The information gained through this study of Jianhui 堅慧 in Valabhī can be summarized as follows:
1. Judging from the findings of research on the edited texts of Sanskrit manuscripts, the Sanskrit commentaries attributed to Sthiramati were all written by a single person.
2. The commentary on the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, which survives only in Tibetan translation, was written by a different person.
3. There is no evidence whatsoever that allows one to identify Sthiramati mentioned in the copperplate inscriptions from Valabhī with the commentator Sthiramati.
4. There is a strong possibility that it was precisely because Xuanzang knew that there was a person called Sthiramati at Valabhī and was aware that this person was a different person from the commentator Sthiramati that he translated his name as “Jianhui” rather than “Anhui.”
5. There is little evidence to suggest that there existed in Valabhī a centre of Buddhist studies in the form of a monastery comparable in scale to Nālandā.
6. There is a strong possibility that the understanding that Sthiramati of Valabhī propounded an earlier version of Vijñānavāda doctrine, characterized by tathāgatagarbha thought, and stood in conflict with Dharmapāla’s new orthodox Vijñānavāda doctrine in Nālandā had its origins in Japan during the Edo period and is a tradition that was formulated by scholars in the early twentieth century.
It is possible that the situation will change if new material, such as archaeological material, is discovered in the future, but at the present point in time the following conclusions can be drawn:
1. Sthiramati of Valabhī was a different person from the scholar of the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda school who wrote several commentaries on works by Vasubandhu.
2. In view of the fact that it would seem unreasonable to suppose that there existed in Valabhī a centre of Buddhism on a par with Nālandā, and since, according to Xuanzang’s account, neither Guṇamati nor Sthiramati stayed there for any great length of time, it is unreasonable to suppose that this Sthiramati would have been head abbot of this centre of Buddhism ahead of Guṇamati.
3. It is completely inadmissible to project onto the history of Buddhism in India a conflict between Sthiramati (Anhui) and Dharmapāla, the latter of whom built the foundations of the doctrines of the Chinese Weishi school and the Japanese Hossō school.
