A critical study of the Bailun, Aryadeva's 'Treatise in One Hundred Verses' (Sata sastra)

The project began as a translation and critical study of the Hundred Treatise, a Madhyamika Buddhist text in Chinese attributed to Aryadeva (Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo Vol.30, no. 1569). Investigation of this text ultimately required translation of a far larger text, T1571 (Aryadeva's 'Extended Hundred Treatise' which corresponds to part of the Catuhsataka or 'Four Hundred (stanzas) Treatise'. The research sought firstly to elicit the meaning of the text and make it available to scholars of Buddhism and Chinese philosophy through a modern, annotated translation, secondly to locate the text within the broader corpus of Madhyamika commentarial works (this aspect required further investigation of related but hitherto unstudied Chinese texts), and finally a critical assessment of the contribution of the Hundred Treatise to Madhyamika philosophy and logic. Most of the initial detailed work was done during the period of the grant between 1999-2001 with Dr Youxuan Wang as Research Assistant funded by the AHRB. During the past year I have been working on this material with a view to bringing the project to publication by the end of the year. Our original intention was to make the translation of the Bailun available on the web and to publish the critical study separately as a monograph, but in light of the project's findings the most likely outcome will be that the translation and critical study of the 'Hundred Treatise' will be published as a single work, either in print or on the web, while a translation of the far larger 'Extended Hundred Treatise' will be offered on the web for the benefit of scholars.