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薩曇分陀利經

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Text ID
KR6d0004
Date
265–316
Dynasty
西晉

Sàtán fēntuólì jīng 薩曇分陀利經

Sūtra of the Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka (Partial Translation) Translator unknown (失譯), attributed to the Western Jìn 西晉 catalogue.

About the work

A short single-juan partial translation of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, transliterating the Indic title Saddharmapuṇḍarīka as Sàtán fēntuólì 薩曇分陀利 (with the bilingual gloss given in the body of the text: 漢言法華 “in Chinese language, Fǎhuá”). Its content corresponds to the Bǎotǎ pǐn 寶塔品 (Apparition of the Stūpa, ch. 11 of Kumārajīva’s KR6d0001) and Típódáduō pǐn 提婆達多品 (Devadatta, ch. 12), as is explicitly noted by the Taishō editors in the cross-reference at the head of the text: “Nos. 262(11, 12), 263(11), 264(11)“. The Taishō front-matter records the translator as unknown but adds the standard scribal note 失譯人名今附西晉錄 (“translator’s name lost, now attached to the Western Jìn catalogue”).

Prefaces

The text has no separate translator’s preface; only a brief bibliographical note: “Sàtán fēntuólì jīng, one juan. Translator’s name lost, now attached to the Western Jìn catalogue.” The body proceeds directly with the standard sūtra-opening 聞如是 (“Thus have I heard”).

Abstract

T265 is one of several short, partial early Chinese translations of episodes from the Lotus Sūtra that circulated in pre-Kumārajīva Buddhist China. It opens with the appearance of the seven-jewelled stūpa rising from beneath the earth, the seated Buddha within it (transliterated 抱休羅蘭 = Prabhūtaratna, glossed 漢言大寶), and his summons to Śākyamuni to expound the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka; it then proceeds to the Devadatta episode, in which the Buddha narrates his prior-life service as the slave of a brahmin in exchange for the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, identifies that brahmin as Devadatta in his previous life, and prophesies Devadatta’s eventual buddhahood as Devarāja-buddha (天王佛, lit. “King-of-Heaven Buddha”) in the realm Devabhūmi (提和越, glossed 漢言天地國).

The translation diction is markedly archaic: it preserves long Sanskrit transliterations with bilingual interlinear glosses (Sàtán fēntuólì 漢言法華, bǎoxiūluólán 漢言大寶, tíhéyuè 漢言天地國) typical of the pre-Kumārajīva translation idiom of the late Hàn through Western Jìn period, when standard Sinitic equivalences had not yet stabilised. The bilingual gloss-style and the use of 撾鼓搖鈴 (“striking drums and shaking bells”) in narrative verse suggest a translator working in the orbit of the early Western Jìn translation circles around Dharmarakṣa or his immediate predecessors. The catalogue attribution to the Western Jìn 西晉 (265–316 CE) is conventional and not securely established; some modern scholars (Hirakawa, Karashima) suggest a slightly earlier date in the late Eastern Hàn or Three Kingdoms period.

The text is significant for the history of the Devadatta episode: it is the earliest surviving Chinese witness to the Devadatta-prophecy material, which Kumārajīva did not include in his translation but which Jñānagupta and Dharmagupta restored from a fresh Indic manuscript in T264 (KR6d0003) in 601 CE. The textual archaism of T265 confirms that the Devadatta material was a relatively early stratum of the Indic Lotus Sūtra and not, as some 19th-century scholarship had supposed, a late interpolation.

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. (Discusses T265 in relation to the Devadatta-chapter textual history.)
  • Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. Sho-ki Daijō Bukkyō no kenkyū: Hokekyō to Hannya-kyō no genryū o tazunete 初期大乗仏教の研究：法華経と般若経の源流をたずねて. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 2010.
  • Lancaster, Lewis R. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. (Cat. no. K. 118.)
  • Pelliot, Paul. “Le ‘Sūtra de la Devadatta-prédiction’ d’après une version chinoise inédite.” Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 7 (1939–1945): 195–216. (Brief treatment in the context of Pelliot’s Dunhuang research.)

Other points of interest

T265 is one of the most philologically interesting “partial Lotus” translations in the canon because it preserves what may be one of the earliest Indic-to-Chinese renderings of the Devadatta-prophecy episode — a passage with substantial doctrinal interest because it implies the eventual Buddhahood of the Buddha’s principal antagonist. The transliteration Sàtán fēntuólì (薩曇分陀利) is itself notable: it suggests a source language in which Saddharma was already palatalised toward Middle Indic Saddhamma (hence Chinese 薩曇 Sàtán < sat-ṭam rather than sat-dharm), which is consistent with a Prakrit (likely Gāndhārī or a related early Middle Indic) source for the underlying Indic recension.

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