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修行本起經

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Text ID
KR6b0040
Date
197–197
Dynasty
後漢

Xiūxíng běnqǐ jīng 修行本起經

Sūtra of the Origins of Cultivation (Buddha-biography) by 竺大力 (Mahābala) and 康孟詳 (Kāng Mèngxiáng), 譯

About the work

A two-fascicle Eastern-Hàn Buddha-biography sūtra recounting the lineage and youth of the future Buddha — his Tuṣita-heaven previous life, his descent, his birth in Kapilavastu, and the early phases of his renunciation. Translated jointly by 竺大力 Mahābala (Indian śramaṇa) and 康孟詳 Kāng Mèngxiáng (Hàn-Chinese collaborator) in the late Eastern Hàn. Signature: 「後漢西域三藏竺大力共康孟詳譯」.

T184 is one of the earliest stand-alone Buddha-biography texts in Chinese — a foundational document of the Hàn-period reception of Buddhist hagiography — and the source-text for many later sinophone Buddha-biography elaborations.

Prefaces

No preface or postface; only the canonical translator-signature.

Abstract

T184’s translation is documented in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (KR6s0084) to Jiàn’ān 建安 2 = 197 CE — one of the most precisely-dated Hàn-period translations after 安世高 Ān Shìgāo’s. The Indic source corresponds to a Lalitavistara-class Buddha-biography in early-Mahāyāna form, though no exact Indic recension can be identified. The work is paired with [[KR6b0053|Zhōng běnqǐ jīng (T196)]] — translated jointly by 曇果 Tánguǒ and Kāng Mèngxiáng — which continues the Buddha-biography from the bodhi-tree onward; the two texts together constitute a complete Buddha-biography cycle in the Eastern-Hàn Chinese tradition.

The Buddha-biography genre played a foundational role in the Hàn-period sinophone formation of Buddhism: T184 and T196 together gave the Chinese reading public their first sustained narrative encounter with the life of the Buddha, and provided the imaginative-doctrinal framework within which Mahāyāna bodhisattva-doctrine and later Buddhāvataṃsaka-class scriptures could be received.

Translations and research

  • Karetzky, Patricia E. The Life of the Buddha: Ancient Scriptural and Pictorial Traditions. Lanham: University Press of America, 1992.
  • Lévi, Sylvain. “Le Bouddhacarita.” Journal asiatique (1892). (Comparative Lalitavistara / Buddhacarita methodology.)
  • Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 2007. (Discussion of T184 as a Hàn-period Buddha-biography.)

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