Dàshèng bēifēntuólì jīng 大乘悲分陀利經
Mahāyāna Karuṇā-puṇḍarīka-sūtra (Mahāyāna Lotus-of-Compassion Sūtra) by 失譯 (anonymous translator, 譯; appended to the Qín register)
About the work
An eight-fascicle anonymous translation of the Karuṇā-puṇḍarīka-sūtra, the doublet companion of [[KR6b0006|Bēihuā jīng 悲華經 (T157)]] translated by 曇無讖 Dharmakṣema c. 414–421. The catalog signature reads 「失三藏名今附秦錄」 (“the tri-piṭaka-master’s name lost; presently appended to the Qín register”). The text opens at Vulture-Peak with the same 62,000-bhikṣu assembly and proceeds through the same Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka narrative as T157, but in a more literal and idiomatically less polished Chinese register.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface in the source file; the only paratext is the canonical signature 「失三藏名今附秦錄」.
Abstract
T158 is the doublet companion of T157, preserving an independent Chinese translation of the same Indic source (a Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka-recension) by an unidentified translator working under a “Qín” 秦 register-attribution. The catalog assignment to “Qín” is ambiguous between Former Qín 前秦 (351–394), Latter Qín 後秦 (384–417), or Western Qín 西秦 (385–431); modern scholarship (Yamada 1968; Mizuno; Demiéville) on linguistic grounds tends to place the translation in the late fourth / early fifth century, broadly compatible with the Latter or Western Qín. The 350–431 date-bracket given here is the maximal possible window the catalog register-attribution can support without further evidence.
The work is doctrinally identical in core narrative content to T157, but it preserves features of the Indic original that have been smoothed in Dharmakṣema’s later translation — notably more literal renderings of Sanskrit terminology and a less sinified moral-rhetorical surface. Yamada’s 1968 critical edition of the Sanskrit Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka uses both Chinese translations comparatively; the doublet is a key test-case for assessing pre-Kumārajīva versus Northern-Liáng translation idioms applied to the same Indic source.
Translations and research
- Yamada Isshi 山田一誠. Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka, Edited with Introduction and Notes. 2 vols. London: SOAS, 1968. (Comparative apparatus including T158.)
- Mizuno Kōgen 水野弘元. “Hi-funda-ri kyō to Hi-ke-kyō” 悲分陀利經と悲華經. Bukkyō kenkyū 仏教研究 (article on the doublet).
- Boucher, Daniel. “Buddhist Translation Procedures in Third-Century China: A Study of Dharmarakṣa and his Translation Idiom.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116 (1996). (Methodological framework applicable to T158 attribution analysis.)
Other points of interest
The doublet relationship between T157 and T158 is one of the most important test-cases in pre-Tang Chinese Buddhist translation studies, since the two Chinese versions of the same Indic Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka recension preserve in side-by-side form the difference in translation idiom between an anonymous Qín-period rendering and Dharmakṣema’s later Northern-Liáng one.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (417): Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (CBETA reference index) — dazangthings.nz