The Hakubi Project

In the introduction of the critical edition of Abhayākaragupta's Niṣpannayogāvalī, the garland of yoga which is completed, the editor Benoytosh BHATTACHARYYA(1897-1964) mentioned two points regards to this publication. First, the edition based on three Sanskrit Manuscripts(MSS)/Codices, but the third MSS preserved in Kalimpong through his interpreter a Nepalese scholar of Buddhism Paṇḍita Śrī Siddhiharṣa BAJRĀCĀRYA(1879-1951) has corrected many obscure and delicate points of other two MSS. Second, the publication will make it particularly easy to interpret a large number of bronze statuettes discovered in the Forbidden City of Beijing in China, of whom images published by Walter Eugene CLARK(1881-1960) in "Two Lamaistic Pantheons." This episode means BHATTACHARYYA had depended on Philological and Iconographical resources via interpreters for making his critical edition. Such a kind of approach, which started publications of BHATTACHARYYA including "Sādhanamāla" and "The Indian Buddhist Iconography," is being succeeded as a primary method of Indian Tantric Buddhist Studies, i.e. Marie-Thérèse de MALLMANN(1909-1975) and Richard Othon MEISEZAHL(1906-1992), to Yong-Hyun LEE. On the other hand, their contextual background though interpreters of which Newar and Tibetan tradition has not been examined in any detail. Considering this point of view, it should reconsider the background of these critical editions and materials as their resources again for making critical edition and annotated translation. Especially, it should be noted that the influence of Indic Buddhist styles as practiced by Newar artisans of the Kathmandu Valley.