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太子慕魄經

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Text ID
KR6b0019
Date
148–170
Dynasty
後漢

Tàizǐ Mùpò jīng 太子慕魄經

Sūtra of Prince Mùpò by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)

About the work

A short single-fascicle Eastern-Hàn jātaka recounting the past life of the Buddha as Prince Mùpò 慕魄 (the name’s Indic source debated; conventionally read as a transliteration of *Mūka, “the Mute”), a king’s son who feigned muteness and immobility for thirteen years to avoid worldly rule, until his father, despairing of his apparent disability, ordered him buried. The jātaka is one of the canonical Buddhist bodhisattva-renunciation narratives and is paralleled in the Mūgapakkhajātaka (Pāli Jātaka no. 538). Signature: 「後漢安息三藏安世高譯」.

The Taishō header cross-references T152(38) (康僧會 Kāng Sēnghuì’s parallel) and T168 (竺法護 Dharmarakṣa’s parallel translation).

Prefaces

The text bears no preface or postface; only the canonical translator-signature.

Abstract

T167 is a securely-attributed 安世高 Ān Shìgāo translation, dated to his Luòyáng period 148–170 CE. The text is paralleled by 竺法護 Dharmarakṣa’s later [[KR6b0020|Tàizǐ Mùpò jīng (T168)]] and by 康僧會 Kāng Sēnghuì’s narrative version in T152; the three Chinese versions of the same Indic jātaka have been a key test-case for the development of Chinese Buddhist jātaka-translation idiom across the Hàn / Western-Jìn / Wú periods. The Pāli parallel (Mūgapakkha / Temiya-jātaka) is the source-narrative for the Thai Mahānipāta dance-drama tradition; the Chinese versions thus preserve an early form of one of the most widely diffused Buddhist jātakas.

Translations and research

  • Cowell, E. B. (ed.). The Jātaka. Cambridge, 1895–1907. Vol. 6 (Mūgapakkha-jātaka).
  • Cone, Margaret, and Richard F. Gombrich. The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. (Comparative jātaka methodology applicable to the Mūgapakkha.)
  • Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB, 2008. (Treats T167 as a securely Ān-Shìgāo-attributed text.)

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