MINOR BUDDHIST TEXTS (Part 1)

G. TUCCI
ing stanzas of the commentary from the real metrical
work.
Therefore in spite of the contrary statement of the
Chin kang hsien lun and of the booklet of I
Ching on the last stanza of the Vajracchedika it
seems that we must conclude:
1. that the karikas on the Vajracchedika
are the work of Asariga 1J and not of Vasubandhu just as it
is confirmed by the colophon of our mss. and by the translations
of I Ching, both of the karikas and of the
commentary on them;
2. that the karikas of this small treatise are
really seventyseven and not eighty.
Now what about the other two prose commentaries,
the one attributed to Asanga by the Chinese sources and
the other which the Tibetans lotsavas want us to
accept as a work of Vasubandhu? In other words is this
commentary preserved in the bsTan agyur the same
as that attributed to him in the Chinese canon, viz. the
commentary on the karikas by Asanga, or is it an
independent work ? First of all we must remember that
the statement of Nanji5 viz. that Nj. 1168 (the translation
by Bodhiruci of the commentary by Vasubandhu
on the karikas of Asanga) is a commentary on Nj. 1167
(the prose work upon the Vajracchedika attributed
in the Chinese indices to Asanga and by the Tibetans to
Vasubandhu) is wrong. Nj. 1168 and 1167 are two different
*) The question of the attribution of the karikas to Maitreya would
lead to the discussion whether Maitreyanatha was a historical personage or
not. But this is not the scope of the present study. Moreover, it has been,
to my mind, definitely settled by P. DEMIEVILLE in his recent study on the
Yogacdrabhumi de Safigharaksa in BEFEO, Vol. XLIV, fasc. 2, p. 381, n. 4.
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