The new BDK NIRVANA SUTRA (MAHĀPARINIRVĀṆA-SŪTRA) VOLUME I, (Taishō Volume 12, Number 374) translated by Mark L. Blum. This has the first 10 of 40 FASCICLES, with three volumes left to come.
DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE!https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.p ... a_Volume_I
NOW let's look at the Mahayana Mahāparinirvāṇa-Sūtra , translated by Kosho Yamamoto. This in 46 CHAPTERS
CHECK IT OUT https://nirvanasutranet.wordpress.com/
After comparing I can confirm that Doctor Tony Page's edition has both the core 10 chapters which Dharmakṣema translated in 421 CE and the 30 extra chapters which Dharmakṣema, ahem, co-incidentally is alleged to have "translated" in the subsequent decades.
The first 10 FASCICLES of the BDK edition indeed end after the 17th CHAPTER of the Page edition. [page 131 to page 140]
I quote the wiki here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah%C4%81 ... S%C5%ABtraThe translation done by Dharmakṣema from 421 CE on may for a large part be based on a non-Indian text.[15]
The first ten fascicles may be based on a birch-bark manuscript of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra from North-Western India that Dharmakṣema brought with him, which he used for the initial translation work of his version. This version corresponds overall in content to the "six fascicle" version and the Tibetan version.[16]:157[17][6]:104
Dharmakṣema's translation of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra extends for a further thirty fascicles, beyond the first ten fascicles of this sutra. Many scholars doubt if these thirty fascicles are based on an Indian Sanskrit text. The chief reasons for this skepticism are these:[18]:12–13
no traces of an extended Sanskrit text has ever been found, while Sanskrit manuscript fragments of twenty four separate pages distributed right across the core portion of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra have been found over the past hundred years in various parts of Asia;[18]:12–13
no quotations are known from this latter portion in any Indian commentaries or sutra anthologies;[15]
no other translator in China or Tibet ever found Sanskrit copies of this portion.[15]
In addition, these doubts correspond with an account from the Chinese monk-translator Yijing,[note 6] who mentions that he searched for a copy of the enlarged Mahaparinirvāṇa-sūtra through all that time, but only found manuscripts corresponding to the core portion of this work.[6]
For these reasons, textual scholars generally regard the authenticity of the latter portion as dubious. It may have been a local Central Asian composition at best, or else written by Dharmakṣema himself, who had both the ability and the motive for doing so
The upshot, I'll keep my BDK edition for study and spiritual edification and I'll save my money by NOT buying 2 to 4 of the BDK, hanging onto the Page edition as good enough for that material.