Redaction and Rhetoric in Mahāyāna Sūtras

Abstract

This article examines a newly discovered and recently published Sanskrit manuscript of the Jayamatiparipṛcchāsūtra (“Inquiry of Jayamati”) and documents its relationship, previously unrecognized, as part of the Śūraṃgamasamādhisūtra (“The Concentration of Heroic Progress”). While both texts are classified as Mahāyāna sūtras, the Jayamatiparipṛcchā depicts its content as spoken by the Buddha while the Śūraṃgamasamādhi represents exactly the same content, spoken by Jayamati, as a “lower” view of the Buddha’s teachings. As the modern study of Mahāyāna sūtra literature has produced only a handful of confirmed cases of shared textual material between sūtras, the identification documented here provides important evidence for how authorial communities compiled and redacted “Mahāyāna” Buddhist texts.