So, I realized after my reply that I hadn’t compared the twelve sutra divisions in MA.1 to the Abhidharma passage in T1536 at the time that I edited my English translation, and I fell into a rabbit hole when I looked it up. T1536 doesn’t clear up the problem because it’s order for items 5-8 is different than MA.1’s–but Xuanzang’s translations are much clearer.
In the process of researching this, I realized that the confusion lies in the understanding of itivuttaka in Pali and itivrttaka in BHS. They mean different things. In Pali it’s explained to mean “so it was said” but in BHS the term is understood to derive from itivrtta, which means “event/occurrence.”
Edgerton’s BHS dictionary says:
itivrttaka, nt. (in Bbh m.; = ityukta, °taka, qq.v.,
= Pali itivuttaka, which seems clearly based on iti vuttam
= ity uktam, but in BHS has been blended formally, by
Hypersanskritism, with Skt. itivrtta, nt., see BR; Tib.,
see below, proves that at least for Tib. translators the
word was connected with vrtta rather than ukta), n. of
a canonical work or type öf literature, story of past events
(associated with jätaka): Mvy 1274 = Tib. (de lta bu)
byuñ ba (-hi sde), story, history (root hbyuñ, happen,
take place, = vrt);
And he reports that this BHS reading is confirmed in Tibetan translation, too.
The BDK translators I think may have confused themselves by insisting on thinking of MA as a translation from Pali instead of another more likely Indic language. Maybe. The whole thing is very confusing.
So, the list of items in MA.1 goes like this:
正經、歌詠、記說、偈咃、因緣、撰錄、本起、此說、生處、廣解、未曾有法及說義
In T1536 Xuanzang gives us this:
契經、應誦、記說、伽他、自說、因緣、譬喻、本事、本生、方廣、希法、論議
Items 1-4 and 9-12 agree with each other. It’s 5-8 that get jumbled from one source to the next. This must be a function of memory because I’ve seen several examples of this. We forget the middle of lists more often than the beginning or end.
Anyway, in Chinese udana is understood to mean “unprompted discourses,” which would be 自說 or 此說 in the above lists. Itivrttaka means “past events or stories,” which equals 本起 and 本事 in the above lists. Avadana usually is translated the way Xuanzang translates it: 譬喻–“parables”. In MA.1 we have 撰錄 as an apparent equivalent.
I’ve also discovered that Xuanzang in fact translated what is probably the Sarvativada version of the Itivrttaka collection of sutras (T765). He titles it the 本事經. The content is very similar to the Pali Itivuttaka collection as far as I can gather looking at existing English translations and comparing them to his Chinese. So, the texts look to be the same material–the title itivrttaka is just understood differently. His Chinese texts have the same intros that are found in Pali: 吾從世尊聞如是語 = “I heard thus sayings from the Bhagavan.”
Charlie