Fóshuō Āwéiyuèzhì zhē jīng 佛說阿惟越致遮經
Sūtra of the Avaivartika [Non-Backsliding Bodhisattva] (Taught by the Buddha) by 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù / Dharmarakṣa, 譯)
About the work
A three-juan (上 / 中 / 下) early Chinese translation of the Avaivartika-cakra-sūtra (Skt. Avaivartika-cakra — “the wheel of non-backsliding [bodhisattvas]”) by Dharmarakṣa 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù, c. 233–c. 311) of the Western Jìn. The title transliterates the Sanskrit avaivartika (एवै वर्तिक, “non-backsliding [bodhisattva]”) as Āwéiyuèzhì 阿惟越致 with the Chinese suffix zhē 遮 (a transcriptional element). The work is the earliest of three Chinese translations of the same Indic source-text preserved in the canon: this work (T266), the anonymous Bùtuìzhuǎn fǎlún jīng (KR6d0106, T267), and Zhì-yán’s Fóshuō Guǎngbó yánjìng bùtuìzhuǎn lún jīng (KR6d0107, T268). The Taishō cross-reference 「No. 266 [Nos. 267, 268]」 documents this triple-translation pattern.
Prefaces
The text in the Taishō recension carries the standard front matter; the body opens directly with the Bùtuìzhuǎn fǎlún pǐn dìyī 不退轉法輪品第一 (“First Chapter on the Non-Backsliding Dharma-Wheel”). The translator-attribution is somewhat textually disturbed in the editorial apparatus: the Taishō presents variants between Yuèshì sānzàng 月氏三藏 (“Tripiṭaka of the Yuèshì”) and Sānzàng fǎshī 三藏法師 (“Tripiṭaka Dharma-Master”), but consistently identifies the translator as Dharmarakṣa.
Abstract
The Āwéiyuèzhì zhē jīng is one of the early Mahāyāna sūtras translated by Dharmarakṣa during his Western Jìn productive period (c. 270s–290s). Its content elaborates the doctrine of the avaivartika (non-backsliding) bodhisattva — a central category of early Mahāyāna soteriology — and provides one of the earliest Chinese expositions of the doctrine that the avaivartika stage marks the irreversible commitment to the path to Buddhahood. The work is closely related thematically to the Lotus Sūtra’s ekayāna doctrine and to the broader early Mahāyāna prajñāpāramitā literature on bodhisattva soteriology.
The dating: Dharmarakṣa’s productive period extended approximately 270s–290s; the Āwéiyuèzhì zhē jīng is generally placed in the same broader period as his Lotus Sūtra translation (KR6d0002, T263, completed in 286), with a defensible bracket of c. 284–286 for the present work.
The triple-translation pattern (T266 / T267 / T268) demonstrates the substantial East-Asian Buddhist interest in the avaivartika doctrine and the willingness of the Chinese tradition to retranslate even relatively short sūtras for doctrinal precision and stylistic refinement.
Translations and research
- Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. A Glossary of Dharmarakṣa’s Translation of the Lotus Sutra. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 1998. (For Dharmarakṣa’s translation idiom.)
- Boucher, Daniel. “Buddhist Translation Procedures in Third-Century China: A Study of Dharmarakṣa and his Translation Idiom.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
- Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
- Lancaster, Lewis R. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Other points of interest
The doctrine of the avaivartika (non-backsliding) bodhisattva is one of the central early Mahāyāna soteriological categories, marking the threshold beyond which the bodhisattva cannot fall back to the śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha paths. The early Chinese translation of the present sūtra and its companions (T267, T268) establishes the foundational Sinitic vocabulary for this doctrine and influenced the subsequent translation of related material in the Lotus Sūtra and the Prajñāpāramitā corpus.
Links
- CBETA online text T0266
- DDB 阿惟越致遮經
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (284, 300): Boucher 1996 — Boucher, Daniel. “Buddhist Translation Procedures in Third-Century China: A Study of Dharmarakṣa and his Translation Idiom.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1996. 270.
- 竺法護 DILA