Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng 般若波羅蜜多心經
Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 智慧輪 (譯, Skt. Prajñācakra)
About the work
A short Tang-period rendering of the Heart Sūtra (Skt. Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya), translated by the esoteric monk Zhìhuìlún 智慧輪 (Prajñācakra) at the Dàxīngshàn Monastery 大興善寺 in Cháng’ān. The Taishō text bears the colophon 「唐上都大興善寺三藏沙門智慧輪奉詔譯」 — translated by imperial decree. It belongs to the so-called “long recension” of the Heart Sūtra, which preserves the full sūtra frame (nidāna with Bhagavān at Gṛdhrakūṭa, dialogue between Śāriputra and Avalokiteśvara, the Buddha’s concluding praise) rather than the much shorter “short recension” associated with Xuánzàng 玄奘 (T251). One fascicle, 256 graphs in the central doctrinal core; one of seven extant Chinese translations canonically grouped as Taishō nos. 250–257.
Prefaces
The CBETA-Taishō witness preserves no preface, only the standard Taishō header (No. 254 [Nos. 250–253, 255, 257]) and the translator’s colophon. The text proper opens with the evaṃ mayā śrutam formula (「如是我聞：一時薄誐梵住王舍城鷲峯山中…」), proceeds through the vipaśyanā of the five aggregates as empty by self-nature, the cycle of negations (no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind…; no ignorance and no exhaustion of ignorance…), and closes with the dhāraṇī «唵 誐帝 誐帝 播囉誐帝 播囉散誐帝 冒地 娑縛賀» (oṃ gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā) and the Buddha’s commendation of Avalokiteśvara, whereupon the assembly rejoices and accepts the teaching.
Abstract
Of the seven Chinese translations of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya preserved in the Taishō (T250–T257), Zhìhuìlún’s T254 is one of the four “long recension” versions; the others are Fǎyuè’s 法月 T252, Bōrě 般若 and Lìyán’s 利言 T253, and Fǎchéng’s 法成 T255. T254 is conspicuously close in wording and structure to T253, both produced in the Cháng’ān esoteric translation milieu of the late eighth and ninth centuries; the dhāraṇī is fully transliterated rather than left in Sanskrit script, characteristic of the mature mantric translation idiom of the late Tang. The translation must postdate Zhìhuìlún’s documented activity at Dàxīngshàn (Dàzhōng era, 847–860) and predate his sending of further texts to the Japanese pilgrim Enchin 圓珍 in Xiántōng 2 (861); the notBefore/notAfter bracket here reflects this attested floruit (847–861) rather than any narrower internal evidence. The Sòng Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 already lists the long-recension Heart Sūtra translations; T254 is included in subsequent canonical inventories from the Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù 貞元新定釋教目錄 forward.
For the wider transmission of the Heart Sūtra, T254 is one of the canonical Tang witnesses cited in modern philological work that has reopened the question of the sūtra’s origin (notably Jan Nattier’s 1992 hypothesis that the short recension is a Chinese back-translation from Xuánzàng’s Dà bōrě jīng 大般若經). T254, as a long-recension witness independently transmitted from an Indic text in a Tang esoteric environment, is a crucial counter-witness in this debate.
Translations and research
- Edward Conze, Buddhist Wisdom Books: containing the Diamond Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958; revised 1975) — standard English translation and commentary on the Hṛdaya; works primarily from the Sanskrit but discusses the Chinese recensions.
- Jan Nattier, “The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15.2 (1992): 153–223 — the foundational re-examination of the Heart Sūtra recensions; treats T254 alongside T251 and T253 as evidence for the sūtra’s textual history.
- John R. McRae, “Ch’an Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: Preliminary Inferences on the Permutation of Chinese Buddhism,” JIABS 11.2 (1988): 87–115 — addresses the Tang Chan reception, against which the ninth-century esoteric translations like T254 are a useful contrast.
- Fukui Fumimasa 福井文雅, Hannya shingyō no rekishiteki kenkyū 般若心経の歴史的研究 (Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1987) — comprehensive Japanese-language study of the historical and bibliographic transmission of the Heart Sūtra in China and Japan, including discussion of T254.
- Chen Jinhua 陳金華, “Esoteric Buddhism and Monastic Institutions,” in Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, eds., Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 286–293, with further references to Zhìhuìlún and his transmission to Enchin.
Other points of interest
The dhāraṇī at the end is given in a fully phoneticised Tang transcription («唵 誐帝 誐帝 播囉誐帝 播囉散誐帝 冒地 娑縛賀»), distinct from the more familiar Xuánzàng-style transliteration of the short version (揭諦 揭諦 波羅揭諦 波羅僧揭諦 菩提薩婆訶). The use of 誐 for ga, 播 for pa, and 娑縛(二合)賀 for svāhā with the standard èrhé 二合 fusion mark is characteristic of late-Tang esoteric phonetic notation.
Links
- DILA Buddhist Studies Person Authority, A001294 (智慧輪 / Prajñācakra) —
Authority-Databases/authority_person/Buddhist_Studies_Person_Authority.xml - CBETA online
- Wikipedia, “Heart Sutra”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra - Wikidata Q189873 (Heart Sūtra)
- Dazangthings date evidence (870): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/
- 智慧輪 DILA
- Kanseki DB