中阿含經

Zhōng Āhán jīng 中阿含經

The Middle-Length Discourses (Madhyama-āgama) by 瞿曇僧伽提婆 (Gautama Saṃghadeva, 譯)

About the work

The Zhōng Āhán jīng, in 60 fascicles, is the Chinese version of the Madhyama-āgama — the second of the four Indic-language āgama collections that, on the northern side of the transmission, correspond to the Pāli Majjhima-nikāya. It contains 222 sūtras (compared to 152 in the Pāli) organised into eighteen grouping-sections (品), each in turn organised by numerical category (the “Section of Sevens” 七法品, “Section of Tens” 十法品, etc.) — a doctrinally rationalised arrangement quite distinct from the Pāli Majjhima’s five vagga-by-fifty groupings. The collection was translated by the Kashmirian master 瞿曇僧伽提婆 Saṃghadeva (Gautama Saṃghadeva) at the Dōngtíng Monastery 東亭寺 in Jiànkāng 建康 between the eleventh month of Lóng’ān 隆安 1 (= November 397 CE) and the sixth month of Lóng’ān 2 (= June 398 CE), with 道祖 Dàozǔ as Chinese-language scribe (筆受). Modern scholarship is unanimous that the underlying Indic recension belongs to the Sarvāstivāda (說一切有部) school — in contrast to the Dharmaguptaka recension underlying the [[KR6a0001|Cháng Āhán]] — making the four Chinese Āgamas a deliberately cross-sectarian collection.

The text is one of the largest single translations in the early Chinese canon and one of the most important non-Pāli sources for early Buddhist discourse literature. It contains many sūtras famous in their Pāli form: the Cūḷa-Mālunkya (T26[221] Jiànyú jīng 箭喻經), the Cūḷa-Hatthipadopama (T26[146]), the Mahāhatthipadopama (T26[30] Xiàngjī yùjīng 象跡喻經), the Sāleyyaka (T26[170]), the Cūḷa-Karmavibhaṅga (T26[170]), the Aṅgulimāla (T26[178] Yāngqúmólí jīng 央掘魔羅經), the Mahāparinibbāna-related material in T26[68] (Dà shàn-jiàn wáng jīng 大善見王經), and many more.

Prefaces

The translation byline at the head of T26 is exceptionally informative — itself functioning as a colophon-style preface: “Translated under the Eastern Jìn, in the time of Emperor Xiào-Wǔ-dì and Emperor Ān-dì, from the eleventh month of Lóng’ān 1 to the sixth month of Lóng’ān 2, completed at the Dōngtíng Monastery, by the Kashmirian Tripiṭaka master Gautama Saṃghadeva, with Dàozǔ as scribe (筆受).” This is one of only a handful of early-Chinese translation bylines to specify the precise period, place, and the names of both Indic-language master and Chinese scribe; it is the principal contemporary witness to the circumstances of the translation. The original (lost) preface to T26 by Dào’ān-circle scholars is partially reconstructable from quotations in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, KR6s0084).

The internal structural verse-summaries at the head of each vagga (品) — the uddāna (撮頌) — are a characteristic feature preserved from the Indic Madhyama-āgama and provide one of the few extant Chinese examples of this Indian mnemonic device.

Abstract

The Zhōng āhán has a complex translation-history. An earlier Chinese version of the Madhyama-āgama, in 59 fascicles, had been produced by 曇摩難提 Dharmanandi with 竺佛念 Zhú Fóniàn in the Fú-Qín 苻秦 capital of Cháng’ān around 384–385 CE. That earlier translation was, however, regarded by 道安 Dào’ān and his circle as flawed — the Chinese was rough and the doctrinal content not always intelligible. After the political collapse of the Fú-Qín, Saṃghadeva (who had been part of Dharmanandi’s translation circle in Cháng’ān) travelled south, was patronised by the powerful aristocratic family of 王珣 Wáng Xún (ce. 349–400) at Lúshān 廬山 and Jiànkāng, and was given imperial support to retranslate the Madhyama-āgama afresh from a corrected Sanskrit Vorlage that had been brought from the Western Regions. The result is the present T26, which entirely supplanted Dharmanandi’s earlier rendering — the latter is now lost in independent form, although fragments may survive embedded in the apocryphal Yīn-chí-rù jīng 陰持入經 family of texts.

The Indic source-text of T26 has not been securely identified with any extant Sanskrit Vorlage, but Sanskrit fragments of the Sarvāstivāda Madhyama-āgama preserved in the Schøyen / Bāmiyān and Turfan finds (edited by Klaus Wille and others) confirm the school affiliation and provide, for some sūtras, direct comparanda for the Chinese translation.

The text-historical significance of T26 is fourfold. First, it is the only complete Chinese version of the Madhyama-āgama — there is no analogue, for the Madhyama tradition, to the four-fold cluster that survives for the Dīrghāgama. Second, its sectarian affiliation (Sarvāstivāda) is different from that of the Dīrghāgama (Dharmaguptaka), so that the two great Āgama collections in Chinese together provide cross-sectarian comparative material for the early Buddhist discourse literature. Third, its 222-sūtra corpus is substantially larger than that of the Pāli Majjhima-nikāya’s 152, with about 100 sūtras unique to the Chinese (or shared only with the Saṃyukta- / Ekottara-āgamas). Fourth, its translation diction — that of the late-Eastern-Jìn Saṃghadeva bureau — represents the apex of the pre-Kumārajīva translation tradition and is one of the most polished of all early Chinese Buddhist translations.

Translations and research

• Anālayo, Bhikkhu. A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya. 2 vols. Dharma Drum Buddhist College Research Series 3. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing, 2011. — The standard contemporary comparative study of T26 alongside the Pāli Majjhima-nikāya; treats every sūtra in detail. This is the principal point of entry to the modern scholarly literature on T26.
• Bingenheimer, Marcus, Anālayo Bhikkhu, and Roderick S. Bucknell, eds., tr. The Madhyama Āgama (Middle-Length Discourses), Volume I. Berkeley: BDK America, 2013. (Volume II: 2020; further volumes forthcoming.) — The first English translation of T26 in progress; the Numata Center series.
• Minh Châu, Thich. The Chinese Madhyama Āgama and the Pāli Majjhima Nikāya: A Comparative Study. Saigon: Saigon Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies, 1964 / repr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991. — Pioneering comparative study; still useful as a per-sūtra concordance.
• Karashima, Seishi 辛嶋静志. “Underlying Languages of Early Chinese Translations of Buddhist Scriptures.” In Studies in Chinese Manuscripts: From the Warring States Period to the 20th Century, edited by Imre Galambos, 355–366. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2013. — Useful methodological treatment of the kind of philological approach needed for T26.
• Hartmann, Jens-Uwe, and Klaus Wille. “The Manuscript Remains of the Dīrghāgama and the Madhyamāgama from Eastern Turkestan.” Various articles in the Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden and Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection series, 1990s–present. — Editions of Sanskrit Madhyamāgama fragments with comparative reference to T26.
• Schmithausen, Lambert. “Beiträge zur Schulzugehörigkeit und Textgeschichte kanonischer und postkanonischer buddhistischer Materialien.” In Zur Schulzugehörigkeit von Werken der Hīnayāna-Literatur, edited by Heinz Bechert, vol. 2, 304–406. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987. — Foundational treatment of the school-affiliation question for the Chinese Madhyama-āgama.
• Mizuno, Kōgen 水野弘元. “Chūagonkyō ni tsuite” 中阿含経について. Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 17.2 (1969): 33–37, and many subsequent articles. — Foundational Japanese scholarship on T26.

Other points of interest

• The uddāna mnemonic verses preserved at the head of each vagga (品) of T26 — short summary-verses listing the key terms of each sūtra in the section — are one of the few Chinese textual witnesses to this Indian mnemonic device, and provide an important clue to the original oral organisation of the Indic Madhyama-āgama.
• The sūtra T26[78] (the Niántóng jīng 念童經 / Kumāradṛṣṭi-sūtra) is one of the earliest Chinese witnesses to the controversies over the rebirth of children — a small but important locus for the early Buddhist treatment of a topic that the early Mahāyāna would dramatically expand.
• The Madhyama sūtra T26[200] (the Āzhā-bózhā jīng 阿叱波叱經 / Aṣṭakanāgaraka) is among the canonical sources for the early-Buddhist use of meditation as therapy; recent comparative scholarship (Anālayo) has illuminated its relation to the Pāli Aṭṭhakanāgara-sutta.

Links

• CBETA online text
• Wikipedia (English): Madhyama Āgama
• Saṃghadeva DILA
• Kanseki DB
• Dazangthings date evidence (390): Mizuno Kōgen 水野弘元, “Kan’yaku Chū agon kyō to Zōichi agon kyō” 漢訳『中阿含経』と『増一阿含経』, Bukkyō kenkyū 仏教研究 18 (1989): 1–42; Chinese translation by Xu Yangzhu 許洋主, Fójiào wénxiàn yánjiū: Shuǐyě Hóngyuán zhùzuò xuǎnjí (1) (Taipei: Fǎgǔ wénhuà, 2003), 509–579 — dazangthings.nz