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添品妙法蓮華經

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Text ID
KR6d0003
Date
601–601
Dynasty
隋

Tiānpǐn miàofǎ liánhuá jīng 添品妙法蓮華經

Sūtra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Dharma, with Supplemented Chapters (Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, Sui Recension) by 闍那崛多 (Shénàjuéduō / Jñānagupta, 譯) and 笈多 (Jíduō / Dharmagupta, 譯)

About the work

The third complete Chinese translation of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, in seven juan and twenty-seven chapters, completed in Rénshòu 仁壽 1 of the Suí 隋 (= 601 CE) at the Dàxīngshànsì 大興善寺 in Cháng’ān by the two Indic tripiṭaka-masters Jñānagupta 闍那崛多 (Shénàjuéduō, 523–600/605) and Dharmagupta 達摩笈多 (Dámójí-duō, d. 619), at the request of the Pǔyàosì 普曜寺 monk Shàngxíng 上行. The work is presented not as an independent fresh translation but as a careful textual revision and supplementation (the meaning of tiānpǐn 添品, “supplemented chapters”) of the existing translations of Dharmarakṣa (KR6d0002) and Kumārajīva (KR6d0001) against fresh palm-leaf (tāra 多羅葉, tāḍapatra) Sanskrit manuscripts brought from India.

Prefaces

The text opens with the translators’ own preface (《添品妙法蓮華經序》), undated but signed for the first year of Rénshòu (601). The preface offers the most important contemporary statement of the textual situation of the Lotus Sūtra in early Suí Buddhist scholarship: “The Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng is the doctrinal pivot for breaking-the-two and clarifying-the-one. … In ancient times the Dūnhuáng śramaṇa Zhú Fǎhù in the time of Jìn Wǔdì translated the Zhèngfǎhuá; later Yáo Xìng of the Later Qín further requested Kumārajīva to translate the Miàofǎ liánhuá. Examining the two translations, they are decidedly not from a single original. Fǎhù’s resembles the [Indic] tāra-leaf; Kumārajīva’s resembles the Kuchean text. I have inspected the scripture-treasury and seen both texts in full: the tāra concords with the Zhèngfǎ, the Kuchean concords with the Miàofǎ. Even Fǎhù’s leaf-text has lacunae; how could Kumārajīva’s text lack omissions? Fǎhù lacks the verses of the Pǔmén chapter; Kumārajīva lacks half of the Yàocǎoyù chapter, the openings of the Fùlóunà and Fǎshī chapters, the Típódáduō chapter, and the verses of the Pǔmén chapter. Kumārajīva also moved the Zhǔlěi chapter ahead of the Yàowáng, and both texts place the dhāraṇī chapter after the Pǔmén. The differences between them cannot be exhausted in words.”

The preface continues by describing the editorial procedure: “I quietly observed that the verses of the Típódáduō and Pǔmén chapters had already been issued by earlier worthies and were circulating to fill the lacunae. Esteeming this surviving wind, taking the established model as my standard, in the great Suí Rénshòu 1, the year xīnyǒu, at the request of the Pǔyàosì śramaṇa Shàngxíng, I together with the two tripiṭaka-masters Jñānagupta and Dharmagupta re-collated, at the Dàxīngshànsì, the Indic tāra-leaf original. The openings of the Fùlóunà and Fǎshī chapters were still missing in the collation manuscript; we further added the half of the Yàocǎoyù; the Típódáduō was incorporated into the [Bǎo-]tǎ chapter; the dhāraṇī was placed after the Shénlì; the Zhǔlěi was returned to its terminal position. … Although the wonderful meaning of myriads of kalpas of gāthā cannot be exhausted, the twenty-seven chapters’ base text is hereby complete.”

Abstract

T264 occupies a unique position in the East-Asian canon of the Lotus Sūtra: it is neither a wholly fresh translation nor a textual variant, but a deliberate philological revision that uses Kumārajīva’s translation as the textual base, supplements its lacunae against new Indic manuscripts, and restores what the editors held to be a more authentic chapter order. Its principal contributions to the received textual history of the Sinitic Lotus are: (1) supplying the verse portion of the Avalokiteśvara (普門) chapter, which Kumārajīva had not translated; (2) restoring the openings of the Pūrṇa (富樓那) and Dharmabhāṇaka (法師) chapters; (3) supplying the second half of the Auṣadhi (藥草喻) chapter; (4) translating the full Devadatta (提婆達多) chapter and incorporating it into the Stūpa (見寶塔) chapter; (5) repositioning the Dhāraṇī chapter after the Tathāgatariddhi (神力) chapter; and (6) restoring the Anuparīndanā (囑累) chapter to its position as the closing chapter.

These editorial decisions had a decisive effect on the standard East-Asian textus receptus of the Lotus: in subsequent centuries the Devadatta chapter and the Avalokiteśvara verses were reinserted into the circulating text of Kumārajīva’s translation (T262), producing the 28-chapter received form, while the chapter order of T264 came to be regarded as the doctrinally and textually superior arrangement. The position of the Devadatta chapter as ch. 12 of the received Kumārajīva translation thus reflects T264’s restoration.

The two translators are figures of substantial standing: Jñānagupta, originally from Gandhāra, had been a translator of more than 30 works under the Northern Zhōu and Suí; Dharmagupta, from southern India, was the principal translator of the Yogācārabhūmi-related Mahāyānasaṃgraha under the Suí. Their joint Lotus Sūtra revision was undertaken at the height of Suí imperial Buddhist patronage under Wéndì 文帝, and is contemporary with the great catalogue project of the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (T2034) of Fèi Chángfáng 費長房.

Translations and research

  • Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. The Textual Study of the Chinese Versions of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra in the Light of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Versions. Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series 3. Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1992. (Comprehensive comparative study of the three Chinese translations of the Lotus Sūtra.)
  • Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. “Hokekyō no kanyaku ni tsuite” 法華経の漢訳について. Sōka daigaku Kokusai Bukkyō-gaku kōtō kenkyūjo nenpō 創価大学国際仏教学高等研究所年報 4 (2001): 137–156. (On the textual relations of T262, T263, and T264.)
  • Tien Po-yao 田博堯 / Tian Pu. “A Study of the Tianpin Miaofa Lianhua Jing 添品妙法蓮華經 and Its Sources.” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 23 (2010): 1–46.
  • Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Indo Bukkyō-shi インド仏教史. Vol. 2. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1979.
  • Lancaster, Lewis R. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. (Cat. no. K. 117.)
  • Sōkō ichiran 宋高僧伝 (T2061), juan 2 (biography of Jñānagupta) and juan 2 (biography of Dharmagupta).

Other points of interest

T264 is the most important pre-modern attestation that pre-Suí Sinitic Buddhists were aware of the textual diversity of the Indic Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and consciously distinguished a “tāra-leaf” (palm-leaf, presumably north-Indian / Gandhāran) recension from a “Kuchean” (Central Asian) recension. The preface is one of the foundational documents in the history of pre-modern Chinese Buddhist text-criticism. Despite its philological importance, T264 was rapidly displaced for liturgical use by the supplemented received form of Kumārajīva’s translation (T262 in its 28-chapter form), and consequently survives chiefly as a scholastic and bibliographical witness rather than a devotionally circulated text.

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