Púsà běnshēng mán lùn 菩薩本生鬘論
Bodhisattva Jātaka-Mālā Treatise (Jātaka-Mālā) by 紹德慧詢 (Shàodé and Huìxún, 等譯); compiled by Āryaśūra and others (聖勇菩薩等造)
About the work
A sixteen-fascicle Northern-Sòng-period Chinese translation of the Jātaka-mālā, the celebrated Sanskrit jātaka-anthology in campū (mixed verse and prose) attributed by the canonical signature to Āryaśūra 聖勇菩薩 (Shèngyǒng púsà) and others. The signature reads 「聖勇菩薩等造／宋朝散大夫試鴻臚少卿同譯經梵才大師紹德慧詢等奉詔譯」 — translation prepared at the Northern-Sòng Imperial Translation Bureau (Yìjīngyuàn 譯經院) at Kāifēng by 紹德 Shàodé and 慧詢 Huìxún, with imperial commission. The opening of the text contains the praṇāma-verses to the sarva-jña and the perfections.
Prefaces
The text bears no separate preface in the source file; the only paratext is the canonical signature.
Abstract
T160 occupies an unusual position in the East-Asian jātaka corpus: it is the only complete Chinese translation of Āryaśūra’s Jātaka-mālā, the Sanskrit jātaka-anthology that is otherwise the principal South-Asian jātaka-classic and which is preserved in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and (in part) in numerous Indic and Central Asian visual-narrative cycles (e.g. the Ajaṇṭā cave paintings). The Sanskrit work, by Āryaśūra (*Ārya-Śūra; c. third or fourth century CE), is one of the foundational Mahāyāna jātaka-collections, a polished campū artwork containing 34 jātakas; the Tang Buddhist tradition was aware of its existence (玄奘 Xuánzàng’s Dà Táng xīyù jì 大唐西域記 (KR6r0121) mentions Āryaśūra’s verses), but no Tang-period Chinese translation was completed.
The 11th-century Northern-Sòng Yìjīngyuàn programme — the imperial translation enterprise established in 980 to remedy the centuries-long lapse in Chinese Buddhist translation since the late Tang — produced the present sixteen-fascicle Chinese version. The Sòng translators worked from a Sanskrit manuscript brought from northern India by the Bureau’s Indian and Tangut translation staff. The translation is more discursive and longer than the Sanskrit original, suggesting the inclusion of additional jātaka material from a parallel collection or extended Indic recension; modern scholarship (Khoroche; Akanuma; Mizuno) has identified that T160 contains some jātaka episodes not found in Āryaśūra’s standard 34-tale Sanskrit recension.
The translation is dateable on internal and institutional grounds to the active period of the Northern-Sòng Yìjīngyuàn under 紹德 Shàodé’s leadership in the early-mid 11th century; the precise year is not directly recorded but the bracket 1000–1058 reflects the documented period of the Bureau’s productive output before its decline.
Translations and research
- Khoroche, Peter, trans. Once the Buddha was a Monkey: Ārya Śūra’s Jātakamālā. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. (Standard English translation of the Sanskrit; consulted in comparison to T160.)
- Speyer, J. S., trans. The Jātakamālā: Garland of Birth-Stories of Āryaśūra. London: Oxford University Press, 1895. (Sacred Books of the East 1.)
- Vaidya, P. L. (ed.). Jātakamālā by Āryaśūra. Buddhist Sanskrit Texts no. 21. Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1959.
- Akanuma Chizen 赤沼智善. Indo Bukkyō koyū meishi jiten 印度仏教固有名詞辞典. Nagoya, 1931. (Indispensable for jātaka nomenclature.)
- Bose, Sugata Ranjan. “Jātakamālā and Its Sanskrit Originals.” Indo-Iranian Journal (1965).
Other points of interest
T160 is the latest substantial Chinese jātaka-collection translation: the Northern-Sòng Bureau largely closed in the early twelfth century and after T160 no further new jātaka-anthology translations were undertaken into Chinese. The work therefore stands at the close of the Chinese-Buddhist jātaka-translation tradition, complementing the early Wú/Western-Jìn pioneering anthologies (T152, T153, T154) at its other end.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (1150): Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (CBETA reference index) — dazangthings.nz