, the Gathering (Nibandhana) by Vīryaśrīdatta, is a didactically subtle and comprehensive manual of Buddhist philosophy. The Gathering reproduces much of the content of Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośa), an unsurpassed and thorough treatise of fundamental Buddhist thought; but while Vasubandhu’s text goes into much detail with the subject matter, the Gathering offers a much more accessible presentation of the same topics.

i.7Vīryaśrīdatta shows the purpose and structure of the sūtra, connects it to other texts, and offers convincing, cogent, and well-supported interpretations. He explains the structure of the sūtra by analyzing it into six topical elements:

i.81. the introductory presentation of the occasion when the sūtra was spoken (nidāna), which starts from the very beginning and goes up to the mention of the number of bhikṣus present;

i.92. the opening remarks by the Buddha (upodghāta), which immediately follow, in which he tells the bhikṣus that he is going to teach and they agree to pay attention;

3. the purpose of the teaching (prayojana), embedded in the very title of the sūtra, which is wisdom or, more precisely, “analysis of the dharmas” ( dharma­pravicaya);

i.104. the initial list of topics (uddeśa), which is the long list of twenty-seven topics that follows the opening remarks;

5. the explanation of the topics (nirdeśa) mentioned in the initial list, which starts right after the initial list and continues to the end of the sūtra;

i.116. the connection between the different expressions (anusandhi), more specifically showing how a later expression is thematically and/or logically connected to a prior one, which applies to the whole text.

i.12The sūtra is also mentioned by Yaśomitra, the author of an extensive explanation (vyākhyā) on Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Abhidharma. Yaśomitra writes that according to “those who emphasize the sūtras” (Sautrāntika), while it is correct to say that the Buddha taught abhidharma, he did not teach separate abhidharmic treatises (as the Vaibhāṣika think); he taught the abhidharma in specific sūtras, such as Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings . As the Buddha’s own paradigmatic statement on the actual nature of reality (dharmalakṣaṇa), the sūtra can be considered an authoritative overview of insight meditation (vipaśyanā). It shares some features with another sūtra transmitted in the Sarvāstivāda tradition, The Discourse on the Twenty-Two Faculties.

i.13The Sanskrit text of Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings was first edited by Alfonsa Ferrari in 1944 on the basis of two incomplete manuscripts: one she describes as a “modern copy of a Nepalese manuscript from around the fourteenth century” in twenty-eight folios, about one third of which, she informs, contains the Nibandhana commentary, and another consisting of three folios photographed by Giuseppe Tucci in Ngor monastery in Ü-Tsang (an institution famous for its library of Sanskrit texts), which cover the first five paragraphs as per her edition. Ferrari points out that the Ngor manuscript may have been produced in Nālandā, and she further writes that “Professor Tucci has noted the presence of copies of the Arthaviniścaya, in Sanskrit, at Žalu and in other monasteries of Tibet.”

i.14A complete edition, on the basis of a Nepalese paper manuscript dated to 1858, preserved in Baroda, was published by P. L. Vaidya in 1961. Vaidya reports that, according to the postscript, the manuscript was copied from an older palm-leaf manuscript, in Newari script, from the Bir Library in Kathmandu. One rather striking feature of this manuscript, Vaidya reports, is that it contains the following sentence in Sanskrit, showing its awareness of Tibetan texts: “The complete information about this is found in the sūtra called Abhiniṣkramaṇa; thus it is related in the Tibetan language.” The anonymous Sanskritist was also a Tibetanist, it seems, or at least someone in dialogue with Tibetanists.

i.15In 1971, N. H. Samtani offered a much-improved and complete edition, including the first edition of the Nibandhana commentary, based on the photographs taken by Rahul Sankrityayan of a palm-leaf manuscript from Ngor monastery. Samtani’s edition, based as it is on the photographs of the oldest-available complete manuscript, is particularly valuable, and we have used it as the primary reference for the Sanskrit. However, all the above Sanskrit versions differ, in various respects, from the Kangyur version, and the Nepalese manuscripts edited by Ferrari, although not comparably old, contain sections that match the Tibetan translation more closely. Overall, the hypothetical Sanskrit original of (almost all) the Tibetan translation can be evinced by comparing the existing Sanskrit versions and looking at parallel passages in other Sanskrit and Pāli texts. This is extremely helpful, for it can greatly clarify the intended syntax of the Tibetan and, in a few cases, show how some obscure expression may be due to a mistake (even a printing mistake) in the transmission of the Tibetan.

i.16This English translation was prepared based on the Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyur. According to the Tibetan translators’ colophon, the Sanskrit text was translated into Tibetan by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Prajñā­varman, and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé. This would place the translation in the early ninth century, but it is worth noting that the translation is absent from both the Denkarma and Phangtangma inventories of Tibetan translations dated to that time. It is also worth mentioning that Jinamitra and Yeshé Dé figure among the compilers of the great Sanskrit–Tibetan lexicon the Mahāvyutpatti, which is a useful point to bear in mind when trying to understand the relationship between the Tibetan translation and the various Sanskrit versions.

i.17The sūtra was also translated, twice, into Chinese: once by Faxian in the tenth century, and later by Jin Zong Chi in the eleventh century (Taishō 762 佛說決定義經 and Taishō 763 佛說法乘義決定經, respectively). Samtani (to whom the present translation is heavily indebted) points out that the two Chinese translations are based on a shorter and longer version, respectively, and discusses to some extent the differences between the different transmissions of this sūtra. According to De Jong, “Strictly speaking one can distinguish six different recensions: (1) the Ṅor manuscript; (2) the Nepalese manuscripts; (3) the first Chinese translation; (4) the second Chinese translation; (5) the Tibetan translation; (6) the text on which the commentary is based.”

i.18We could add the version commented on in the anonymous don rnam par gdon mi za ba’i ’grel pa (Artha­viniścaya­ṭīkā, Toh 4365), an elaborate commentary that survives only in its Tibetan translation. This commentary follows a different scheme than the one adopted by the Nibandhana. It is worth noting that the Tibetan terminology differs, to some extent, from the one employed in the Kangyur version of the sūtra. For example, the very title of the sūtra ( Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings ) is translated as don rnam par gdon mi za ba rather than don rnam par nges pa; this is significant, considering also that the Mahāvyutpatti has an entry rendering arthaviniścaya with don rnam par nges pa. Similarly, śrāvastī is translated as mnyan du yod pa, rather than just mnyan yod as in the Kangyur translation of the sūtra, even when the term appears as a quote of the root text. Alfonsa Ferrari described this commentary as “very long but pedestrian and attached to the letter,” comparing it unfavorably to the Nibandhana, which she describes as “shorter and juicier.” We are not sure whether this is a fair assessment, but “juicy” may be a very good way to speak of the rewards of reading Vīryaśrīdatta’s comments, some of which will be found in the notes and in the glossary, so as to offer at least glimpses of what one may be missing by not reading the Nibandhana. The Mahāvyutpatti explicitly relied on Vasubandhu’s work, and so does Vīryaśrīdatta in explaining the contents of this sūtra. His glosses thus offer some keys to the subtlety, greatness, and extraordinary dedication of the ancient translators from Sanskrit into Tibetan.

i.19There are at least three modern translations of Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings : one in Italian by Ferrari (1944), and two in English by Samtani (1971) and Ānandajoti (2016). None of these translations represents the Kangyur version, and we furthermore differ from all three in certain matters of interpretation. We hope this translation carries at least some of the flavor of the original with its recurrent phrases and topical lists so conducive to chanting and memorization.