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大乘本生心地觀經

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Text ID
KR6b0008
Date
810–811
Dynasty
唐

Dàshèng běnshēng xīndìguān jīng 大乘本生心地觀經

Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Original-Birth Mind-Ground Contemplation by 般若 (Prajña, 譯)

About the work

An eight-fascicle Tang-period Mahāyāna sūtra, framed as a Buddha-discourse at Vulture Peak before an assembly of 32,000 bhikṣu-arhats, on the cultivation of the bodhisattva’s “mind-ground” (心地, citta-bhūmi) through retrospective awareness of the four kindnesses (四恩 — parents, sentient beings, sovereign, triratna) and through the doctrine of the bodhicitta. The translation was prepared by 般若 Prajña of Kashmir at Cháng’ān under imperial commission from 唐憲宗 Tang Xiànzōng in Yuánhé 元和 5–6 (810–811 CE). The signature reads 「大唐罽賓國三藏般若奉詔譯」.

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface in the source file; the only paratext is the canonical translator-signature 「大唐罽賓國三藏般若奉詔譯」.

Abstract

T159 is one of the late-Tang Mahāyāna sūtra-translations through which the East-Asian Buddhist bào’ēn 報恩 (“repayment of kindness”) theology and the Mahāyāna mind-ground (心地, citta-bhūmi) doctrine received their final canonical formulation. Doctrinally the work is a synthesizing MahāyānaYogācāra sūtra, presenting the bodhisattva-path through the cultivation of bodhicitta in three sequential phases (jué 覺 / xíng 行 / guǒ 果) under the rubric of the “mind-ground”, and integrating the four-kindnesses ethical framework into the bodhisattva-vow theology.

The four-kindnesses (sìēn 四恩) doctrine articulated in chapter 2 of T159 — gratitude to (i) parents, (ii) sentient beings, (iii) sovereigns, (iv) the triratna — became the standard East-Asian Buddhist scriptural formulation of the doctrine and is the locus classicus cited in subsequent Chinese Buddhist exegesis on filial-piety and political legitimation. The text is also influential in Japanese Buddhism, particularly in the Shingon and Pure-Land traditions where it underlies key doctrinal-ritual formulations.

The Indic original is unidentified; the Sanskrit is not extant, and the work has occasionally been suspected of being a partial Chinese composition under Prajña’s editorial direction, drawing on multiple shorter Indic sources, though no definitive evidence for this has been adduced. Modern scholarship (Forte; Cole; Tang Dazhao 唐大潮) generally accepts it as substantially translation-based.

Translations and research

  • Cole, Alan. Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. (T159 in the bào’ēn tradition.)
  • Forte, Antonino. Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical Clock. Rome / Paris: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente / EFEO, 1988. (Sections on Prajña’s late-Tang translation programme.)
  • Tang Dazhao 唐大潮. Dà-shèng běn-shēng xīn-dì-guān jīng yánjiū 大乘本生心地觀經研究. Beijing: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué Chūbǎnshè, 2007. (Monographic study.)
  • 來舟 Lái Zhōu (Qing). Dàshèng běnshēng xīndìguān jīng qiǎnzhù 大乘本生心地觀經淺註 (= KR6b0011; the standard Qing-period commentary).

Other points of interest

The text is unusually well represented in the East-Asian commentarial tradition: 來舟 Lái Zhōu’s Qing-period commentary KR6b0011 Qiǎnzhù (1722, with companion outline texts KR6b0009 Xuánshì and KR6b0010 Kēwén) gives the standard pre-modern reading of the sūtra and remains a principal access-point for traditional East-Asian exegesis.

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