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長阿含十報法經

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Text ID
KR6a0013
Date
148–170
Dynasty
後漢

Cháng āhán shíbào fǎ jīng 長阿含十報法經

Sūtra of the “Ten Ascending Categories” of the Long Āgama (the Daśottara-sūtra; parallel to Cháng Āhán sūtra 10, the Shíshàng jīng 十上經, and to the Pāli Dasuttara-sutta, DN 34) by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)

About the work

The Cháng āhán shíbào fǎ jīng is a two-fascicle Eastern Hàn 後漢 translation of the Daśottara-sūtra, a doctrinal-summary discourse organised in ten ascending decades from one to ten and intimately related to the Saṅgīti-sūtra (cf. T12 / Cháng āhán sūtra 9). Despite its title — which appears to mark it as a section of a “Long Āgama” — the text is in fact a separate, much earlier translation of only the Daśottara by Ān Shìgāo, made about two and a half centuries before Buddhayaśas’s T1. The Taishō head-note marks it explicitly as a parallel to the Cháng āhán’s tenth sūtra (T1[10] = the Shíshàng jīng 十上經); the Pāli parallel is DN 34 Dasuttara-sutta. The Chinese title 十報法 (“ten ascending categories”) is Ān Shìgāo’s gloss of daśottara / dasuttara (“of-ten-ascending-units”).

The text opens at the Jetavana monastery in Śrāvastī, where Śāriputra (賢者舍利曰, the early-Hàn rendering of Sāriputta) addresses the monks. Śāriputra announces that he will rehearse a teaching “good in the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end, with wisdom, with skill, fully purified to the very end of practice” — the standard brāhmacarya formula — taking up the categories from one to ten. Each decade comprises ten lists of items: things-to-be-multiplied, things-to-be-developed, things-to-be-mastered, things-to-be-recognized, things-to-be-discarded, things-that-decline, things-that-grow, things-that-are-difficult-to-penetrate, things-that-must-be-engendered, things-that-must-be-known. The format is rigorously systematic, and T13 stands as one of the earliest Chinese witnesses to the abhidharma-style doctrinal-list literature of pre-sectarian Buddhism.

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the canonical translator’s signature at the head: 「後漢安息國三藏安世高譯」 — “translated by Ān Shìgāo, Tripiṭaka master of the country of Anxi (Parthia), under the Later Hàn.” The byline thus identifies Ān Shìgāo unambiguously and dates the translation within his Hàn period.

Abstract

安世高 Ān Shìgāo (DILA primary name 安清; alternates 安侯, 安侯道人) was a Parthian (安息) prince who, having renounced his throne after his father’s death, took monastic ordination and travelled east, arriving in Luòyáng 洛陽 in Jiànhé 建和 2 (148 CE), the first year of the reign of Hàn Huándì. According to the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059, KR6r0052, 323a–325a) and the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, KR6s0084, 95a–96b), he worked as a translator and teacher in Luòyáng for over twenty years (c. 148 – c. 170), producing the first substantial body of Buddhist literature in Chinese. The biographical sources record that he eventually left Luòyáng for the south, founded the Dà’ānsì 大安寺 at Yùzhāng 豫章, travelled to the JiāngNán region during the political turmoil at the end of the dynasty, and was killed in a market-place brawl at Kuàijī 會稽 — the date of his death is uncertain.

T13 is one of the earliest Chinese translations of an Āgama discourse — possibly the very earliest of those that survive in identifiable form. The defensible bracket for the translation is 148–170 CE (Ān Shìgāo’s Luòyáng period), and that bracket is recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source-text is presumed lost; comparison with the Pāli Dasuttara-sutta and with T1[10] (Shíshàng jīng) shows that T13 represents a recension distinct from both — Erik Zürcher and Jan Nattier have argued, persuasively, that T13’s Vorlage was probably affiliated with the (proto-)Sarvāstivāda tradition that flourished in Ān Shìgāo’s Parthian and Central Asian milieu.

The principal scholarly importance of T13 lies in its diction and lexicon: as one of the earliest extant Chinese Buddhist translations, it provides crucial evidence for the formation of the early-Hàn Buddhist Chinese register. The vocabulary is markedly archaic — upāsaka is rendered 清信士, dharma is 法, Saṅgha is 僧 (or paraphrased), and the proper-name transcriptions follow pre-Bukyo standardisation conventions (the Buddha is 佛, Sāriputta is 舍利曰 Shèlìyuē, with the unusual transcription character 曰 yuē). The vocabulary of jhāna-meditation in T13 is one of the cornerstones for the reconstruction of An Shigao’s specifically meditational lexicon and idiom; Stefano Zacchetti and Florin Deleanu have made important contributions in this area.

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. — The standard modern survey of Ān Shìgāo’s translation corpus, with extensive treatment of T13.
  • Zürcher, Erik. “A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts.” In From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Prof. Jan Yün-hua, edited by Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen, 277–304. Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 1991. — Methodological foundation for the critical evaluation of Ān Shìgāo attributions; T13 is one of the texts treated.
  • Mizuno, Kōgen. “Saṅgīti-sutta and Its Chinese Versions.” Komazawa Daigaku Bukkyō Gakubu Kenkyū Kiyō 26 (1968): 1–17. — Comparative discussion that includes T13 alongside T12 and the Pāli Saṅgīti and Dasuttara.
  • Mittal, Kusum. Dogmatische Begriffsreihen im älteren Buddhismus I: Fragmente des Daśottarasūtra aus zentralasiatischen Sanskrit-Handschriften. Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 4. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1957. — Critical edition of Sanskrit Daśottara fragments with extensive comparative reference to T13.
  • Schlingloff, Dieter. Dogmatische Begriffsreihen im älteren Buddhismus, Ia: Daśottara-sūtra IX–X. Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 4a. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962. — Continuation of the Sanskrit critical edition.
  • Zacchetti, Stefano. In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1–3 of Dharmarakṣa’s Guang zan jing 光讚經. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2005. — Methodological exemplar for the synoptic editing of early Chinese translations.
  • Deleanu, Florin. The Chapter on the Mundane Path (Laukikamārga) in the Śrāvakabhūmi: A Trilingual Edition (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese). 2 vols. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2006. — Useful comparand for An Shigao’s meditational vocabulary.
  • Harrison, Paul. “Some Reflections on the Personality of An Shigao.” In Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange, edited by Tansen Sen, vol. 1, 23–54. Singapore: ISEAS, 2014.

Other points of interest

  • The transcription 舍利曰 Shèlìyuē for Sāriputta — using the unusual character 曰 — is one of the orthographic markers of the early-Hàn Buddhist register and is not used by any later Chinese translator. The form is one of the best diagnostics for the An-Shigao stratum.
  • T13’s Chinese diction is often genuinely difficult: clauses are short, the syntax is paratactic and sometimes obscure, and the doctrinal terminology is in the formative state typical of An-Shigao-era translation. The text is therefore one of the most valuable resources for the study of pre-Kumārajīva Buddhist Chinese, but it is also one of the most challenging to read.

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