Fó wǔbǎi dìzǐ zìshuō běnqǐ jīng 佛五百弟子自說本起經
Sūtra of the Five Hundred Disciples Speaking Their Own Origins by 竺法護 (Dharmarakṣa, 譯)
About the work
A single-fascicle avadāna-anthology in which the Buddha and five hundred bhikṣu-disciples are guests of the Nāga King Anavatapta (阿耨達, “Without Heat”) in his palace; each of the disciples in turn narrates his own past-life avadāna — the karmic biography that culminates in his present arhatship. The opening pages identify the Anavatapta-lake and its mythic-geographic setting on the Buddhist Kūnlún (the Sino-Buddhist Mount Kailāśa), with its eight-flavoured water and seven-coloured lotuses. Translated by 竺法護 Dharmarakṣa. Signature: 「西晉三藏竺法護譯」.
Prefaces
No preface or postface; only the canonical translator-signature.
Abstract
T199 is a Chinese translation of the Sthavira-gāthā / Anavatapta-gāthā-class Indic avadāna-anthology, paralleling the Pāli Theragāthā and the Sanskrit Anavataptagāthā (the latter survives in Tibetan and in Sanskrit fragments). The Indic source corresponds to a Sarvāstivāda Anavatapta-gāthā recension. The translation is dateable to Dharmarakṣa’s documented Cháng’ān-period activity (c. 285–311) and is one of the principal early Chinese sources for the Sthavira-avadāna tradition.
The narrative-frame at the Anavatapta-lake — the Buddha and five hundred elders sharing previous-life narratives in cosmological setting — is one of the most distinctive Indic avadāna-anthology frames and provided the structural model for several later Chinese Buddhist hagiographic compilations.
Translations and research
- Hofinger, Marcel. Le congrès du lac Anavatapta: Étude et traduction. 2 vols. Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1954, 1990. (Standard French study of the Anavatapta-gāthā; comparative apparatus including T199.)
- Bechert, Heinz, and Thomas Oberlies (eds.). Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden. Various entries on Anavataptagāthā.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Dharmarakṣa (竺法護) DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (300, 303): [ Kawano 2006 ] Kawano Satoshi 河野訓. Shoki kan’yaku butten no kenkyū: Jiku Hōgo o chūshin to shite 初期漢訳仏典の研究 : 竺法護を中心として. Ise: Kōgakkan Daigaku Shuppanbu, 2006. 73-92, esp. Table 2, 75-77 — dazangthings.nz