This thesis is a recensional research of “The Offering of Dharma” and “Injunction to Spread this Sūtra” in the Chinese translation of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, with part of “the general introduction”（通序）of Chapter One involved. There are two parts: “Data-processing” includes textual criticism, recensional comparison and glossing, parsing, translation of the parallel Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, with further survey when needed. And “research” analyzes recensional variations and constructs the stemma of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, in order to understand the development of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa and the filiation of those recensions of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. . To find out the useful ways to explore the development of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, I reviewed the previous related studies and discover that the formation and development of the Buddhist texts and their studies have observed the rule of stratification. Yet scholars have failed to recognize the ur-sutra/ur-text by deconstructing the process of stratification. By contrast, “intertextuality” corresponds to the formation and development of the Buddhist texts. Hence, I deduce three steps of intertextual analysis from L’intertextualité and apply them to analyzing the variations in the recensions in this thesis.
Then, I investigate the study of the alterations and interpolations in the Buddhist texts in order to select the proper object of my research into the development of the versions of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. The study shows that in Mahāyānasūtras the oft-cited formulas, or fixed sets of words, were where alterations and interpolations were, and that the pattern of the formulas reveals the date, region, and school a text belongs to. Thus, this thesis focuses on formulas for an insight into the formation, distribution and affiliation of the versions of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. After finding out the approach and the research object, I start out with analyzing the editions of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. I indicate first that the Khontese manuscript was dated back to the 5th and 6th centuries, and then my textual comparison discloses that the two extant manuscripts in Japan were copies of the printed edition affiliated to the system of Kaibao Zang. In addition, the proofread materials enable me to discern the paleographic and orthographic characteristics of the Dunhuang and western Tibetan manuscripts and so on, illustrate their translations and contents, and identify the very features of the Tibetan versions. Last, this thesis also contributes to a stemma of recensions of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa by way of recensional comparison and contrast. The recensions can be divided into two groups: Zhi Qian’s and Kumārajīva’s translations are one group, and the rest are the other. Moreover, the intertextual analysis of formulas suggests that the authors or editors of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa must have been very familiar with Śrāvakasūtras. Unlike the daily expressions and the established Buddhist concepts, which rarely change, synonym-piled
