Miàosè wáng yīnyuán jīng 妙色王因緣經
Sūtra of the Past-Life Causes of King Wondrous-Colour by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle avadāna recounting a previous life of the Buddha as King Surūpa (妙色王 — “Wondrous-Colour King”), framed within a Buddha-discourse at Jetavana on the perfection of dāna through self-sacrifice for a gāthā of dharma. Signature: 「大唐三藏法師義淨奉制譯」 (“translated by imperial command of the Great Tang Tri-piṭaka Master Yìjìng”). Yìjìng 義淨 (635–713) was the Tang traveller-translator whose 671–695 sea-route pilgrimage to India and Sumatra produced one of the largest single Tang-period translation corpora.
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface; only the canonical translator-signature.
Abstract
T163 falls within Yìjìng’s documented post-695 translation programme at Cháng’ān and Luòyáng, between his return to China in 695 and his death in 713; the bracket 700–711 corresponds to his major translation activity period. The Indic source is conventionally identified as the Surūpa-avadāna known in Sanskrit and in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya narrative literature, the sub-corpus on which Yìjìng’s translation programme particularly focused. The narrative — the king who exchanges his life for the second half of a dharma-verse spoken by a yakṣa — is one of the celebrated dharma-paryeṣṭi (“dharma-seeking”) avadānas, paralleled in the Bodhicaryāvatāra tradition.
Translations and research
- Akanuma Chizen 赤沼智善. Indo Bukkyō koyū meishi jiten. Nagoya, 1931. (Indic parallel apparatus for the Surūpa-rāja narrative.)
Links
- CBETA online text
- Yìjìng (義淨) DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (705): Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (CBETA reference index) — dazangthings.nz