Yīnguǒ běnqǐ jīng 因果本起經
Sūtra of the Origin of Causes-and-Effects by 求那跋陀羅 (Guṇabhadra, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle Buddha-biography text preserved in the Fángshān shíjīng 房山石經 (“Stone-Sutra of Mount Fáng”) — the carved-stone Buddhist canon at Yúnjūsì 雲居寺 in Fángshān, Hebei (a project initiated in the early seventh century and continuing through the Liáo and Jīn). The text is a Buddha-biography frame opening at Jetavana, with the Buddha hearing the bhikṣus discussing past-life causal narratives and entering to discourse on the yīnguǒ relationships. Attributed by the Fángshān catalog to 求那跋陀羅 Guṇabhadra.
Prefaces
No preface or postface in the source file.
Abstract
T-equivalent for KR6b0046 is the Fángshān shíjīng edition F02n0069. The text is closely related to and partly overlaps with [[KR6b0045|T189 Guòqù xiànzài yīnguǒ jīng]] — the four-fascicle Liú-Sòng Buddha-biography that is its likely textual relative or a source-fragment. The catalog attribution to Guṇabhadra is conventional rather than independently documented; modern scholarship treats the text as an extracted or condensed witness of the yīnguǒ Buddha-biography tradition into which T189 also belongs.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. For the yīnguǒ jīng tradition broadly, see bibliography under T189.
Other points of interest
The Fángshān shíjīng preserves several texts not present in the standard Taishō or Dūnhuáng manuscript collections; KR6b0046 is one of the more obscure of these. The Fángshān carving project provides a unique textual-archaeological witness to texts circulating in mid-Tang and Liáo-period Buddhist communities that have otherwise been lost.