Táng Fàn fān duì zìyīn Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng 唐梵翻對字音般若波羅蜜多心經
Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra: Tang–Sanskrit Phonetic Transcription with Parallel Gloss attributed to 不空 (譯, Skt. Amoghavajra) with preface attributed to 玄奘 (慈恩和尚)
About the work
A unique Heart Sūtra witness preserved in the Dūnhuáng manuscript Stein 700 and admitted into the Taishō canon as T256. Two integrated components: (i) a preface attributed to “Cí’ēn héshàng” 慈恩和尚 — i.e. Xuánzàng 玄奘 — narrating the legendary genesis of his transmission of the Heart Sūtra; and (ii) a fully transliterated Sanskrit version of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya in Chinese phonographs, with each Sanskrit syllable followed by a small-character Chinese gloss giving the equivalent of the Xuánzàng short version (T251). The Sanskrit-side transcription is attributed to Bùkōng 不空 (Amoghavajra) by the colophon-style heading 「特進鴻臚卿開府議同三司封肅國公贈司空官食邑三千戶勅謚大辦正廣不空奉詔譯」, which lists his complete official titulature.
The text also includes a short opening invocation of the Triple Jewel (“Lotus Family Universal Praise of the Three Jewels” 蓮花部等普讚歎三寶) before the Heart Sūtra proper, suggesting use in an esoteric ritual context. One fascicle, very short.
Prefaces
The preface (“奉昭述序”) opens with the famous origin legend: while Xuánzàng was setting out for India and lodging at the Kōnghuì Monastery 空惠寺 in Yìzhōu 益州, he met a sick monk who, hearing of his pilgrimage, taught him orally the “Mind-essential Dharma-gate of the Buddhas of the Three Times” (三世諸佛心要法門 — i.e. the Hṛdaya). The next morning the monk had vanished. Xuánzàng then carried the Heart Sūtra westwards across the deserts (“路涉流沙，波深弱水”). The text recounts in florid parallel prose the dangers of his road — Tibetan winds, mountain spirits, snowy peaks, and demonic terrain (“胡風起處，動塞草以愁人；山鬼啼時，對荒兵之落葉”) — and explains that whenever Xuánzàng was lost or hungry, after reciting the sūtra forty-nine times a magical figure would appear to guide him or food would materialise. On reaching Nālandā in Magadha (磨竭陀國那爛陀寺), he met the same monk again, who revealed himself to be Avalokiteśvara (「我是觀音菩薩」) before vanishing into the sky. The preface concludes that this is therefore the supreme proof of the Heart Sūtra’s efficacy and exhorts sincere recitation.
The provenance note 「燉煌出 S. 700」 in the Taishō header explicitly identifies the witness as Stein 700, recovered from the Mògāo Caves 莫高窟 at Dūnhuáng. The header further locates the text textually at the 「西京大興善寺石璧上錄出」 — copied from a stone wall at Dàxīngshàn Monastery in the Western Capital (Cháng’ān).
Abstract
T256 is the most important single witness for reconstructing a Tang-period Sanskrit text of the Heart Sūtra (short recension). Each Chinese-transliterated syllable carries a small-character Chinese gloss, so the work effectively functions as a parallel Sanskrit-Chinese edition. Conze used T256 as one of his sources in establishing the standard edition of the Sanskrit Hṛdaya (1948, revised 1967), and Nattier (1992) drew on it heavily in arguing that the short recension circulated in China before any extant Sanskrit witness.
The double attribution — preface to Xuánzàng (d. 664), transliteration to Amoghavajra (705–774) — has long puzzled scholars. The historical Xuánzàng cannot have authored a preface to a transcription made decades after his death. Most modern scholarship treats the preface itself as a hagiographic fiction (the Yìzhōu/Avalokiteśvara story is paralleled in the Dà Táng Dàcí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī zhuàn 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳, juan 1, but in much more sober form) added secondarily to a transliteration produced in the Cháng’ān esoteric milieu of Amoghavajra’s circle or a generation later. The use of Amoghavajra’s full titulature in the colophon points to a date within or shortly after his lifetime.
The bracket notBefore 746 (Amoghavajra’s return to Cháng’ān) — notAfter 850 (well within the Tibetan-period Dūnhuáng cave deposit’s likely accumulation horizon) reflects this composite uncertainty. Earlier scholars assumed an authentic eighth-century Amoghavajra-period origin; later studies have suggested ninth-century Dūnhuáng compilation. The Dūnhuáng manuscript itself shows ninth-century palaeographic features.
The text was unknown to the printed canons (Sòng Kāibǎo, Liáo, Jīn, Yuán, Yǒnglè běi zàng 永樂北藏) and entered the Taishō only after the Stein collection was studied in the 1920s.
Translations and research
- Edward Conze, “The Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya Sūtra,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 80 (1948): 33–51; revised in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies (Oxford: Cassirer, 1967), 148–167 — uses T256 to establish the Sanskrit text.
- Jan Nattier, “The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?” JIABS 15.2 (1992): 153–223 — central treatment; T256 is critical evidence for her thesis.
- Fukui Fumimasa 福井文雅, Hannya shingyō no rekishiteki kenkyū 般若心経の歴史的研究 (Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1987) — extensive philological discussion including T256 and the related Stein/Pelliot witnesses.
- Lewis R. Lancaster, “The Heart Sūtra and the Mahāvairocanasūtra: An Edition Based on Stein 700,” in his collected papers — Sanskrit reconstruction from T256 specifically.
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō Bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究 (Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1990) — Dūnhuáng-side context.
- Robert M. Gimello, “Wisdom and the End of Wisdom: A Study of the Tang Reception of the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya,” in essays on Tang Buddhism (various venues), addresses the Amoghavajra-circle attribution.
Other points of interest
The dual-script presentation (Sanskrit syllables in Chinese phonographic transcription, glossed in small print with the equivalent Chinese characters of T251) is unusual in the Buddhist canon. It places T256 alongside the Siddham primers and the Yīqiè jīngyīn yì 一切經音義 of Huìlín 慧琳 in the genre of Tang philological aids for esoteric chanting. The work is a primary source for Tang reading-pronunciations of Sanskrit and for the reconstruction of late-Tang esoteric mantric phonology.
Embedded in the transliteration are visible scribal slips and duplications (note the doubled passage at lines 「卅三 曩無尾儞也乞叉喻盡卅四 野乃嚩至曩無㘃囉老麼囉喃」 and following), suggesting copyist confusion in the Stein 700 original. These artefacts have been used by philologists to identify the recensional ancestry of the witness.
Links
- 不空 DILA
- CBETA online
- Stein 700 (British Library):
http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_loader.a4d?pm=Or.8210/S.700 - Wikipedia, “Heart Sutra”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra - Kanseki DB