A Study of Santideva's Bodhisattvacaryavatara as Found in the Tibetan Manuscripts from Tun-huang

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The present research deals with the earlier version of Santideva's Bodhisattvacaryavatra as exclusively found in the Tibetan manuscripts from Tun-huang, which I first identified as such in my article published in 1986. As one of the final results of the present research, I have made a booklet to be submitted to the Ministry of Education. The booklet contains the introduction, the transliterated texts of the eighth chapter of the St. 628 & 629, and the critically edited text of the commentary on the earlier version, Bodhisattvacaryavataravivrtti[panjika], which was also identified by myself in my previous article. The analysis of the earlier version and also the comparison of the two versions, i.e., the earlier((1)) and the later((2)) versions of the BCA, have made clear the following important facts concerning the texts, contents and the difference of the author's names:1 Aksayamati, the author of the BCA(1), must most probably be one of the nicknames of Santideva.2 The BCA(1) is, clearly, more authentic than the current BCA(2) in terms of both the text and the system of the BCA.3 Both versions differ not only in their numbers of stanzas (701.5 vs.913) and chapters (9 vs.10), but also in their texts of the Tibetan translation and, in many cases, the original Sanskrit as well.