Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng 般若波羅蜜多心經
Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra (Dūnhuáng Stone Cave Recension) by 法成 (譯, Tib. Chos-grub)
About the work
A Tang-period long-recension Chinese translation of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya-sūtra, transmitted not through the Cháng’ān imperial bureau but in the Sino-Tibetan translation milieu of Dūnhuáng. The Taishō header explicitly labels the witness 「燉煌石室本」 — Dūnhuáng Stone Cave manuscript — and the colophon reads 「國大德三藏法師沙門法成譯」. The translator is the Sino-Tibetan ācārya Fǎchéng 法成 / Chos-grub, active at Dūnhuáng in the second quarter to middle of the ninth century. One fascicle, included in the Taishō canon as T255 alongside the other six Chinese Heart Sūtra translations (T250–T254, T257).
Prefaces
The text bears no formal preface in the Taishō witness — only the standard header (No. 255 [Nos. 250–254, 257]) noting the alternate witnesses and the title with the parenthetical 「燉煌石室本」, followed by the translator’s colophon. The sūtra opens with the familiar evaṃ mayā śrutam nidāna (“如是我聞：一時薄伽梵住王舍城鷲峯山中…”) and closes after the dhāraṇī “峩帝 峩帝 波囉峩帝 波囉僧峩帝 菩提 莎訶” with the assembly’s joyful acceptance.
Abstract
T255 is one of the four “long recension” Heart Sūtra translations (with T252, T253, T254) preserved in the Taishō. Its distinguishing features are: (i) Dūnhuáng provenance, attested by Stein and Pelliot manuscripts of the same recension that pre-date the printed canon; (ii) very close phrasing in the central doctrinal passage (色即是空，空即是色…) to the Xuánzàng short version (T251), suggesting that Fǎchéng was working with knowledge of the Xuánzàng text but expanded the framing material from a Sanskrit or Tibetan source; (iii) the dhāraṇī transcribed with the unusual 峩 (for ga) rather than 揭 / 誐, a Dūnhuáng phonological habit. Modern scholars including Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻 have argued that Fǎchéng worked from a Tibetan version, and the Tibetan canon indeed preserves both a long and a short recension of the Hṛdaya (Tōhoku 21 / Peking 160), the long one likely Fǎchéng’s source-text or its sibling.
For composition date, no preface or colophon gives a year. Fǎchéng’s attested activity at Dūnhuáng spans roughly the 830s into the 860s; the notBefore/notAfter bracket here (833–865) reflects this floruit. Earlier scholars sometimes placed his Heart Sūtra version slightly earlier than the Saṃdhinirmocana lectures (which are firmly in the 850s), but the manuscript evidence does not allow narrower dating.
The text became part of the printed canon only after Dūnhuáng manuscripts were collated for inclusion in the Taishō; it is absent from the Sòng Kāibǎo zàng 開寶藏 and the Zhào chéng jīn zàng 趙城金藏, and entered the canonical record largely through Japanese-edited modern editions.
Translations and research
- Edward Conze, Buddhist Wisdom Books (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958; rev. 1975) — standard English translation of the Heart Sūtra; treats the long recension.
- Jan Nattier, “The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?” JIABS 15.2 (1992): 153–223 — central modern study; T255 figures as one of the long-recension witnesses against which the short recension is compared.
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō Bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究 (Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1990), with extensive treatment of Chos-grub / Fǎchéng’s translation activity and bibliography of his works.
- Donald S. Lopez Jr., Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sūtra (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) — focused on the Tibetan and Indian commentarial traditions but with relevant background on the long recension.
- Apple, James B., “Fragments and Phylogeny of the Tibetan Versions of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti: A Case Study in the Genealogy of Tibetan Kanjurs” — methodologically relevant for the kind of Sino-Tibetan textual work Fǎchéng performed.
Other points of interest
The 「燉煌石室本」 designation in the Taishō header is itself a marker of the editorial history: this text entered the printed canon only once Dūnhuáng manuscripts were systematically catalogued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Taishō editors adopted the Stein–Pelliot witnesses. T255 is therefore one of the few canonical sūtra texts whose entire transmission history runs through Dūnhuáng manuscript culture rather than the standard Cháng’ān–Luòyáng imperial translation pipeline.
Links
- DILA Buddhist Studies Person Authority, A000696 (法成 / Chos-grub) —
Authority-Databases/authority_person/Buddhist_Studies_Person_Authority.xml - CBETA online
- Wikipedia, “Chödrup”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chos-grub - Wikidata Q189873 (Heart Sūtra)
- Dazangthings date evidence (830): [ 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/
- 法成 DILA
- Kanseki DB