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大正句王經

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Text ID
KR6a0045
Date
987–1000
Dynasty
宋

Dà Zhèngjù wáng jīng 大正句王經

Sūtra of King Pāyāsi (the Pāyāsisūtra; parallel to Madhyama-āgama sūtra 68, and cf. Cháng Āhán sūtra 2) by 法賢 (Fǎxián, 譯)

About the work

The Dà Zhèngjù wáng jīng is a two-fascicle Northern-Sòng translation of the Pāyāsi-sūtra, the celebrated discourse on the materialist arguments of King Pāyāsi (= Pāli Pāyāsi, here transcribed-glossed as 大正句 “Great-Right-Sentence” — a likely translation of Pāyāsi via Indic Pradeśin or by phonetic association) and his refutation by Kumāra Kāśyapa. The Pāli parallel is DN 23 Pāyāsi-sutta; the Chinese parallels are T26[68] (the Bìsú jīng 弊宿經 of the Madhyama-āgama) and (more loosely) T1[2] (the Cháng āhán’s 弊宿經, sūtra 7 in the Cháng āhán’s ordering).

King Pāyāsi articulates a series of materialist arguments against the doctrine of an afterlife: he has caused men to be killed and weighed before and after to determine whether the soul has any weight; he has had condemned criminals sealed in vats to see whether the soul could be observed escaping; etc. Kumāra Kāśyapa systematically refutes each argument with parable and counter-example, in a discourse that constitutes one of the most striking philosophical engagements in the Pāli canon.

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the Sòng-court translator’s signature at the head: 「西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試光祿卿明教大師臣法賢奉詔譯」.

Abstract

T45 was produced during Fǎxián’s post-987 Sòng-Institute career; the defensible bracket 987–1000 is recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source is presumed lost.

The principal philosophical importance of T45 lies in its preservation of one of the most extensively-developed philosophical discourses of the early Buddhist canon — the Pāyāsi exchange has long been recognised as a high-water mark of pre-Mahāyāna Buddhist vāda (debate-literature). T45 provides a Sòng-period rendering of the discourse alongside the older T26[68] and T1[2], and so allows the diachronic study of how this important philosophical material was rendered into Chinese over five hundred years.

Translations and research

  • Walshe, Maurice, tr. The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995. — DN 23 Pāyāsi-sutta with notes.
  • Bingenheimer, Marcus. “Pāyāsi-sutta.” In Studies in Āgama Literature. Taipei: Shin Wen Feng, 2011, 121–166. — Comparative study with reference to the Chinese parallels.
  • DeJong, J. W. “Notes on the Pāyāsi-sutta.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens 4 (1960): 79–88.

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