The Dharmadhātustava by Nāgārjuna has now been published in the original Sanskrit. As noted in the April 6, 2012 blog post here, “The Dharmadhātu-stava by Nāgārjuna,” a Sanskrit manuscript of it had been found in Tibet. This has now been edited and published in the series, Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region:
Dharmadhātu-stava Original Sanskrit Published
By David Reigle on September 13, 2015 at 3:09 am
Category: Noteworthy Books | 2 comments
Dear Robert,
Nagarjuna’s authorship of the Dharmadhatu-stava is held in doubt only by Christian Lindtner and whatever modern scholars agree with him in this. As Lindtner noted, the Indian writer Bhavya quotes seven verses from it, attributing them to Nagarjuna. The whole of Tibetan tradition, inheriting the Indian tradition, has considered this text to be written by Nagarjuna. For Tibetan writers, the presence of tathagata-garbha teachings in a work by Nagarjuna did not present a problem. The Tibetan writer Tsongkhapa, for example, merely defined the tathagata-garbha as the emptiness of the mind. Hence no contradiction with Nagarjuna’s other writings. Tsongkhapa even classified the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, which teaches the tathagata-garbha, to be of definitive meaning.
Dear David,
Regarding the dharma-dhātu-stava being considered authored by Nāgārjuna, I refer to Christian Lindtner’s “Master of Wisdom. Writings of the Buddhist Master Nāgārjuna,” Dharma Publishing, 1997, pages 330-31:
“The third group [of authentic Nāgārjuna texts], i.e., the dubious texts . . . those most likely not: . . . Dharma-dhātustava . . ..”
At the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies website:
,
it mentions: “Nāgārjuna, the founder of Mādhyamika, was considered to be the author of Dharmadhātustava. However, late Mādhyamika considered that Dharmadhātustava showed significant influence from the Tathāgatagarbha-tradition.”
My question to you is, would the stava’s leanings towards the Tathāgatagarbha-tradition of Maitreya, etc., be considered one reason why the text is held in doubt as being authored by Nāgārjuna, since it is not considered a purely Mādhyamika-text?