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無量義經

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Text ID
KR6d0118
Date
481–481
Dynasty
蕭齊

Wúliàngyì jīng 無量義經

The Sūtra of Innumerable Meanings by 曇摩伽陀耶舍 (Tánmójiātuóyéshè / Dharmagatayaśas, 譯)

About the work

A single-juan Southern-Qí (Xiāo Qí 蕭齊) translation by Dharmagatayaśas 曇摩伽陀耶舍 (also written 曇摩迦陀耶舍), produced at the Cháotíngsì 朝亭寺 in Guǎngzhōu in Jiànyuán 建元 3 (= 481 CE). The work is the conventionally-recognised prologue sūtra to the Lotus Sūtra in the East-Asian Tiāntái tradition: in the Tiāntái doctrinal framework, the Wúliàngyì is the “opening text” of the Lotus assembly, with the Lotus Sūtra proper following as the principal scriptural revelation.

Prefaces

The text opens with the celebrated Wúliàngyì jīng xù 無量義經序 by 劉虬 Liú Qiú (433–495), the Southern-Qí Jīngzhōu yǐnshì 荊州隱士 (“hermit of Jīngzhōu”) and lay Buddhist scholar. Liú Qiú’s preface is one of the most influential pre-Tang Sinitic Buddhist documents and provides the foundational seven-period classification of the Buddha’s teaching that informed both the southern Liáng Lotus exegesis (法雲 Fǎyún, 僧旻 Sēngmín, 智藏 Zhìzàng) and the subsequent Tiāntái systematisation under 智顗 Zhìyǐ:

“The Wúliàngyì jīng: taking its non-characteristic single-dharma, broadly producing the assembled teachings, the contained meanings inestimable; therefore called Wúliàng [innumerable]. Now the triloka (three-realms) assembled-beings, following karma, are turned about. The one-supreme right-awakening, conforming to potential, penetrates [them]. Those who flow and turn through arising-and-extinction necessarily are in suffering and hope for joy: this is the seekers’ summons of the Holy One. Those who conform-and-penetrate to manifest are also dispatched in compassion and apply benevolence: that is the response of the world-saver.

“Roots being different, teachings differ; their stages amount to seven: 1, first for Pāli etc. expounded the five precepts — that is, the human-and-celestial good-roots, the first; 2, next for Kauṇḍinya etc. turned the four-truths — the granting of the śrāvaka vehicle, the second; 3, next for the middle-faculty expounded the twelve-fold-causality — the granting of the pratyekabuddha vehicle, the third; 4, next for the high-faculty raised the six perfections — the granting of the great vehicle, the fourth.

“The various teachings, propagated and integrated, the assembled doubts requiring leadership: next he expounded the Wúliàngyì jīng. Already named having attained the Way’s stages, again said not yet manifest the real-truth — to make arouse the seeking-the-real subtle-potential, to use to open the one-supreme’s foundational sequence, the fifth. Therefore the Lotus continued the proclamation, manifesting the one and removing the three; conforming to that seeking-the-real heart, removing this provisional-deployment name, the sixth. Although the provisional was opened and the real manifested, still it veiled the proper meaning of permanent-abiding. At the twin trees overlooking the brink, the Mahāparinirvāṇa expounded the profound sound of self-and-purity, the seventh.”

Abstract

The Wúliàngyì jīng is one of the most doctrinally significant short Mahāyāna sūtras in the East-Asian Buddhist canon: it occupies the structurally critical position as the prologue text of the Lotus Sūtra in the Tiāntái doctrinal framework, providing the doctrinal preparation through which the Buddha’s audience is brought to the receptive disposition for the Lotus’s kāiquán xiǎnshí doctrine.

Liú Qiú’s seven-period classification of the Buddha’s teaching, articulated in the preface, became the foundational document of southern Sinitic Lotus exegesis. Its principal claim — that the Lotus Sūtra represents the fifth and sixth periods of the Buddha’s career, with the Mahāparinirvāṇa representing the seventh and supreme period — was preserved and systematised in the subsequent Liáng-period exegesis of Fǎyún (KR6d0005) and the Suí-period synthesis of Zhìyǐ (KR6d0006).

The Indic provenance of the Wúliàngyì jīng is uncertain. The Tibetan canon does not preserve it, and there is no evidence for the Sanskrit original. Some modern scholars have argued that the work may itself be a Sinitic apocryphon composed in late-fifth-century southern China (parallel to the case of the Vajrasamādhi-sūtra, KR6d0112), with Dharmagatayaśas’s “translation” being a fictional production-frame for a Chinese-composed text. The textual-historical question remains contested.

Translations and research

  • Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. The Textual Study of the Chinese Versions of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra. Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1992.
  • Buswell, Robert E., Jr., ed. Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990. (For the Wúliàngyì jīng’s possible apocryphal status.)
  • Reeves, Gene, trans. The Lotus Sutra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008. (Includes English translation of the Wúliàngyì jīng as the Lotus’s prologue.)
  • Kubo Tsugunari and Yuyama Akira, trans. The Lotus Sutra: Taishō Volume 9, Number 262. BDK English Tripiṭaka 13-I. Berkeley: Numata Center, 2007.
  • Stevenson, Daniel B., and Kanno Hiroshi. The Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra’s Course of Ease and Bliss. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2006.
  • Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. Hokke gisho no kenkyū 法華義疏の研究. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1996.

Other points of interest

The Wúliàngyì jīng — together with the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka itself and the Pǔxián guān jīng 普賢觀經 (T277, the Samantabhadra-bodhisattva-dhyāna-cary-dharma-sūtra) — constitutes the classical “Three-Part Lotus” (sānbù Fǎhuá 三部法華) of the East-Asian Tiāntái tradition: the Wúliàngyì as the prologue, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka as the principal text, and the Pǔxián guān jīng as the epilogue. The three together formed the standard liturgical-meditative apparatus of Tiāntái Lotus practice through the medieval period.

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