सद्धर्मपुण्डरीक (Lotus Sutra — Kern translation from Sanskrit, 1884)

part of No. 134 is retained). The reader is requested not to have any suspicion about these differences.'

According to the opinion of an eminent Chinese scholar, the late Stanislas Julien, the translation of Kumâragîva widely differs from Burnouf's. He gives utterance to that opinion in a letter dated June 12, 1866, and addressed to Professor Max Müller, to whose obliging kindness it is due that I am able to publish a specimen of Kumâragîva's version rendered into French by Stanislas Julien. The fragment answers to the stanzas 1–22 of chapter 3. As it is too long to be inserted here, I give it hereafter on page xl.

On comparing the fragment with the corresponding passages in Burnouf's French translation and the English version in this volume, the reader cannot fail to perceive that the discrepancies between the two European versions are fewer and of less consequence than between each of them and Kumâragîva's work. It is hardly to be supposed that the text used by Kumâragîva can have differed so much from ours, and it seems far more probable that he has taken the liberty, for the sake of clarity, to modify the construction of the verses, a literal rendering whereof, it must be admitted, is impossible in any language. It is a pity that Stanislas Julien has chosen for his specimen a fragment exclusively consisting of Gâthâs verses. A page in prose would have been far more useful as a test of the accuracy of the Chinese version.

Proceeding to treat of the contents of our Sûtra discourse, I begin by quoting the passage where Burnouf, in his usual masterly way, describes the general character of the book and the prominent features of the central figure in it. The illustrious French scholar writes original: Introduction, p. 119:

'There, as in the simple Sûtras, it is Çâkya who is the most important, the first of beings; and although the imagination of the compiler has endowed him with all the perfections of science and virtue admitted among the Bouddhistes Buddhists; although Çâkya already assumes a mythological character when he declares that for a long time he has fulfilled the duties of a Buddha, and that he must fulfill them for a long time yet, despite his approaching death, which does not destroy his eternity; although, finally, one represents him as creating from his body Buddhas who are like the images and ideal reproductions of his mortal person, nowhere is Çâkyamuni named God; nowhere does he receive the title of Âdibuddha Primordial Buddha.'