I've recently begun reading up on the Avataṃsaka Sutra and was curious if anyone here is aware of any available Sanskrit text. Thank you.
2 Answers
I think it is only complete in Chinese & Tibetan, the Chinese being much longer than the Tibetan. Sanskritic manuscripts are too fragmentary to form a full Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra.
This is a particular section of the Buddhāvataṃsaka that we happen to still have legible manuscripts for: http://www.dsbcproject.org/canon-text/book/40. It is called the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra, you can read the Chinese correspondence at T279.319a6 in the Taishō Canon 入法界品 Dharmadhātupraveśanaparivartaḥ Ch 39 in Thomas Cleary's English translation "Flower Ornament Scripture" it is called the "Entry into the Realm of Reality" chapter, at page 1135: https://archive.org/stream/TheFlowerOrnamentScriptureATranslationOfTheAvatamsakaSutraByThomasClearypdfdtyxxytd/The%20Flower%20Ornament%20Scripture%20A%20Translation%20of%20the%20Avatamsaka%20Sutra%20by%20Thomas%20Cleary%20%5Bpdf%5D%20%7Bdtyxxytd%7D#page/n5/mode/2up.
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Is Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra a part of the sutra? I thought it was a later addition...– Andriy Volkov ♦Dec 10, 2021 at 19:41
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1It is indeed widely-believed to be a later addition to the sūtra, but constitutes the "final chapter" of the Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra in its present-day redaction. It is similar to how the Tathāgatāyuṣpramāṇaparivarta (Ch 15 of the Sanskrit Lotus Sūtra, Ch 16 of the Chinese) is believed to have circulated once as a separate text. The Gaṇḍavyūha's original title was something like "Dharmadhātupraveśana," or "The Entrance into the Dharmadhātu." You can read more on its history on the "Introduction" section of the 84,000 Reading Room translation: read.84000.co/translation/toh44-45.html Dec 11, 2021 at 9:29
You should be able to find it in the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon. Unfortunately I don't have a Sanskrit IME to give you the direct link to the text, but doing a search should bring it up.
