Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/248

 XX THE PRAGi?A-PARAMITA-H*JDAYA-stiTRA. THE PRAG^A-PArAMITA-H^/DAYA- sOtra. (THE LARGER AND THE SMALLER TEXT.) As the short text and translation of these Sfltras were pub- lished in the Anecdota Oxoniensia, 1884, with Introduction and full notes, I did not at first intend to include them in this volume. But as I was told that this Sfitra is really the most widely read Buddhist text in Japan, to be seen everywhere on shrines, temples and monasteries, more admired, it may be, than understood by the Buddhist laity, I yielded to the wishes of my Buddhist friends, and have reprinted it so as to make this volume a really complete repository of all the important sacred texts on which Buddhism takes its stand in Japan. We have heard so much of late of a Buddhist propaganda for the conversion of the East and the West to the doctrines of Buddha, that it may be useful to see what the doctrines of the historical Buddha have become in the Mah&y&na-school, more parti- cularly in the monasteries of Japan. the amitAyur-dhyAna-sCtra. As I did not succeed in getting possession of a MS. of the original Sanskrit text of this Sfitra, I had given up all hope of being able to give in this volume a translation of all the classical texts used by the two leading sects of the Buddhists in Japan. Fortunately at the last moment a young Japanese scholar who is reading Sanskrit with me at Oxford, Mr. J. Takakusu, informed me that he possessed the Chinese translation of this SGtra, and that he felt quite competent to translate it. It so happens that the style of this SGtra is very simple, so that there is less fear of the Chinese translator, K41ayaras, having misunderstood the Sanskrit original. But though I feel no doubt that this Digitized by Google