234 stephan peter bumbacher
centre around which the cultic activity ( ower-pj, dancing, etc.) takes
place.”^150
As this stra-cult had already been ourishing for three or more
centuries within the Central Asiatic countries; and as the place where
the Taiping jing was discovered lies, according to the Daoxue zhuan, in
the area where the trade routes from Central Asia to China passed
through, it seems quite likely that this Daoist form of a book cult may
have been “imported” from the West. Kohn’s statement, for which,
however, she does not present any textual evidence: “[... the] practice
of [Daoist] scripture veneration w[as] introduced from Mahyna Bud-
dhism [.. .]”^151 thus may indeed have a fundamentum in re.
- Appropriation of Buddhist STRAs by Daoists
Another form of Buddho-Daoist interaction deserving to be discussed
here is that of each side’s appropriation of whole texts originally belong-
ing to the other tradition. Unfortunately, due to lack of space, we must
restrict ourselves here to the discussion of one single example, namely
of the transformation of a Buddhist text into a Daoist one. As appro-
priation was a two-way process, it goes without saying that Buddhist
adaptations of Daoist texts ought to be analysed as well.
The received title of the text “traditionally regarded as the rst
Indian Buddhist scripture to be translated into Chinese”^152 is Sishier
zhang jing (Scripture in Forty-two Sections). The claim of
its primeval nature is already made in the rst chapter of the Gaoseng
zhuan, in K yapa Mta ga’s biography. The received title, however,
is not the original one. In fact, all early references call the scripture
the Fojing sishier zhang (Forty-two Sections of Buddhist
Scriptures) or similar, which is also more accurate as far as its contents
are concerned.^153
(^150) Op. cit., p. 181. Schopen further assumes that, “since each text placed itself at
the centre of its own cult, early Mahyna (from a sociological point of view), rather
than being an identi able single group, was in the beginning a loose federation of a
number of distinct though related cults, all of the same pattern, but each associated
with its speci c text”.
(^151) Kohn in Kohn 2000, p. 303.
(^152) Sharf 1996, p. 360.
(^153) An early version of this section was presented at the XVth EACS European
Association for Chinese Studies Conference, Heidelberg University, August 25–29,
- A more detailed analysis is given in Bumbacher 2006 (forthcoming).