early buddhism in china: daoist reactions 233
the place where the scripture was found, not unlike erecting a temple,
goes far beyond merely paying homage to the scripture or burning
incense on behalf of it. Although it could be considered a logical next
step after, as Ge Hong had described, “setting up an altar and making
a present of silk”, it is noteworthy that the Taiping jing episode is said
to have occurred in China’s far West. This may indicate where this
behaviour came from: from Central Asia if not even from Northern
India. In his seminal article Gregory Schopen has analysed the mean-
ing and function of the phrase “sa pthiv pradea caityabhto bhavet” as it
appears in the Sanskrit version of the Vajracchedik stra and in other early
Mahyna stras.^147 In a detailed and differentiating study, whose argu-
ment does not have to be repeated here, he showed convincingly that the
phrase ought to be rendered as “that spot of earth becomes an eminent
sacred place”.^148 By “that spot of earth” is meant the place where a
Mahyna stra is taught, illuminated, recited, taken up, made into a
book, copied, worshipped, and adored—in short: the locality where the
cult of the book, the cult of the stra, takes place. The underlying idea
was that if the presence of the Buddha at a particular place rendered
that place sacred and if the Buddha’s teaching (the stra) is “part” of
himself then the presence of his stra would equally render the place
where it actually is located a sacred one. Schopen goes on saying:
Once this formula was worked out and accepted, it could then be
inserted into the text which one recited and wished to establish, and then
the recitation, etc., of that text at a particular spot, on the basis of the
associations asserted in the formula, would have, in effect, the effect of
authoritatively legitimating that spot as a cultic center.^149In other words, by using this “mechanism” it was possible to expand and
develop new centres. We may thus see here one of the means by which
the representatives of early Mahyna established their own “domain”
in opposition to the stpa-cult of Mainstream Buddhism. This formula
also marks the shift from an oral transmission of the stra for which the
presence of bhakas was necessary to a transmission of the written text
that could be read by anybody capable of reading. More importantly,
however, was the fact that now “the spot of earth on which the book
stands, is the focal point of the cult of the book—the organisational
(^147) Schopen 1975.
(^148) Op. cit., p. 178.
(^149) Op. cit., p. 179.