GREGORY SCHOPEN THE PHRASE 'sa prthiv?pradegag caityabh~to bhavet" IN THE Vafracchedik~: NOTES ON THE CULT OF THE BOOK IN MAHAYANA* The phrase sa p.rthivrpradegag caityabhfito bhavet at Vajracchedik~(= Vaj) 12 & 15c represents neither the sole, nor even, perhaps, the most important occurrence of this curious formula. The Vaj occurrences are taken as the point of departure for the present paper because they represent the least fully articulated form of the phrase and its supportive context, and, as a consequence, are most open to misunderstanding if confronted in isolation. Further, by beginning from this point, we are able to illustrate in a more general way the danger of approaching any one piece of Buddhist Sfitra Literature - be it a phrase, a figure of speech, or a whole text - in isolation from its fellows, which generally - as in this case - exhibit an unexpected interlocking of seemingly disparate wholes. The approach followed here is to give the two occurrences of the phrase in the Va]; to look at them and note the difficulties; then to read both behind them and around them in the hope of understanding the intention of the phrase and - if any - its concrete referent. This method requires that we rely heavily on textual citations, and they will usually be given in full in the hope that, since the language of the various passages is similar but not identical, the manner of expression in one passage will illuminate a somewhat different expression in another passage, and vice versa. Our basic source materials are the Sanskrit texts; within the Sanskrit texts, in turn, our basic problem is one of how to understand the compound 'caityabh~ta'. As an ancillary aid to this understanding we have consulted throughout the Tibetan translations of our basic documents. In the process it became apparent that the Tibetan translators had had the same difficulty in rendering the term into Tibetan that modem translators had had in rendering it into modern European languages, proving, I suppose, that if our understanding of these passages is not altogether satisfactory, we can at least be consoled with the idea that we are in good company. Finally, in investigating the occurrence and the context of parallel or partially parallel versions of the phrase in works other than the Vaj, we stumbled upon some significant data which made possible a set of generalizations as to the evolution of basic cult-types in early Mahffyff_na. The first of the two occurrences which constitute our point of departure is Vaj 12 (Mffller, 28.10-17); Pargiter 181.13-182.3; Chakravarti, deest; *I should like to thank my friends in Canada who helped me, and the Canada Council for its generous financial support.