Fóshuō Jì zhū fāngděng xué jīng 佛說濟諸方等學經
Sūtra Saving All the Vaipulya Studies (Taught by the Buddha) by 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù / Dharmarakṣa, 譯)
About the work
A short single-juan Mahāyāna sūtra translated by Dharmarakṣa 竺法護 (c. 233–c. 311) of the Western Jìn. The Taishō cross-reference 「No. 274 [No. 275]」 indicates a thematic relation to 毘尼多流支 Vinītaruci’s Dàshèng fāngguǎng zǒngchí jīng (KR6d0117, T275), a parallel translation of the same Indic source-text. Body attribution: Xī Jìn Yuèshì sānzàng Zhú Fǎhù yì 西晉月氏三藏竺法護譯.
Prefaces
The text in the Taishō recension carries the standard front matter; the body opens with the standard sūtra-opening Wén rúshì 聞如是 (“Heard thus”) — characteristic of Dharmarakṣa’s distinctive translation idiom (in contrast to 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s later Rúshì wǒ wén 如是我聞).
Abstract
The work is a relatively short Mahāyāna sūtra elaborating the doctrine of the Vaipulya (方等, “extensive”) — i.e., the early Mahāyāna sūtras as a class — and the practice of saving (jì 濟) the followers of these Vaipulya teachings from doctrinal deviation and karmic affliction. The work belongs to the broader early Mahāyāna scriptural tradition of fāngděng sūtras that articulated the foundational doctrines of the Mahāyāna in the period immediately following the formation of the Prajñāpāramitā corpus.
The composition of the Indic original is most plausibly placed in the second or third century CE; the Chinese translation is bracketed within Dharmarakṣa’s productive period c. 270s–290s.
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.
- Boucher, Daniel. “Buddhist Translation Procedures in Third-Century China: A Study of Dharmarakṣa and his Translation Idiom.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
- Lancaster, Lewis R. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Links
- CBETA online text T0274
- Kanseki DB
- 竺法護 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (300): T CBETA Taishō — Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924–1932.