The Book of Zambasta: A Khotanese Poem on Buddhism. by R. E.

Emmerick
Review by: Alex Wayman
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Nov., 1969), pp. 151-152
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
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BOOK REVIEWS 151
estimates for China in the I960's, project on
to that disjointed land the concepts of a closely
administered Western-type nation state for
which such aggregates would be meaningful.
For China, each time a nation-wide aggregate
is used, it needs to be asked how far it is, in
fact, meaningful. In some sectors a national
aggregate may be significant. In others-and
the reviewer would argue that national income
in the 1960's is among them-it is misleading
in that it gives rise to assumptions about an
integrated national economy that does not exist
except in certain sectors.
Some years ago a defector from the People's
Republic attended a conference on contempo-
rary China. Asked his opinion of the discus-
sion, he replied that it was like a blind man
feeling an elephant. However this was meant,
it could be taken as a compliment, since with
the developed sense of touch of the blind,
much could be known of the animal being
examined: certainly the fact that it was an
elephant. The techniques for the most part
used in the volume under review would chart
the changes in weight and volume of the crea-
ture, but fail to reveal if it was an elephant or
a rhinoceros.
AUDREY DONNITHORNE
The Australian National University
The Book of Zambasta: A Khotanese Poem
on Buddhism. EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY
R. E. EMMERICK. London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, I968, XXii, 455 pp. Appen-
dixes, $20.75.
The
Book
of Zambasta (named after the
official Ysambasta who sponsored the work) is
the longest single poem to survive in the east
Iranian language called Khotanese. Of course,
Dr. Emmerick is indebted to previous labors
on this text, especially by E. Leumann and H.
W. Bailey, which he duly acknowledges. At
the same time, his edition and translation con-
stitutes a significant personal accomplishment
on a treacherous work. His admirable control
over the Khotanese language is shown by his
simultaneous
Saka
Grammatical Studies
(I968) which appeared as Volume XX in the
same London Oriental Series in which the pres-
ent work is Volume XXI.
Dr. Emmerick has avoided no pains to
collect every extant folio so that his text, which
is printed facing the English, will be as com-
plete as possible. Even so, there are frequent
gaps, often reducing the English version to a
string of phrases with intervening dots; and
only about half of the longest chapter (No.
XXIV) is extant. His critical apparatus is
principally devoted to the folio numbers (In-
troduction, pp. xi-xix) and variant fragments
(Appendix I, pp. 424-436) and so signaling
the folio numbers in the margins of the pub-
lished text. His metrical information is on the
separate page xxi as well as in Appendix 2
(pp.
437-453)
devoted to the Mailjusrinairdt-
mydvatdrasfitra. In each of the twenty-four
chapters, he numbers both the Khotanese
verses and their English renditions, so students
of the Khotanese language should find this to
be an ideal reader.
The fragmentary nature of the text accen-
tuates the translation difficulty. But the fact
that it is a Buddhist text seems almost inci-
dental to the treatment, since there are only
meager notes to the translation, namely those
contained in the valuable introductory para-
graph to each chapter, the Arapacana Syllabary
of Appendix 3 (pp. 454-455), and some rare
footnotes. There is no index at all, which if
constructed, would have facilitated consulta-
tion of the translation of the Buddhist work.
Still, Dr. Emmerick has succeeded in render-
ing a sufficient amount of the text with a high
level of translation to enable the reader to get
a fair idea of the contents of the work.
Although Dr. Emmerick's force of scholar-
ship was directed more to the text than to the
translation, the work should interest Buddhist
specialists. It sheds much light on the char-
acter of Khotanese Buddhism. It is significant
that this work is devoted to the mythological,
devotional, and miraculous side of Mahayana
Buddhism, with wholesale drawing on previ-
ous sources, especially from both the Ratnak-
iita and the Avatamsaka type of scriptures.
There is scarce evidence of philosophical sub-
tlety; rather the work is aimed at popularizing
Buddhism. The cult of the Future Buddha
Maitreya (Chapter XXIII, pp. 301-341) is pres-
ent as pure devotion and, incidentally, con-
tains a charming description of the jewels of
the Universal Emperor (pp. 3II-33). The
popular emphasis does not prevent the appear-
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152 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES
ance of some intriguing doctrinal points, such
as the manner of subdividing each of the six
perfections (pdran2itz) by the other perfec-
tions (pp.
I55, I57)
of the Bodhisattva. I sup-
pose that monks in the Khotan region would
still study more abstruse tresatises in the
authoritative Sanskrit language, just as cen-
turies later the Mongolian lamas would study
the sacred scriptures in the Tibetan language
rather than in their own Mongolian language
even when works were translated therein, as
the late Dilowa Gegen Hutukhtu once told
me.
The Sanskrit background of the work is not
lost to Dr. Emmerick, who again and again
renders the Khotanese by equivalent Sanskrit
terms rather than by English expressions. So
in Chapter X, p. 15: "He realizes the Suira-
rgamasamcdhdna and the
vairopama-experi-
ence, the ten upayas, the four vaisadradyas, the
eighteen dvenikadharmas. This is the un-
shared j[iana. So many are its dnus'amsas."
Such Sanskrit terms are useful for Buddhist
specialists, yet in their untranslated form they
give the impression that the translator never
intended his work to be read by persons
limited to the English language! In some cases,
this sticking to the Sanskrit term reduces the
clarity and even cogency of a sentence, as in
his use of the term samjiin as though this were
untranslatable (whereas, as the French Budd-
hologists long ago recognized, it means an
'idea' or a 'notion'), thus in Chapter IV, p. 8i:
"Therefore is there no manifestation of form
there: because one has had no meditation on
form. The vijildna has meditated without
samjini. It has not even the samriad of form."
Here the Khotanese (p. 8o) vifidni
kaste
asamini should mean "One has meditated with
perception (vijiidna) (but) not with an idea
(samnjfd)." And so also: "One has not even
the idea of form."
There are some other spots which are de-
batable, but there is no doubting the fine level
of attainment. The whole work appears to be
a kind of tour de force by a young scholar
whose promise is being proven, who should be
recognized as a solid specialist in Khotanese
studies. If in his haste to establish this point he
failed to equip his book with a full table of
contents and an index and thereby reduced
the usefulness, one should still give him credit
for the good accomplishment and look for-
ward to other works by him that are sure to
come.
ALEX WAYMAN
Columbia University
Survey of the Sino-Soviet Dispute. BY JOHN
GITTINGS. New York: Oxford University
Press, I968, XiX, 4IO
pp.
Appendixes, In-
dex. $I I.75.
The study under review is designed, as the
author suggests, to throw light on the origins
and development of the Chinese-Soviet dis-
pute by "extracting, refining and interpreting"
the articles and statements exchanged between
China and the Soviet Union between I963 and
I967. The polemics in I963 ceased to be
couched in "esoteric language" and both sides
began to indulge in an open dialogue about
their differences. The author has compiled a
careful and useful collection of annotated and
shortened versions of the documents, provid-
ing an indispensable reference book for those
who are concerned with the subject.
It may be argued that documents of this
nature are inadequate for an understanding
of the dispute between China and the Soviet
Union, and particularly so for this volume be-
cause after I963 the statements were often
"distorted and partial" in the open debate.
The materials appearing in this volume are
much more instructive and revealing than one
might have thought, because the language is
vivid and extreme about what we already
know, making it more interesting, but much
softer and less clear about issues that are still
obscure to us. For the most part, the extracts
reveal the sharply divergent views of China
and the Soviet Union on practically every ma-
jor issue, including the Vietnam War and the
Cultural Revolution. Each accuses the other of
making "a lie," "a distortion," or "an error."
On the other hand, both sides tend to be silent
on the I956-I957 period, especially on the na-
ture of their cooperation or discord over bloc
policy. The true circumstances of Chou En-
lai's trip to Warsaw early in I957, for example,
remain very unclear. Edgar Snow, for one,
suggests in The Other Side of the River that
Moscow shared its leadership with China in
bloc affairs because Khrushchev needed
China's backing to consolidate his power posi-
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