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梵網六十二見經

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Text ID
KR6a0021
Date
222–253
Dynasty
吳

Fànwǎng liùshí’èr jiàn jīng 梵網六十二見經

Sūtra of the Brahma-Net of Sixty-Two Views (the Brahmajālasūtra; parallel to Cháng Āhán sūtra 21, the Fàndòng jīng 梵動經) by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)

About the work

The Fànwǎng liù-shí’èr jiàn jīng is a single-fascicle Three-Kingdoms Wú 吳 translation of the Brahmajāla-sūtra, the foundational discourse on the sixty-two heretical views (dṛṣṭi) which the Buddha catalogues, with their grounds and refutations, as caught — like fish in a net — by the unifying analysis of his own teaching. The Pāli parallel is DN 1 Brahmajāla-sutta; the Cháng āhán parallel is sūtra 21, the Fàndòng jīng 梵動經 (literally “Sūtra on the Trembling of Brahmā,” from the alternative Indic title Brahmajāla / “Brahma’s net” being construed as brahma-jara or related). The Taishō head-note marks T21 explicitly as a parallel to T1[21]. T21 is earlier than T1[21] (Buddhayaśas) by about 190 years and stands as the principal pre-Buddhayaśas Chinese witness to the Brahmajāla.

The text opens at “the Kuru country” (俱留國), with the Buddha and the saṅgha of 1,250 monks travelling on the road. A heretical wandering teacher named Suppiya 須卑 (with his disciple Brahmadatta 梵達摩納) is following the Buddha; the master is busy denigrating the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha, while his pupil cannot stop praising them. Their dispute reaches the monks’ encampment, and the Buddha, on hearing of it, takes it as the occasion for the great discourse on the sixty-two views — eighteen “concerning the past” and forty-four “concerning the future” — that constitute the entirety of speculative (mis-)understanding of the world; the discourse closes with the famous fish-in-the-net image of how all these views are caught within the Buddha’s analysis.

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the canonical translator’s signature at the head: 「月支優婆塞支謙譯」 — “translated by the Yuezhi upāsaka (lay-Buddhist) Zhī Qiān.” The lay status of Zhī Qiān (優婆塞 / 居士) is preserved throughout his bylines.

Abstract

T21 was produced during Zhī Qiān’s Wú-court translation period (222–253 CE), and that bracket is recorded in the frontmatter; for biographical notes on the translator see KR6a0020. The Indic source-text is presumed lost; comparison with the Pāli Brahmajāla and with T1[21] shows that T21 represents a recension distinct from both — its arrangement of the sixty-two views differs in detail from both witnesses, although the doctrinal substance is the same.

The principal scholarly importance of T21 lies in its preservation of the Brahmajāla in the pre-canonical post-Hàn translation idiom. Diction is markedly archaic — the title compound 梵網 (“Brahma-Net”) is rendered semantically rather than transcribed, the proper-name 須卑 Xūbēi (rather than the later 須婆 Xūpó) is one of the diagnostic markers of the Three-Kingdoms stratum, and 異道人 (“other-path-people”) is used for paribbājaka / wandering ascetic in place of the later canonical 外道. Together with T20, T21 is one of the principal early-Chinese witnesses to the early-Buddhist dṛṣṭi-analysis literature; it would have circulated alongside Zhī Qiān’s other major Wú-period translations as one of the foundations of third-century Chinese Buddhist learning.

Translations and research

  • Bodhi, Bhikkhu, tr. The All-Embracing Net of Views: The Brahmajāla Sutta and Its Commentaries. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1978. — Definitive English translation of the Pāli parallel, with the Sumaṅgalavilāsinī commentary.
  • Walshe, Maurice, tr. The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995. — DN 1 with notes.
  • Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB, 2008. — Treats T21 within the wider Zhī Qiān corpus.
  • Anālayo, Bhikkhu. “The Brahmajāla and the Early Buddhist Oral Tradition.” Journal of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, Sri Lanka 7 (2009): 41–59. — Comparative discussion that includes T21.

Other points of interest

  • The semantic rendering 梵網 (“Brahma-Net”) of brahma-jāla is universally adopted in subsequent Chinese Buddhist literature. T21 is one of the earliest extant attestations of the form, alongside the contemporaneous Three-Kingdoms apocrypha that share the title (the Fànwǎng pútisǎ jièběn jīng 梵網菩提薩埵戒本經, T1484, an entirely separate work despite the shared title).

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