Brief Communication

BRIAN GALLOWAY

A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MARK TATZ

The very learned Prof. Mark Tatz, in a brief communication in IIJ 36:
335–336 (1993), which I discovered only by chance in 1996, offers
some criticisms of my paper in IIJ 34: 87–104 (1991). There I argue
that Prof. J. Brough was partly wrong in stating that the opening of
a Buddhist sutra must always be understood as evam maya srutam
ekasmin samaye: bhagavan  : : : viharati sma ‘Thus have I heard at
one time: the Lord dwelt : : : ’, reading ekasmin samaye with what
precedes rather than with what follows. In that paper I show that
some Indian commentators support this interpretation and that some
do not, and I show that Vimalamitra in his commentary on the Heart
Sutra demands the interpretation evam maya srutam: ekasmin samaye
bhagavan : : : viharati sma ‘Thus have I heard: At one time the Lord
dwelt : : : ’, reading ‘at one time’ with what follows rather than with
what precedes. I also show that some Indian commentators support
both interpretations, regarding either as correct.
At one point I mentioned that if we read the Tibetan translations of
the opening of a sutra in the fashion of Brough, a substantial violation
of usual Tibetan word order ensues. This is a minor point, since I
also admitted that usual Tibetan word order is elsewhere violated in
Tibetan translations of sutras, usually in deference to the word order of
the Sanskrit original. But I thought that this violation, if it was done,
would be particularly noticeable and believed that the Tibetan translators
should not be accused of making it when another interpretation of the
phrase (reading the Tibetan equivalent of ekasmin samaye with what
follows) renders them harmless in this regard. Admittedly the Tibetans
often put a punctuation mark after the Tibetan equivalent of ekasmin
samaye, but I show, giving evidence and reasoning, that this mark does
not compel us to read the Tibetan equivalent of ekasmin samaye with
what precedes it.
Prof. Tatz writes in this connection, ‘Brian Galloway is too hasty in
dismissing as “unlikely” the punctuation of the Tibetan translation [sic]
by John Brough.’ Of course the punctuation in the Tibetan translations

Indo-Iranian Journal 40: 367–371, 1997.
c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
368 BRIAN GALLOWAY

is not by John Brough; it was there in the texts previous to him; and of
course I did not dismiss it or declare it to be unlikely. I merely interpret
it differently from Brough.
Tatz believes that the violations of normal Tibetan word order that he
postulates in order to read ‘at one time’ with what precedes is supported
by other violations of normal Tibetan word order, though the existence
of other violations would not prove the existence of this one. Besides,
most of the rules, or guidelines, or tendencies, that he claims are violated
do not really seem to exist, or at any rate he gives no sources for them,
and if they do exist, they are so frequently broken elsewhere – not
only at the beginnings of sutras – that one must ask what significance
they have, and what significance violations of them here could have. If
Tatz argues that they are not rules explicitly promulgated, but simply
tendencies observed de facto in the literature, I reply that they are not
in fact observed, since so many counterexamples occur immediately to
mind.
If I understand him correctly, Tatz argues that the Tibetan translators
(and/or also the Indians who compiled the originals; it is not always
clear which language Tatz is referring to) broke a rule that would put
the adverbial ‘at one time’ first in any sentence in which it appears;
followed a rule that would put evam first; followed a rule that would
put ‘Lord’ (bhagavan) first; broke a rule prohibiting the direct object
from being first; broke a rule that would put a word for ‘I’ first; and
broke the (Tibetan) rule putting adjective after noun. This last is the
only rule, or tendency, that in my view exists at all.

Tatz’s rule of evam

As for a rule putting evam first in a sentence or clause, the quotation
from the Hevajra Tantra that Tatz adduces, though it testifies to the
importance of this word, does not say that it must be first. According
to Tatz, the rule requiring that evam be first came into conflict with
the rule that the direct object (and evam here functions as the direct
object) be placed after the subject, and the first rule prevailed. For the
supposed rule that a direct object must not be first, see below.

Tatz’s rule of ‘Lord’

Against my theory, and Vimalamitra’s, that we can understand (after the
three-word preamble evam maya srutam) ekasmin samaye bhagavan 
: : : viharati sma ‘At one time the Lord dwelt : : : ’, Tatz avers that the

word for Lord ‘always stands at the head of a clause, often in defiance
of syntax.’ But in the common phrase idam avocad bhagavan  ‘thus
said the Lord’, bhagavan  stands at the very end. The famous ye dharma
 A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MARK TATZ 369

hetuprabhava,  hetun tes. am 

 . tathagato  . ca yo nirodha
hy avadat; tes. am
evam. v 
adi mah 
asraman. .ah ends with a word equivalent 
to bhagavan
‘Lord’. In S antaraksita’s Tattvasamgraha several clauses end with ‘Lord’
. .
or equivalent words as subject. Here is verse 3628 in the GOS edition1
and in the English translations by Jha,2 which is verse 3627 in the
1981–1982 edition of Dwarikasas Shastri;3 the text in both editions has

acaran 
. o but read avaran . o with Jha and the Tibetan translation.
4

yadyad icchati boddhum . va tattad vetti niyogatah. |

saktir evam
. vidha tasya prahın. avaran
 . o hy asau ||

‘Whatever he wishes to know, that he sees without fail; such power

is his part, for shaken off obscuration has he.’ The following verse
ends with prabhuh. ‘the mighty one’ i.e. the Buddha as subject of the
preceding verb pratipadyate ‘attains’. The next verse ends with kramen. a
vetti vijn~eyam
. sarvam. sarvavid ity atah. ‘in succession he sees every
cognizable, the all-seeing one’, the subject sarvavid being last in the
 . si vijn~ane
clause. The next half-verse is tatra tadr  kramen. a bhavati
prabhoh. , which Jha translates as ‘when this cognition of the Lord thus
appears in succession’, which is supported by the Tibetan translation,
though the Sanskrit appears to mean rather ‘in such a cognition’.

Tatz’s rule of the direct object

Tatz states, ‘As direct object, evam should follow the ergative subject,
not precede it.’ But the verses of homage that begin Nagarjuna’s

Mulamadhyamakak  a5 put the direct objects first, in extenso (there
arik
are fully eight adjectives, all applying to the direct object, tam, the
Buddha, all in the accusative case); and the second verse ends tam .
vande ‘him I praise’. In the Lank_ avat
 ara Sutra
 6 the Lord states triyanam

 . ca ayanam
ekayanam  . ca vadamy aham ‘I discuss the triple vehicle, the
one vehicle, and the no vehicle’, the direct objects being first, the verb
next, and the subject ‘I’ (standing for ‘Lord’ here) being last, which is
not infrequent.

Tatz’s rule of ‘I’

Tatz writes, ‘according to the grammatical purist’ (who?) ‘the pronoun
“I” should begin the sutra.’ Again, the example just given from the
_ avat
Lank  ara
 Sutra
 has ‘I’ last in the sentence. One has also seen bhavamy

aham ‘am I’ (after a self-description of the Buddha) for instance. More
generally, the subject of a sentence need not be first: the Prajn~ap
 aramit
 a
sutras often show such as dus. kara bodhisattvah
. ‘doers of what is hard
are the Bodhisattvas’, meaning, of course, ‘Bodhisattvas do what is
hard’ (meaning, again, it is clear from context, not that anyone who
370 BRIAN GALLOWAY

does what is hard is a Bodhisattva, but that anyone who is a Bodhisattva

is a doer of what is hard; thus not ‘if a doer of what is hard, then a
Bodhisattva’ but ‘if a Bodhisattva, then a doer of what is hard’).

Tatz’s rule of adjective after noun

Tatz makes the interesting point that evam should have been translated
into Tibetan as skad ’di rather than as ’di skad (but this does not
necessarily suggest that a different violation of usual Tibetan word
order has occurred elsewhere). It could be that in the period of the
early translators or earlier there was a different word order that was
current, so that this order may have been a conscious archaism on the
part of the Tibetan translators.
Concerning thabs gcig tu Tatz is perfectly right, and I thank him
for correcting me. Evidently the original signification of the phrase
was not ‘on one occasion’ but ‘as one occasion’ i.e. ‘together’. This is
confirmed by a passage in the Prophecy of the Li Country:7 n~an-thos
chen-po bcu-drug dan_ thabs gcig-tu car-mar
 de-bzin-gsegs-pah. i chul

bstan-nas ‘when he in Tsar-ma together with the sixteen great disciples
had taught the way of the Tathagata’.
Finally Tatz recommends Professor Wayman’s remarks on the sutra
preamble in his Srımal adev
 ısim  utra.
. hanadas  8 Wayman agrees with me
that either preamble is possible, but has concluded, based on insufficient
evidence, that the Mahayanists chose the five-word preamble evam
maya srutam ekasmin samaye ‘thus have I heard at one time’ while
the Hinayanists chose the three-word preamble evam maya srutam
‘thus have I heard’. But as my paper shows, Vimalamitra and other
Mahayanists chose the three-word preamble and are thus not in accord
with Wayman’s conception of a Mahayanist five-word preamble. They
are at one with Buddhaghosa on this. Here as elsewhere there is no
unified or monolithic Mahayana line.

NOTES
1
Vol. II. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1988 (reprinted from the original GOS edition
of 1926), p. 932.
2
Vol. II. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986 (reprint of original GOS edition of 1939),
p. 1573.
3
Vol. 2. Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, 1982, p. 1126.
4
Vol. 138, p. 199.3.6.
5
Dwarika Das Shastri, ed. Madhyamakasastra  arjuna.
of Nag  Varanasi: Bauddha
Bharati, 1983, p. 1 in the text of the Madhyamakasastra,
 p. 3 in the text of the
commentary of Candrakırti.
6
P. L. Vaidya, ed. Saddharmalank _ avat
 aras
 utram.
 Darbhanga, Mithila Institute, 1963,
 A REPLY TO PROFESSOR MARK TATZ 371

p. 28 (ch. 2, verse 129); D. T. Suzuki, tr. The Lankavatara Sutra. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1932, p. 58 (ch. 2, verse 131).
7
R. E. Emmerick. Tibetan Texts concerning Khotan. London: Oxford Univ. Press,
1967, p. 26. See also the review by J. W. de Jong in IIJ 13: 222–225 (1971), p. 224.
8
A. and H. Wayman, trs. The Lion’s Roar of Queen Sr  ımal
 a.
 Columbia Univ. Press,
1974, prologue, Note 1.

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