Prof. Harrison on The Diamond

If that peaked your interest, you might want to try reading Paul Harrison's long article entitled Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā: A New English Translation of the Sanskrit Text Based on Two Manuscripts from Greater Gandhāra, contained in: Jens Braarvig, general editor, Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection: Buddhist Manuscripts Volume III, Hermes Publishing (Oslo 2006), pp. 133-159. It might take half an hour or a little longer. Depends on you.

If for some odd reason you're not willing to sacrifice the time and effort required to search out this publication in a large university research library near you, it would be worth your while to try reading this page in any case. Quicker, but not quite so rewarding.

I think it's interesting to gain some insight into what professional academic Buddhologists (if you prefer, we could call them Buddhist Studies experts) are up to. If you are young and you feel inspired to follow this career route, get started learning the languages you will need. If you were to follow my advice, you would start with Sanskrit and/or Pali. Then move to Chinese or Tibetan, in whichever order you prefer. Finally, Japanese is today the most important language for contemporary research about Buddhism. If you don't learn it you will always find reasons for regret. You might also want to seriously consider Korean or one or two of several Southeast Asian languages. Mongolian and Manchu are interesting options, since you find huge collections of Buddhist scriptures in them, also. I'm thinking it would not be good to neglect Khotanese Saka. Don't be too discouraged, though. In actual practice, there are a number of very respectable Buddhologists who do make do with fewer than all of these languages. Did I mention Apabhramsha? Guess not.



Oh, and Tangut. Don't forget Tangut.