Compared with the previous publications (i.e., the first and second volumes) of this translation series, Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, A Japanese Translation and Annotation of Chapter II: Taking Refuge in Mahāyāna—the series’ third volume—is a work of higher perfection with more informative contents and materials. It newly includes the text and translation of Sthiramati’s as well as Asvabhāva’s commentary. It also contains the latest results of research on the manuscripts of Vairocanarakṣita’s and Sajjana’s commentaries which have hardly been examined in research so far. It offers a translation in natural Japanese while retaining the taste of the original text. Regarding the problems of the history of Yogācāra thought, we can see the basic position of this book in the following two points. First,it maintains that there were two lineages in the formation of Yogācāra thought: the line of the Yogācārabhūmi and that of Maitreya’s treatises. Second, it situates the theory of pañca-vastu in the kernel of the thought of Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra that was one combined consequence of the two lineages. We find the contextualization with pañca-vastu in Sthiramati’s and Asvabhāva’s commentaries, and it is necessary to examine more carefully whether Vasubandhu’s commentary expounded the pañca-vastu in the first and second verses of the first chapter. However, this book is highly significant in that it provides us with an overview of the history of Yogācāra thought.
