Notes on the Divyāvadāna

It is well known that most of the tales which make up the Divyāvadāna collection are to be found here and there in the Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. Cowell and Neil noted in the introduction to their editio princeps of 1886 that “although these (Tibetan) versions are often faulty and corrupt, yet without continual reference to them it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation of the Divyāvadāna”. Students of the Vinaya will probably agree that these editors, whose acquaintance with the Ḥdul ba seems to have been based upon English renderings of selected passages supplied by Léon Feer, here did less than justice to the skill and fidelity of the Tibetan translators and to the reliability of the Sanskrit manuscripts from which they worked. The extensive fragments of the Sanskrit text of the Vinaya published in the Gilgit Manuscript Series show on the whole a very close correspondence with their Tibetan counterparts, and a detailed comparison of about 200 pages of Cowell and Neil's text with the corresponding portions of the Ḥdul ba has satisfied me that where they diverge significantly the fault generally lies with the former.