Jiǔsè lù jīng 九色鹿經
Sūtra of the Nine-Coloured Deer by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle jātaka recounting the past life of the Buddha as a Bodhisattva-deer with nine-coloured fur and snow-white antlers, who rescues a drowning man from the Ganges; the man, betraying his oath, reports the deer’s whereabouts to the queen who covets its skin. Translated by 支謙 Zhī Qiān in the Wú. Signature: 「吳月氏優婆塞支謙譯」. The Taishō header cross-references T152(58).
The Nine-Coloured Deer narrative is one of the most widely-attested jātakas in East-Asian Buddhist art, painted in the Mògāo Cave 257 (Northern-Wèi period) at Dūnhuáng — one of the masterpieces of medieval Chinese Buddhist mural painting.
Prefaces
No preface or postface; only the canonical translator-signature.
Abstract
T181a is the Korean-canon recension of 支謙 Zhī Qiān’s translation; T181b is a parallel recension of the same translation in slightly different textual state. The Indic source corresponds to the Ruru-jātaka (Pāli Jātaka no. 482), known in Sanskrit as the Ruru-mṛga-jātaka and depicted at Bharhut, Sānchī, and most famously in the Ajaṇṭā Cave 17 mural cycle.
Translations and research
- Cowell, E. B. (ed.). The Jātaka. Vol. 4 (Ruru-jātaka).
- Whitfield, Roderick, and Anne Farrer. Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route. London: British Museum, 1990. (Mògāo Cave 257 Nine-Coloured Deer mural.)
- Wu Hung. The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. (Comparative narrative-art methodology applicable to T181a’s reception.)