Púsà Shǎnzǐ jīng 菩薩睒子經
Sūtra of the Bodhisattva Śyāmaka by 失譯 (anonymous translator, 譯; appended to the Western-Jìn register)
About the work
A short single-fascicle jātaka recounting the past life of the Buddha as the Bodhisattva Śyāmaka (睒子), the perfectly filial son who served his blind ascetic parents in the forest, and was killed by mistake by King Pīluō (毘羅勒 in this recension) hunting deer; the gods restored his life on account of his filial virtue. Signature: 「安公錄中闕譯今附西晉錄」 (“[Dào]ān’s catalog records this as a missing-translator [text]; presently appended to the Western-Jìn register”).
The Śyāmaka-jātaka is one of the most widely-attested jātakas, paralleled in the Pāli Sāma-jātaka (no. 540), the Mahāvastu, and across Asian Buddhist art (Bharhut, Sānchī, Ajaṇṭā, and Dūnhuáng).
Prefaces
The text bears no preface or postface; only the canonical signature 「安公錄中闕譯今附西晉錄」.
Abstract
T174 is the canonical anonymous-translator version of the Chinese Śyāmaka-jātaka, paralleled by 聖堅 Shèngjiān’s three Western-Qín translations T175a, T175b, and T175c (the same translation transmitted in three slightly different recensions). The Western-Jìn register-attribution is by 道安 Dào’ān’s catalog (preserved in 僧祐 Sēngyòu); modern scholarship places the actual translation in roughly the same period (late third / early fourth century).
The narrative was foundational in the East-Asian Buddhist accommodation of filial-piety ethics: alongside [[KR6b0019|T167 Tàizǐ Mùpò jīng]] and the parallels to Sudāna / Vessantara, the Śyāmaka-narrative was one of the principal Buddhist exempla read by medieval Chinese Buddhist exegetes as evidence that bodhisattva-virtue and Confucian filial-piety converge.
Translations and research
- Cone, Margaret, and Richard F. Gombrich. The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. (Comparative methodology.)
- Cowell, E. B. (ed.). The Jātaka. Vol. 6 (Sāma-jātaka).
- Dehejia, Vidya. Discourse in Early Buddhist Art: Visual Narratives of India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997. (Visual-narrative parallels for Śyāmaka.)
Links
- CBETA online text
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (400): Hayashiya Tomojirō 林屋友次郎. Iyaku kyōrui no kenkyū 異譯經類の研究. Tokyo: Tōyō bunko, 1945, 455–476 — dazangthings.nz