Fó běnxíng jí jīng 佛本行集經
Compendium-Sūtra of the Buddha’s Practice (Mahāyāna Buddha-biography) by 闍那崛多 (Jñānagupta, 譯)
About the work
The longest and most comprehensive of the Chinese Buddha-biography sūtras — sixty fascicles — covering the entire Buddha-biography from the previous-life Bodhisattva-vows through the final parinirvāṇa. Translated by 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta (523–c. 605) in the Suí. Signature: 「隋天竺三藏闍那崛多譯」. The opening praṇāma-formula 「歸命大智海毗盧遮那佛」 (“homage to the great wisdom-ocean Buddha Vairocana”) signals the work’s Mahāyāna-cosmological framing.
Prefaces
No preface or postface in the source file; only the canonical translator-signature.
Abstract
T190 is the most extensive of the Mahāyāna Buddha-biography sūtras translated into Chinese and is the principal pre-Tang Mahāyāna biographical encyclopedia of the Buddha. The translation can be dated to Jñānagupta’s documented Suí translation period at Cháng’ān, between his arrival at the imperial Yìjīngyuàn under 隋文帝 Suí Wéndì in 583 and his death c. 605; the bracket 587–591 reflects the most plausible window of the Fó běnxíng jí jīng’s production based on internal evidence and the Suí translation-bureau records.
The Indic source corresponds to an extended Mahāyāna Buddha-vaṃśa and jātaka-anthology of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-tradition, similar in orientation to the Saṅghabhedavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. T190’s bodhisattva-Vairocana frame explicitly Mahāyānises the underlying Sarvāstivādin biography material; the closing chapters integrate Avataṃsaka-class doxology into the Buddha-biography genre.
Translations and research
- Beal, Samuel, trans. The Romantic Legend of Sâkya Buddha: A Translation of the Chinese Version of the Abhiniṣkramaṇa-sūtra. London: Trübner, 1875. (Partial English translation of T190.)
- Karetzky, Patricia E. The Life of the Buddha: Ancient Scriptural and Pictorial Traditions. Lanham: University Press of America, 1992.
- Mizuno Kōgen 水野弘元. Bukkyō no genten. Tokyo: Daihōrin-kaku, 1990.
Other points of interest
T190 is one of the principal Chinese-language sources for early Mahāyāna Buddha-vaṃśa and jātaka literature, and remains the most extensive single Buddhist hagiography in the Chinese canon. Its introductory passage on the Bodhisattva-vow taken in the presence of the Buddha Dīpaṃkara — the foundational Buddhist hagiographic narrative of bodhicitta-utpāda — was particularly influential in shaping East-Asian Buddhist understanding of the bodhisattva-vow.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Jñānagupta (闍那崛多) DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (590): Overbey, Ryan. “Memory, Rhetoric, and Education in the Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2010, 44, 57 — dazangthings.nz