Yīqièzhì guāngmíng xiānrén cíxīn yīnyuán bùshíròu jīng 一切智光明仙人慈心因緣不食肉經
Sūtra on the Causal Conditions of the Compassionate Heart of the All-Knowing Light-Sage and his Renunciation of Meat-Eating by 失譯 (anonymous translator, 譯; appended to the Qín register)
About the work
A single-fascicle jātaka / avadāna on the past life of the Buddha as the sage Sarvajñā-prabha (“All-Knowing Light”), narrating his vow to abstain from meat for the sake of all beings. Signature: 「失譯人名今附秦錄」. The work is one of the principal Mahāyāna scriptural sources for the East-Asian Buddhist vegetarian tradition, alongside [[KR6b0016|Shīzǐsùtuósuō wáng duànròu jīng (T164)]] and the Lankāvatāra.
Prefaces
No preface or postface; only the canonical signature.
Abstract
T183 is conventionally registered to the Qín period (350–431); modern scholarship is generally accepting of this register-attribution on linguistic grounds. The narrative is doctrinally important as one of the early Chinese Buddhist scriptural sources for the Mahāyāna anti-meat-eating tradition: the future Buddha takes a vow that, even in animal form, he will not eat meat, anticipating the Lankāvatāra’s and Brahmajāla’s development of the doctrine.
Translations and research
- Kieschnick, John. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture. Princeton University Press, 2003. (T183 cited as a Buddhist anti-meat-eating scriptural source.)
Links
- CBETA online text
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (417, 505): Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (CBETA reference index) — dazangthings.nz