Bìmó shì Mùlián jīng 弊魔試目連經
Sūtra of the Vile Māra Testing Mahāmaudgalyāyana (the Māratajjanīya-sūtra; parallel to Madhyama-āgama sūtra 131, and to Móráoluàn jīng 魔嬈亂經 (KR6a0066)) — alternative title 一名魔嬈亂經 Yīmíng Móráoluàn jīng by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)
About the work
The Bìmó shì Mùlián jīng is a single-fascicle Three-Kingdoms Wú 吳 translation of the Māratajjanīyasūtra, a doublet of T66. The source-byline gives an alternative title 魔嬈亂經 (“Sūtra of Māra’s Disturbance”) — the same title as T66 — confirming that the two texts are renderings of the same Indic discourse from differently-edited Vorlagen.
The text opens at “Mount of Wonderful Flowers in the Bhaggā country, in the Fearful-Multitude Deer Park” (焚祇國妙華山恐懼聚鹿苑), where Mahāmoggallāna is pacing in the night. Māra enters his body, and the same narrative as in T66 unfolds.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface. The only paratext is the Wú-period translator’s signature at the head: 「吳月支國居士支謙譯」.
Abstract
T67 was produced during Zhī Qiān’s Wú-court translation period (222–253 CE), recorded in the frontmatter. The Indic source is presumed lost. The doublet relationship to T66 is one of the more interesting cases in the early canon: the two were almost contemporaneous (T66 conventionally Hàn, T67 Wú, both probably 200–250 CE), and a comparison of the two provides a small but illuminating cross-section of how the same Indic Māratajjanīya recension was rendered into Chinese by separate translation teams.
Translations and research
- See KR6a0066 for the comparative Māratajjanīya literature.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Zhī Qiān DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (245, 299, 300): Féi Chángfáng 費長房, Lìdài sānbǎo jì (LDSBJ) 歷代三寶紀 T2034 (KR6r0011), XLIX 58b23, 66c16–17 — dazangthings.nz