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大智度論

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Text ID
KR6c0005
Date
402–405
Dynasty
後秦

Dàzhìdù lùn 大智度論

Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom) by 龍樹菩薩 (Nāgārjuna, 造); translated by 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva, 譯)

About the work

A hundred-fascicle Mahāyāna commentary on Kumārajīva’s [[KR6c0004|Móhē bōrě bōluómì jīng (T223)]] — the foundational Chinese-Mādhyamika śāstra — attributed in the Chinese tradition to Nāgārjuna 龍樹菩薩 and translated by Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 at Cháng’ān under Latter-Qín patronage. Signature: 「龍樹菩薩造／後秦三藏鳩摩羅什譯」. The Taishō head-note cross-references T223. The opening Móhē bōrě bōluómì jīng shìlùn 摩訶般若波羅蜜經釋論 (“Treatise commenting on the Móhē bōrě bōluómì jīng”) is given by 僧叡 Sēngruì in his celebrated preface, preserved at the head of the text.

Prefaces

The text opens with 僧叡 Sēngruì’s celebrated preface — one of the most consequential prefatorial documents in pre-modern Chinese Buddhist literature. It opens (translated): “Indeed: the ten-thousand existences have their root in the springing-forth of birth, but birth itself is unborn; transformations begin from the first beginning of things, but the beginning is itself without beginning. Hence the unborn and the beginningless are the very nature of things. Birth and beginning move not from this nature, yet the ten-thousand existences are arrayed without and remorse-and-regret arise within — this is only false thinking. The Right-Awakening, seeing that false thinking arises of itself, made the Āgama for it; knowing that error proceeds from clinging-to-being, the Prajñā shines for it. Yet that shining is in essence beyond seeing-and-hearing, the ford-passage is vast, the principle exceeds words, the purport cuts off the realm of thought. Seek it through words and you miss its profundity; measure it with intellect and you lose its …” (the preface continues with extensive doctrinal exposition of the prajñāpāramitā-Mādhyamaka soteriology).

Abstract

T1509 is the most extensive Mahāyāna śāstra in the Chinese canon — a hundred-fascicle commentary on the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, encyclopaedic in coverage of Mahāyāna doctrine, Abhidharma-systematics, Sarvāstivādin and Mādhyamika philosophy, and Mahāyāna religious practice (bodhisattva-bhūmis, the perfections, dhyāna-meditation, the Buddha-anusmṛti, etc.). The translation can be dated to Kumārajīva’s documented period at Cháng’ān, 402–405 CE, with documentary evidence in the Chū sānzàng jì jí.

The attribution problem: Indic-Sanskrit fragments of T1509 have not been recovered, and there is no Tibetan translation; a Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra is not attested by name in surviving Indic Mādhyamika sources. Modern scholarship (Lamotte, Conze, Hsiao, Chou) is divided: one school accepts the traditional Nāgārjuna attribution and views the work as the missing major prajñā-commentary by the Mādhyamika founder; another (notably Lamotte 1949 and many subsequent scholars) treats T1509 as Kumārajīva’s own compilation in Mādhyamika-spirit drawing on Indic sources, including some Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma material that no historical Nāgārjuna would have used; a third (Chou Po-kan; Stuart Young) takes a middle view, treating the work as substantially Indic but augmented and reorganised by Kumārajīva.

Doctrinally T1509 is foundational for East-Asian Mahāyāna: it provides the encyclopaedic doctrinal vocabulary for the Sānlùn 三論 / Mādhyamika tradition in China, supplies the conceptual framework for Tiāntái’s pànjiào 判教 doctrinal classification, and is one of the principal sources cited in Huáyán and Chán doctrinal literature. Its bodhisattva-path schema — particularly the elaboration of the six perfections and the ten bhūmis — is the textual base for much of medieval Chinese bodhisattva doctrine.

Translations and research

  • Lamotte, Étienne, trans. Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra). 5 vols. Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1944–1980. (The standard Western-language translation, with extensive philological apparatus and influential discussion of the attribution problem.)
  • Chou Po-kan 周伯戡. “Dà-zhì-dù lùn yú jīng-yì zhī yánjiū” 大智度論於經義之研究. Buddhist Studies Review (1996).
  • Hsiao Bea-hui 蕭碧惠. Nāgārjuna’s Encyclopedia of the Prajñāpāramitā. PhD Thesis, Indiana University, 1995.
  • Yìn-shùn 印順. Dà-zhì-dù lùn zhī zuòzhě jí qí fānyì 大智度論之作者及其翻譯. Taipei: Zhèngwén Chūbǎnshè, 1990. (Major Chinese-language defence of the Nāgārjuna attribution.)
  • Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.

Other points of interest

T1509 is one of the textually richest and historically most-influential śāstras in the entire Chinese Buddhist canon: its citation-density in pre-Tang Mahāyāna doctrinal literature is unmatched by any other single source, and its formative role in the Chinese Mādhyamika and Tiāntái traditions is foundational.

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