The Bhadramayakara-Vyakarana: Introduction, Tibetan Text, Translation and Notes

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The Bhadra-mayakara-vyakarana, •The Prophecy of the Magician BhadraÍ, is part of the great collection entitled Ratnakuta, ‘Multitude of Jewels’, a collection much revered in the Buddhist Mahayana traditions of Tibet and China. While it is not one of the more important of the 49 sutras included in the Ratnakuta, it is in itself, an apologue full of charm and irony which has its value in its literary qualities, merits which are, as Regamey himself mentioned, rare in this type of literature.

RegameyÍs plan was that the Bhadra-mayakaravyakarana should inaugurate a series entitled, Minor Ratnakuta Sutras. The series got no further than its first volume. The project had a resurgence in the form of an edition and translation of the Upali-pariprccha published in 1973 by Pierre Python, a student of Konstanty Regamey at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. It was in this same university that Regamey consecrated a seminar to reading another ïminor Ratnakuta SutraÍ, the Drdhadhyasaya-samcodana-sutra; but, to our knowledge, nothing was ever published. The stock of the 1938 edition of the Bhadravyakarana perished in the destruction of Warsaw during the Second World War, making RegameyÍs work one of extreme scarcity. The present reprint by Motilal Banarsidass is, therefore, all the more welcome indeed.

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