History of The Text
The Platform Sutra underwent various redactions. Though its recollection has been attributed to Fa-hai, a student of Huineng, its origins are not clear:
The early development of the Platform Sutra is shrouded in the mists of time, and we will probably never know much for certain about it. The Dunhuang version of the text, the earliest complete edition we have, is almost certainly a product of a long evolution with elements coming together from several different Chan groups with different agendas, as the uneven character of the text and its internal inconsistencies attest.The Dunhuang versions are the oldest texts available. Two copies dated to between 830 and 860 have been found in the Mogao Caves. Both are thought to be based on an edition from about 780. The finds at Dunhuang have been very important for the historical understanding of Zen:
Scholarship on early Chan was transformed after the discovery in the beginning of the twentieth century of a number of texts relating to the early Chan movement in the cave library at Dunhuang, which also contained an early version of the Platform Sutra.In 1056, the Chinese monk Qisong produced a larger edition.
In 1291, Tsungpao produced the edition that became part of the Ming Dynasty Chinese Buddhist canon. This canonical version, apparently based on the Qisong edition, is about a third longer than the Mogao Caves version, and structured differently.
Read more about this topic: Platform Sutra
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or text:
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)