Dharma Pearls

I have great news. The Dīrgha Āgama is completely drafted, all 22 fascicles of it (which comes to about 235,000 words of English). The past few months have been non-stop drafting, and at times it’s been quite challenging, especially DĀ 19’s mysterious transliterations and the long tract in DĀ 30 about all the various Hells, which puts modern horror film screenwriters to shame. But now I will be focusing for the next 6 weeks or so on editing the final four sutras and releasing them at Dharma Pearls.

DĀ 1 (Mahāvadāna) and DĀ 2 (Parinirvāṇa) will be released this month, then DĀ 30 (Description of the World) in May. DĀ 19 (Mahāsamaya) may take longer because I want to consult with outside help on its transliterated Gandhari passages. It may be an intractable problem, but I want to explore all the avenues before I finalize a release.

I did push a couple updates to Dharma Pearls last month that aren’t related to the Dīrgha Āgama. I began re-editing my translations of Samyukta Āgama sutras, and as this continues there are drafts that will be released in the next couple months. I also released a translation of MĀ 210 Dharmadinnā, which is one of the few EBTs that depicts a bhikṣuṇī as a teacher.

Some may have also noticed this new bit:

I’ve been working with the Śāriputra Abhidharma as I research passages in DĀ, and I’ve been finding sutra quotes that appear to be unrecognized EBT parallels to date. I’ll be collecting such extracts and releasing them on Dharma Pearls in the future as it appears to be the only source of Dharmaguptaka sutras that exists outside of DĀ.

Looking beyond the release of the last of the DĀ sutras, I’ll be shifting gears and working on other projects this summer that have been neglected while working on this big project. I’ll get back to polishing SĀ and MĀ sutras (and editing drafts that have been waiting for attention), and there’s a couple other DĀ publications to work on once the translation is polished (hardcopy books and SuttaCentral).