Tiěchéng nílí jīng 鐵城泥犁經
Sūtra of the Iron-City Hells (the Devadūtasūtra; parallel to Madhyama-āgama sūtra 64, the Tiānshǐ jīng 天使經, to T43, and to Ekottara-āgama 32.4) by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán, 譯)
About the work
The Tiěchéng nílí jīng is a single-fascicle Eastern Jìn 東晉 translation of the Devadūtasūtra, the canonical discourse on the “divine messengers” (the four sights — old age, sickness, death, and a punished criminal) and on the iron-city hells where King Yama interrogates the dead about whether they noticed these messengers. The Pāli parallel is MN 130 Devadūta-sutta (also AN 3.36); the Chinese parallels are T26[64] (the Tiānshǐ jīng 天使經 of the Madhyama-āgama), T43 (the Yánluówáng wǔ tiānshǐzhě jīng 閻羅王五天使者經 by Huìjiǎn) and Ekottara-āgama 32.4 (T125).
The Chinese title 鐵城泥犁 — “Iron-City Hell-Pit” — captures the most vivid feature of the discourse: the elaborate cosmography of the naraka hells, surrounded by walls of red-hot iron, into which the unrepentant are cast for their deeds. Nílí 泥犁 is a phonetic transcription of naraka / niraya, characteristic of the older translation stratum.
The text opens at the Jetavana monastery in Śrāvasti, with the Buddha telling the monks: “I see with the divine eye the going-and-coming of beings…” — and proceeds with the doctrine of the divine messengers and the iron-city hell.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the Eastern-Jìn translator’s signature at the head: 「東晉西域沙門竺曇無蘭譯」 (cf. KR6a0022).
Abstract
T42 was produced during Zhú Tánwúlán’s Yangdu translation period (381–395 CE; cf. KR6a0022 for biographical context), and that bracket is recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source is presumed lost.
The text’s principal scholarly importance is its preservation of the early Buddhist eschatological vocabulary in late-Eastern-Jìn Chinese: the term nílí (and not the later 地獄 dìyù “earth-prison”) for naraka, the term tiānshǐ “divine messenger” for devadūta, and the elaborate description of the eight great hells together with their utsada (“attendant”) sub-hells. T42 is one of the principal early-Chinese sources for the Buddhist hell-cosmology that would later become so important in East Asian popular religion.
Translations and research
- Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi, tr. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995. — MN 130 with notes.
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. — Background on the Buddhist hell-cosmology in Chinese reception, with reference to the Devadūta tradition.
- Strong, John S. The Legend of King Aśoka. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. — Touches on the Devadūta tradition.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Tánwúlán DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (390): Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra, Le canon bouddhique en Chine: Les traducteurs et les traductions, Sino-Indica 1 (Paris: Geuthner, 1927), 322–334 — dazangthings.nz