起世因本經

Qǐshì yīnběn jīng 起世因本經

Sūtra on the Causal Origin of the Rising of the World (the Lokaprajñapti-sūtra; parallel to Cháng Āhán sūtra 30, the Shìjì jīng 世記經, and to T23 / T24) by 達摩笈多 (Dharmagupta, 譯)

About the work

The Qǐ-shì yīnběn jīng is a ten-fascicle Suí-period 隋 translation of the Lokaprajñapti-sūtra. It is a sister-text to T24 (the Qǐ-shì jīng by Jñānagupta): the two share the same Indic Vorlage, the same chapter structure (twelve pinyin chapters following T23’s pattern), and substantially the same phrasing throughout. T25 differs from T24 in choice of Indic-name transcriptions (e.g. T24’s 舍婆提 Śravastī vs. T25’s 舍囉婆悉帝 — closer to the Sanskrit Śrāvastī; T24’s 迦利羅石室 vs. T25’s 迦利囉窟 for the Kālīkārā stone hall) and in some details of doctrinal framing, but is otherwise the same text. The relationship between T24 and T25 is best understood as that of the original Suí Cháng’ān bureau translation (T24, c. 581–600) and a near-contemporary revision or independent re-rendering of the same Vorlage by a closely associated translator (T25). The added 因本 (“causal origin”) in T25’s title may reflect the Indic Vorlage’s variant title-form Lokotpatti-prajñapti or simply a more analytic semantic gloss.

The text opens at the Kālīkārā stone-cave (迦利囉窟) at Śrāvasti (舍囉婆悉帝城). After their post-noon meal the monks emerge from the assembly-hall and gather to ponder the question of how the world arises and dissolves; the Buddha overhears them and the long cosmological discourse follows.

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the Suí-period translator’s signature at the head: 「隋天竺沙門達摩笈多譯」 — “translated by the Indian śramaṇa Dharmagupta, under the Suí.” Note the absence of 等 (“and others”), in contrast to T24’s byline; this suggests Dharmagupta worked here as an individual translator rather than as bureau-leader of a committee.

Abstract

達摩笈多 Dharmagupta (Chinese gloss 法密 Fǎmì “Dharma-Secret” / 法藏 Fǎzàng “Dharma-Treasury”; d. c. 619/620) was an Indian monk from Vaḷḷabhī (伐臘毘國, in modern Gujarat) who arrived in China in 590 CE and rose to prominence as one of the principal translators of the late Suí. He travelled overland through Khotan and Tukhāra to Cháng’ān, where he joined the Suí translation bureau under 闍那崛多 (Jñānagupta) and the lay scholar Yánzōng 彥琮. After Jñānagupta’s death and the transition to the Táng, Dharmagupta continued as senior bureau-translator into the late Suí and early Táng; he died at the Dà-Xīng-shàn-sì 大興善寺 in Cháng’ān in c. 619/620.

T25 was produced during Dharmagupta’s Suí career, with a defensible bracket of 590–619 CE recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source is presumed lost; its identity with the Vorlage of T24 is established by the textual near-identity of the two Chinese versions. Why the same text was translated twice in such close succession is a recurring question for the Suí Cháng’ān bureau: one possibility is that T25 was a deliberate revision of T24, perhaps prepared in response to specific imperial concerns about translation accuracy; another is that the two were produced by separate sub-bureaus working from the same Vorlage in mutual ignorance. Modern scholarship has not resolved the question.

The translation idiom is fully consistent with the late-Suí Cháng’ān bureau and shows characteristic post-Jñānagupta refinements (more fully phonetic Indic-name transcriptions, more analytical chapter-headings, a tendency to expand abbreviated Indic syntax into fuller Chinese parataxis). T25 is one of the principal Chinese cosmological reference works alongside T23, T24 and T1[30].

Translations and research

• See bibliography under KR6a0023 and KR6a0024 — the same comparative-Lokaprajñapti literature applies.
• Dharmagupta’s specific contribution to the Suí translation enterprise is treated in:
• Liu, Xinru. Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, AD 1–600. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. — Background on the Indian translation diaspora to which Dharmagupta belonged.

Other points of interest

• The pair T24 / T25 is one of the more striking examples of duplicate-translation in the Chinese canon. The two texts together provide an exceptional opportunity for the diachronic study of late-Suí translation idiom, since the differences in proper-name transcription and phrasing between them isolate the specific lexical preferences of two adjacent Cháng’ān-bureau translators working from the same Indic source.
• T25’s transcription 舍囉婆悉帝 Shèluópóxīdì for Śrāvastī — closer to the Sanskrit than T24’s older 舍婆提 — is one of several signs that T25 represents a stage of Indic-name standardisation slightly later than T24.

Links

• CBETA online text
• Dharmagupta DILA
• Kanseki DB
• Dazangthings date evidence (610): 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