Yīnyuán xīn lùn sòng 因緣心論頌
Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya-kārikā by 龍樹 (Nāgārjuna, 作); critical edition by 華方田 (整理)
About the work
Nāgārjuna’s Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya-kārikā, a short verse-treatise (140 characters in Chinese) by the founder of the Madhyamaka school setting out the central doctrine of yuán-qǐ 緣起 (dependent origination) in compressed kārikā form. Despite its brevity it is one of Nāgārjuna’s important works and a key witness to the early Madhyamaka treatment of pratītyasamutpāda.
Abstract
The work is unrecorded in any Chinese Buddhist catalogue and was lost from the Chinese tradition. Recovered from Dūnhuáng, it was set into the Taishō from S. 1358 and S. 2462 only (T32 no. 1654) — full of error. Huá Fāngtián’s 1996 edition draws on seven Dūnhuáng witnesses (Beijing Library Běi 7257 [海 17] = base text; Běi 7255 [官 68], S. 1358, P. 4645, S. 250, S. 4235, Běi 469 [雨 55]) plus careful three-way collation against the Yīnyuán xīn lùn shì (KR6v0034, the auto-commentary) and the Yīnyuán xīn shì-lùn kāijué jì (KR6v0035, the secondary commentary). The Tibetan version is preserved as Tōhoku 4553 / Pek. 5236 (Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya-kārikā); the Sanskrit text was recovered by Tucci from a Newari manuscript in 1924 (Minor Buddhist Texts, vol. I, SOR X.1, Roma: IsMEO, 1956). Nāgārjuna’s life-dates are set here at the conventional c. 150–250 CE; modern scholarship (Lindtner, Vetter) tends to a slightly later second-third century floruit.
Translations and research
- Tucci, Giuseppe, “Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya di Nāgārjuna,” Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, ser. V, 31 (1922) — first Sanskrit edition.
- Lindtner, Christian, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of Nāgārjuna (Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1982) — the standard study, with translation.
- Frauwallner, Erich, Die Philosophie des Buddhismus, 5th ed. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2010) — context for the Madhyamaka pratītyasamutpāda doctrine.
- Huá Fāngtián 華方田, “Yīnyuán xīn lùn sòng 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 3 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1996).
Other points of interest
The triad KR6v0033 (verses) + KR6v0034 (auto-commentary) + KR6v0035 (secondary commentary) constitutes one of the very few cases in the Chinese transmission where a Madhyamaka kārikā, its vṛtti, and a Chinese-composed sub-commentary survive together — and only in Dūnhuáng. The triple recovery is one of the principal Madhyamaka discoveries of twentieth-century Buddhist studies.