JACQUES MAY'S TRANSLATION
OF PRASANNAPADA
Johannes Rahder
CANDRAKIRTI: PRASANNAPADA, MADHYAMAKAVRTTI. Douze chapitres traduits du sanscrit et du tibetain, accompagnes d'une introduction, de notes et d'une edition critique de la version tibetaine. Par Jacques May. Preface de Paul Demieville. Paris : A. Maisonneuve, 1959. pp. 543. 10.
Candrakirti's commentary on Nagarjuna's verses (Madhyamaka-Karika) is the most important Indian Mahayana philosophical text, extant in San-skrit, Tibetan and Mongolian versions only.
Earlier Western translations rendered about half of Candrakirti's ma-gnif icent Summa under the following translated titles "Conception of Buddhist Nirvana" (chapters 1, 25, translated by Stcherbatsky), "Ausge-waehlte Kapitel aus der Prasannapada" (chapters 5, 12-16, translated by Schayer), "Feuer and Brennstoff" (ch. 10 translated by Schayer), "Traite de l'acte" (ch. 17 translated by Lamotte), "Cinq chapitres de la Prasanna-pada" (ch. 18-22 translated by J. W. De Jong).
The remaining 12 chapters have been correctly translated in the book under review by Constantin Regamey's Swiss pupil Jacques May, so that all 27 chapters are now available in well annotated Western translations.
The following 12 chapters have been rendered into excellent French philosophical terminology by Jacques May:
1) ch. 2 on movement; 2) ch. 3 on sense perception; 3) ch. 4 on matter, sensations, concepts, samskara (components), citta (mind), all essences (dis-tinct, self-identical entities, not reducible to relations, according to Sarva-stivada ontology); 4) ch. 6 on desire and simultaneity (saha-bhava); 5) ch. 7 on compounds, production (occurrence), destruction (disappearance); 6)
-755-JACQUES MAWS TRANSLATION OF PRASANNAPADA (J. Rahder) (10) ch. 8 on agent, act, activity (kriya, vrtti), event (notes 25, 61, 414); 7) ch. 9 on a (personal) substance, preceding experience; 8) ch. 11 on beginning, end, middle; past, future, present time-sequence, phenomenal momentari
sness of all essences; duration, reality; 9) ch. 23 on passions, good and evil, error; 10) ch. 24 on truth, soteriology and vacuity (sunya, rendered "relativity" by Stcherb
atsky and Obermiller), meaning in the Rigveda form suna (Grassmann, Worterbuch 1409; B. Heimann's article in BSOS 9 (1939) p. 1018) both "full, expanded" (Buddhist equivalent bhuta-koti, ya-ndagpahi mthah "Ultimate Reality") and "empty", corresponding to the Hellenistic gnostic polarity pleroma "full, perfect nature" (Iamblichus, De Mysteriis 1. 8; Damascius, De Principiis 28 bis; Ep. Rom. 11. 12; Ep. Eph. 3. 19, 4. 13) and kenoma "non-existence" (Anonymous Commentary on Plato's Parmenides; Gospel of Truth, also entitled Codex C. G. Jung "the Christian Gnostic sage rises from illusory, imperfect, worldly kenoma "emptiness, vanity" up to perfect pleroma", i. e. anapausis "quiescence", corresponding to Nirvana; see E. Hennecke, W. Schneemelcher, Neutesta-mentliche Apokryphen, 3rd ed., Tuebingen 1959, p. 165; W. Bauer, Grie-chisch-Deutsches Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testamentss und der uebrigen Urchristlichen Literatur. Funf to Auflage, 1958, Column 846-7, 1333), "vacuum" (Philo Mechanicus 57. 17), Kenosis "emptying" (Plato's Republic 585 b; the renunciation of the divine nature in the inca-rnation of Jesus Christ, Epistle to the Philippians 2: 6, 7) (comparison with the Greek terms made by the reviewer); 11) ch. 26 on the chain of 12 factors of conditioned existence; 12) ch. 27 on 16 erroneous doctrines concerning personal existence, eternity, the finite and infinite. May's thorough work has 1096 foot-notes in the translated chapters (in addition to hundreds of notes, listing Tibetan variant readings and citations of parallel passages in other texts), and an elaborate index of 38 pages, listing the Sanskrit terms with Tibetan and French equivalents and references to page and line number of the Sanskrit text (edited by L. de la Vallee Poussin in 1903-1913) and of the Tibetan and French translations.
