Qī fó fùmǔ xìngzì jīng 七佛父母姓字經
Sūtra of the Family Names of the Seven Buddhas’ Parents Anonymous (失譯), conventionally attributed to the CáoWèi 曹魏 period
About the work
The Qī fó fùmǔ xìngzì jīng is a single short scripture, in one fascicle, transmitted as anonymous (失譯, “translator lost”) and conventionally attached in the Buddhist catalogues to the Cáo-Wèi 曹魏 dynasty (220–265). It is the briefest of the four Chinese parallels listed by the Taishō head-note for this saptatathāgata-cluster (T1[1] = the Dà běn jīng 大本經 of the Cháng Āhán; T2 = the [[KR6a0002|Qī fó jīng 七佛經]]; T3 = the [[KR6a0003|Pípóshī fó jīng 毘婆尸佛經]]; T4 = the present text). Its scope is precisely the field of “names” (姓字, xìngzì) for which T1 and T2 reserve only summary lists: for each of the seven past Buddhas — Wéiwèi 維衛 (Vipaśyin), Shì 式 (Śikhin), Suíyè 隨葉 (Viśvabhū), Jūlóuqín 拘樓秦 (Krakucchanda), Jūnàhánmóuní 拘那含牟尼 (Kanakamuni), Jiāyè 迦葉 (Kāśyapa), and “I now, who have become Śākyamuni” — the text gives the family clan-name (姓), social class (剎利 / 婆羅門), father’s and mother’s personal name, name of the kingdom and capital, the bodhi-tree under which awakening was achieved, the chief attendant, the two principal disciples, the son, the lifespan, and the number of preaching-assemblies.
The scripture is set at Śrāvastī, in the house of one Wúyánmǔ 無延母 (“Mother of Wúyán”). After the meal a group of monks sit aside and ask one another whether the Buddha’s omniscience extends to the names and circumstances of the past and future Buddhas; the Buddha hears them by his divine ear, joins them, and recites the names. The frame is thus a short Āgama-style narrative, but the body of the text is essentially a list — closer to an Avadāna-style nāmāvalī than to a discourse.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface, postface, or scribal colophon. The only paratext is the catalog rubric printed at the head: 「失譯附前魏譯」 — “translator unknown, attached to the Former Wèi (= CáoWèi) translations.” This is a catalogue convention recorded already in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, KR6s0084, where the work is listed among 失譯雜經) and carried forward through subsequent inventories.
Abstract
The transmitted attribution to the Cáo-Wèi (220–265) is a catalog-tradition assignment, not a documentable historical fact. Internal lexical evidence is consistent with an early date but does not pin the work tightly: the Buddha-names follow the archaic transcription standard (維衛 for Vipaśyin, 隨葉 for Viśvabhū, 拘樓秦 for Krakucchanda, 釋迦文 for Śākyamuni — all of which were displaced in later renderings by 毘婆尸, 毘舍浮, 俱留孫, 釋迦牟尼); the phrase 般泥洹 (parinirvāṇa) and the cosmological term 披地羅劫 (= bhadrakalpa) likewise belong to the older translation idiom. Modern scholarship (Erik Zürcher; later Jan Nattier in her A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations, IRIAB 2008) treats the text as part of the early “anonymous Hàn-Wèi” stratum: the safest position is that it was certainly in circulation by the late Three Kingdoms period and may date from somewhat earlier. Some catalogue and modern sources venture an attribution to 安世高 Ān Shìgāo (mid-2nd c.) on stylistic grounds, but this is not securely established and the Taishō rubric “前魏” (= Cáo-Wèi) is the conservative position retained here, with 220–265 as the recorded bracket. The Indic original is presumed lost.
The cluster T1[1] / T2 / T3 / T4 together provides a remarkable diachronic cross-section of how the Indian saptatathāgata tradition was rendered into Chinese over eight centuries: T4 is the early-medieval shorthand list, T1[1] (413) the Yáo-Qín full-narrative Mahāvadāna, T3 (Sòng) a fresh narrative-and-verse rendering of the Vipaśyin episode, and T2 (Sòng) a compact summary in the Sòng court-translation idiom.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢 and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica X. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2008. — Surveys the early-Chinese stratum to which T4 is conventionally assigned; useful for the methodology of evaluating “anonymous Hàn-Wèi” attributions.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Sinica Leidensia 11. Leiden: Brill, 1959 / 3rd ed. 2007. — Provides background on the Cáo-Wèi translation milieu and on catalog-tradition assignments of the kind borne by T4.
- Fukita, Takamichi 吹田隆道. The Mahāvadānasūtra. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. — Brief comparative discussion of T4 alongside the Sanskrit Mahāvadāna and T1[1] / T2 / T3.
- No dedicated study of T4 specifically has been located.
Other points of interest
- The transcription 維衛 for Vipaśyin, attested already in An Shigao’s circle, is one of the markers of the early stratum; its presence here (alongside 拘樓秦, 隨葉, etc.) makes T4 a useful test-case for those interested in early-Chinese Buddhist transcription practice.
- The scripture’s content amounts almost entirely to a catalogue of nineteen pieces of information per Buddha; it is one of the earliest Chinese examples of the saptatathāgatanāmāvalī genre that would later proliferate in zàn 讚, ritual, and iconographic form.