Qǐshì jīng 起世經
Sūtra of the Rising of the World (the Lokaprajñapti-sūtra; parallel to Cháng Āhán sūtra 30, the Shìjì jīng 世記經, and to T23 / T25) by 闍那崛多 (Jñānagupta, 等譯) et al.
About the work
The Qǐ-shì jīng is a ten-fascicle Suí-period 隋 translation of the Lokaprajñapti-sūtra, the long Buddhist cosmological treatise on the structure of the universe. The Pāli has no direct parallel; the Chinese parallels are T1[30] (the Shìjì jīng 世記經 of the Cháng āhán’s fourth division), T23 (the Dà lóu-tàn jīng, by Fǎlì and Fǎjù), and T25 (the Qǐ-shì yīnběn jīng 起世因本經, by Dharmagupta — a slightly later, closely related Suí translation that is often regarded as a revision or sister-text of T24). T24 and T25 together represent the most fully-developed Chinese form of the Lokaprajñapti tradition.
The text follows the standard Lokaprajñapti structure, divided into chapters (品) corresponding to T23: (1) Jambudvīpa (閻浮洲品), (2) Uttarakuru, (3) the wheel-turning king, (4) the hells, (5) the dragons and birds, (6) the asuras, (7) the Four Heavenly Kings, (8) the Trāyastriṃśa heaven, (9) the great calamities, (10) the cosmic battles, (11) the three intermediate kalpas, and (12) the genealogy of the world. The opening matches the standard Buddhist cosmological frame: the Buddha at the Kālīkārā stone hall (迦利羅石室) at Śrāvasti (舍婆提城), perplexed monks asking how the world arises and dissolves, the Buddha’s long answer.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the Suí-period translator’s signature at the head: 「隋天竺三藏闍那崛多等譯」 — “translated by the Indian Tripiṭaka master Jñānagupta and others, under the Suí.” The 等 (“and others”) flags the standard Suí-court committee-translation procedure.
Abstract
闍那崛多 Jñānagupta (Chinese rendering 至德 Zhìdé / 德志 Dézhì; 523–600) was an Indian monk from Gandhāra (健馱邏國) who arrived in the Northern Zhōu capital of Cháng’ān in 559 CE. He worked through the persecutions of the Northern Zhōu (574–578) and into the Suí, becoming one of the principal translators at Wén-dì’s 文帝 court at the Dà-Xīng-shàn-sì 大興善寺 from the establishment of the Suí in 581 onward. The Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (T2034, KR6r0011) and the Xù gāosēng zhuàn 續高僧傳 (T2060, 433a–435a) record some 39 translations to his name in 192 fascicles; he died at the great age of 78 in Kāihuáng 開皇 20 (600) — although there is conflicting evidence (the Tiānpīn miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xù 添品妙法蓮華經序 places him still active in Rénshòu 仁壽 1 (601)).
T24 was produced during his Suí career; the Lìdài sānbǎo jì registers it without a precise year, and the surviving witnesses do not pin it tightly within the Suí period. The defensible bracket is therefore 581–600 (the Suí period of his activity), recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source is presumed lost; T24 and T25 (Dharmagupta) clearly render the same Indic recension — the two translations are nearly identical in their cosmological substance and differ chiefly in details of phrasing, suggesting that T25 is either a Dharmagupta revision of T24 or an independent Dharmagupta translation made from the same Vorlage with knowledge of T24.
The translation idiom is that of the mature Suí Cháng’ān bureau: vocabulary is post-Kumārajīva and pre-Xuánzàng, with characteristic use of 婆伽婆 (Bhagavat) for the Buddha (rather than the older 世尊 / 眾祐), and the proper-name system fully standardised. T24 is one of the principal canonical Buddhist cosmological reference works in Chinese.
Translations and research
- Denis, Eugène. La Lokapaññatti et les idées cosmologiques du bouddhisme ancien. 3 vols. Lille: Université de Lille III, 1977. — Treats T24 alongside T23, T25 and T1[30].
- Sadakata, Akira 定方晟. Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins. Tokyo: Kōsei, 1997. — General introduction with reference to the Qǐ-shì jīng.
- Mochizuki, Shinkō 望月信亨. Bukkyō daijiten 佛教大辞典. Sub vocibus 起世, 樓炭, 世記.
- Anālayo, Bhikkhu. “The Buddhist Cosmology of T1, the Saṃyuktāgama, and Comparative Sources.” Forthcoming.
- Lévi, Sylvain. “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde, IV–V: Le Lokapaññatti.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 5 (1905): 262–273. — Classic French study with comparative notes on T24.
Other points of interest
- T24 and T25 are two Suí-period translations of essentially the same Indic recension and were produced within years of each other. The pair is one of the more striking examples of “duplicate translation” within the Chinese canon — a phenomenon attributable to the Suí-court translation programme’s institutional momentum, which often led to parallel renderings of the same Vorlage by separate translation-bureaus.
- The 婆伽婆 transcription of Bhagavat used in T24 — phonetic rather than the semantic 世尊 — is one of the diagnostic markers of the Suí Cháng’ān bureau and is shared with T25.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Jñānagupta DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (590): Buswell, Robert E. Jr., “Sugi’s Collation Notes to the Koryŏ Buddhist Canon and Their Significance for Buddhist Textual Criticism,” The Journal of Korean Studies 9.1 (2004): 129–184, at 163 — dazangthings.nz