As a work that has influence on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Bodbicaryāvatāra, is an important treatise written by Śāntideva, an active Mahāyāna Buddhist monk at Nālandā Monastery during the first half of the 8th century. According to legend, the number of commentaries for Bodbicaryāvatāra written by the Indians was as many as one hundred. The texts that are still available today, however, are only about ten volumes. Among these, the only extant Sanskrit manuscript is Prajñakaramati’s Bodbicaryāvatāra-pañjikā. Prajñakaramati was one of the great scholastic monks at Vikramaśīla, the largest Buddhist monastery roughly about 10th -11th century India. About the same era were scholars such as Ratnākaraāśānti and Jñānaśrīmitra. Bodbicaryāvatāra-pañjikā is Prajñakaramati’s most important masterpiece, in which it states that the 9th Chapter of Śāntideva’s Bodbicaryāvatāra can be divided into several sections as follow. Firstly, verses 1 to 5 are the outline of the Mādhyamika’s theory of the two truths. Next, from verses 6 to 151 are the arguments surrounding this theory. Through these verses, Śāntideva disputed the argumentations of his opponents from the standpoint of Mādhyamika thinker and he eventually reached the conclusion that anything causally produced is empty in substance and is ultimately neither arising nor ceasing. This, apparently, is the ideology of emptiness since Nagarjuna. And thirdly, verses 152 to 168 form the conclusion of the chapter. This paper translates and annotates the commentary of verse 1. As mentioned above, verses 1 to 5 are related to the theory of the two truths, which is the core concept of Mādhyamika. Among these, verse 1 is a preface to the theory, furthermore, it can also be considered as an introduction to chapter 9. Prajñakaramati wrote an extremely detail commentary for this verse even though it only consists of one verse. Perusing its content, it’s not hard to conclude that this commentary can be viewed as a preliminary study of Mādhyamika Buddhism as well. Besides translating this commentary from Sanskrit to modern Chinese, this paper also provides detailed footnotes to its use of terminologies and references. For the convenience of its readers, this paper tries to use modern terms in Chinese during the translation.
