Fó shuō Guānxiǎng fómǔ bōrě bōluómìduō púsà jīng 佛說觀想佛母般若波羅蜜多菩薩經
Sūtra of Contemplating the Buddha-Mother Prajñāpāramitā Bodhisattva by 天息災 Tiānxīzāi (譯, Skt. Devaśāntika)
About the work
A short one-fascicle Sòng-period Prajñāpāramitā sūtra translation by 天息災 Tiānxīzāi, preserved in the Taishō as T259. One fascicle.
The title — Guānxiǎng fómǔ bōrě bōluómìduō púsà “Contemplating the Buddha-Mother Prajñāpāramitā Bodhisattva” — explicitly identifies Prajñāpāramitā as a personified bodhisattva-deity (the Buddha-Mother) and prescribes a contemplative practice (guānxiǎng 觀想 = visualisation) directed toward this personified deity. The work is therefore one of the more explicitly Vajrayāna-influenced of Tiānxīzāi’s Prajñāpāramitā translations.
Abstract
T259 is a short late-Indian Prajñāpāramitā sūtra in the Vajrayāna-influenced deity-visualisation genre. The Buddha-Mother Prajñāpāramitā iconography prescribed in the text — typically a four-armed female bodhisattva holding the Aṣṭasāhasrikā manuscript and other attributes — became standard in late-Indian and Tibetan Buddhist iconography and entered Chinese tantric Buddhism through translations like T259.
The work belongs to the late-Indian Vajrayāna-meets-Prajñāpāramitā devotional fusion characteristic of the Pāla-era eastern Indian Buddhism (c. 8th–12th century) that the Sòng Yìjīngyuàn worked to transmit to China through the late 10th and 11th centuries.
Composition date: Tiānxīzāi’s translation activity at the Yìjīngyuàn (982–1000).
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located of T259 specifically.
- For the Bhagavatī Prajñāpāramitā deity tradition and its iconography, see Christopher Conrad, Mahāmāyā: A Buddhist Goddess and other modern studies of late-Indian Buddhist female deities.
- For Tiānxīzāi and the Sòng Yìjīngyuàn, Tansen Sen (2003).
Links
- 天息災 DILA
- CBETA T08n0259
- Dazangthings date evidence (990) — Taishō shinshū daizōkyō dating.
- Kanseki DB