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大方廣佛華嚴經

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Text ID
KR6e0001
Date
418–420
Dynasty
東晉

Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng 大方廣佛華嚴經

The Sūtra on the Great, Vast Buddha-Flower-Garland (Buddhāvataṃsaka-mahāvaipulya-sūtra) — the “Sixty-fascicle Huáyán” (六十華嚴 / 舊譯華嚴) by 佛馱跋陀羅 Buddhabhadra (譯)

About the work

The Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng, in 60 fascicles and 34 chapters (品), is the foundational scripture of the Chinese Huáyán 華嚴 tradition. It is the first of the two complete Chinese versions of the Buddhāvataṃsaka / Avataṃsaka-sūtra, conventionally distinguished from the later 80-fascicle Tang version of 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda (KR6e0010, 695–699 CE) as the Jiù yì 舊譯 (“Old Translation”) or Liù shí Huáyán 六十華嚴 (“Sixty-fascicle Huáyán”). Its scriptural matter is a vast and highly stratified compendium of Mahāyāna doctrine ranged around the figure of Vairocana 毘盧遮那 / 盧舍那 Buddha enthroned at the moment of awakening at Bodhgayā, with discourses given by a hierarchy of bodhisattvas — most prominently Samantabhadra 普賢 and Mañjuśrī 文殊 — addressing the metaphysics of interdependence, the stages of the bodhisattva path (the Ten Stages, daśabhūmi 十地, occupy chapter 22 in this version), and culminating in the great pilgrimage narrative of Sudhana 善財 童子 visiting fifty-three teachers (the Gaṇḍavyūha-equivalent material, here as the Rù fǎjiè pǐn 入法界品, the work’s closing section). Two of the sūtra’s major constituent texts — the Daśabhūmika and the Gaṇḍavyūha — were known and circulated independently in Indian, Tibetan, and Central Asian transmission, and the Avataṃsaka as a whole appears in the form of the present Chinese text to be a Central Asian (probably Khotanese) compilation rather than a single Indian original.

Prefaces

The work carries no formal preface in the Taishō print, but the closing fascicle (juàn 60) preserves a colophon that is the principal contemporary witness to the circumstances of the translation:

華嚴經梵本凡十萬偈，昔道人支法領，從于闐國得此三萬六千偈，以晉義熙十四年歲次鶉火三月十日，於揚州司空謝石所立道場寺，請天竺禪師佛度跋陀羅，手執梵文譯梵為晉，沙門釋法業親從筆受。時吳郡內史孟顗、右衛將軍褚叔度為檀越，至元熙二年六月十日出訖。

That is: the Sanskrit (or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) original of the Huáyán is in 100,000 verses; the monk 支法領 Zhī Fǎlǐng obtained a 36,000-verse recension from Khotan (Yútián 于闐); on Yìxī 義熙 14 (418 CE), 3rd month, 10th day, at the Dàochǎng-sì 道場寺 in Yángzhōu (i.e. Jiànkāng 建康 / modern Nánjīng) — a monastery founded by the Sīkōng 司空 謝石 Xiè Shí — the Indian Chan-master Buddhabhadra (here written 佛度跋陀羅) was invited to “hold the Sanskrit text and translate Sanskrit into Jìn”; the śramaṇa 法業 Shì Fǎyè took dictation; the dānapatis (檀越, lay donors) were 孟顗 Mèng Yǐ, Inner Historian of Wú Commandery, and 褚叔度 Chǔ Shūdù, Right Guard General; the work was completed on Yuánxī 元熙 2 (420 CE), 6th month, 10th day. Translation thus took just over two years.

The colophon’s reading 佛度跋陀羅 is one of the standard graphic variants of Buddhabhadra’s name (see DILA A000441 alternativ persName) and reflects an early phonetic rendering. It is consistent with — and provides the documentary basis for — the entries in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, 60c–61a) and the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059, 334c–335b), both of which derive their account from this and related Dàochǎngsì records.

Abstract

The Sixty-fascicle Huáyán is one of the most consequential scriptural translations of the entire Chinese Buddhist tradition. The dating is exact: 418/3/10 to 420/6/10, ranging across the very last years of Eastern Jìn (the Yuánxī era 419–420 was the final reign-period of Jìn before the LiúSòng usurpation). The translator was the Kapilavastu-born Buddhabhadra, then resident at Jiànkāng’s Dàochǎngsì after his expulsion from Cháng’ān and his stay at Lúshān. The southern court setting and the patronage of court figures 孟顗 Mèng Yǐ and 褚叔度 Chǔ Shūdù marked the project as an Eastern-Jìn imperial-cultural undertaking parallel to, and competing with, the northern YáoQín translation enterprise of Kumārajīva.

The Sanskrit / BHS Vorlage was a 36,000-verse recension transmitted through Khotan and procured for the Chinese by 支法領 Zhī Fǎlǐng — a fact which (taken together with the testimony of Khotanese fragments and the late-seventh-century report of 提雲般若 Devaprajñā about the existence of an “expanded” Khotanese version) supports the now-standard scholarly view that the Avataṃsaka in its complete form is a Central Asian compilation drawing together originally independent Indian and Inner Asian materials around the Vairocana / Samantabhadra cosmology. Nattier 2003, Hamar 2007, and Osto 2008 review the evidence; Forte 1985 traced the Khotanese channels in detail.

The 60-fascicle version contains 34 chapters (品), opening with the Shìjiān jìngyǎn pǐn 世間淨眼品 (“Pure Eye of the World”) setting the cosmic-stage scene at Bodhgayā and proceeding through the Lúshènà fó pǐn 盧舍那佛品 (the central exposition of Vairocana / Rocana), the Tathāgatanāmadheya pǐn 如來名號品 (Buddha-names across the cosmos), the great Shízhù pǐn 十住品, Shíxíng pǐn 十行品, Shíhuíxiàng pǐn 十迴向品, and Shídì pǐn 十地品 (the Daśabhūmika — the locus classicus for Mahāyāna stage-doctrine, drawn here from a text already separately translated as T286), down to the magnificent closing Rù fǎjiè pǐn 入法界品 in 8 fascicles, which corresponds to the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra and contains the Sudhana-pilgrimage narrative. Compared with the later 80-fascicle Táng version, the 60-fascicle text is shorter by 11 chapters and is missing some material in the Sudhana section; the Pǔxián xíngyuàn pǐn 普賢行願品 (familiar from the East Asian liturgical tradition) is not present and was supplied in 般若 Prajñā’s 40-fascicle translation (KR6e0041, T293) at the very end of the eighth century.

The work was the foundation of the doctrinal lineage that runs from 杜順 Dùshùn (557–640) through 智儼 Zhìyǎn (602–668) — author of the Sōuxuán fēnqí tōngzhì fāngguǐ 搜玄分齊通智方軌 (KR6e0003, T1732) — to 法藏 Fǎzàng (643–712), who systematized the Chinese Huáyán doctrine in his Tànxuán jì 探玄記 (KR6e0004, T1733) and made the 60-fascicle version the basis of the school. Even after Śikṣānanda’s 80-fascicle version became canonically dominant, the Old Translation retained authority because Fǎzàng’s commentaries had been written on it, and because of certain chapter divisions and readings preserved here that diverge from the later Táng version. The two versions thus circulated side by side in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Huáyán/Hwaeom/Kegon scholasticism throughout the medieval and early-modern periods.

The Taishō text (T278) was prepared on the basis of the Korean Tripiṭaka (高麗藏) collated against the Sòng (宋), Yuán (元), Míng (明), Palace (宮), Old-Sòng (磧砂), Shèng (聖), Southern Míng (南藏), Northern Míng (北藏), and Chí 知 witnesses — an unusually rich apparatus reflecting the text’s centrality.

Translations and research

  • Cleary, Thomas, tr. The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Boulder: Shambhala, 1984–1987 (3 vols.); 1-vol. ed. 1993. — Complete English translation, based on the 80-fascicle Táng version (T279) but consulting T278.
  • Nattier, Jan. A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā). Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003. — Foundational discussion of the Avataṃsaka’s text-historical layering.
  • Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism. Asiatische Forschungen 151. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. — Includes Hamar’s “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: Shorter and Larger Texts” (139–168), the standard recent overview.
  • Osto, Douglas. Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. Routledge, 2008.
  • Forte, Antonino. “The Chinese Translation of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra.” In La transmission du savoir bouddhique en Asie. Paris: EFEO, 1985.
  • Gimello, Robert M. Chih-yen (602–668) and the Foundations of Hua-yen Buddhism. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1976. — Indispensable for the institutional history of the Chinese reception.
  • Cook, Francis H. Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.
  • Ōtake Susumu 大竹晋. Daichidoron no monogatari 大智度論の物語 (and related articles in Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 印度学仏教学研究, on textual layers of the Avataṃsaka materials).
  • Kimura Kiyotaka 木村清孝. Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi 中国華厳思想史. Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1992.
  • Yuyama, Akira. “An Avataṃsaka-sūtra Manuscript from Nepal.” Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 21 (1997): 209–217.
  • Hamlin, Edward. “Magical Upāya in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa-Sūtra.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 11.1 (1988) — touches on the Mahāyāna vyūha genre to which the Avataṃsaka belongs.
  • Sanskrit fragments: Ehman, Mark Allen, ed. and tr. The Daśabhūmika-sūtra. Banaras Hindu University, 1977. — For the Shídì pǐn parallel; Honda Megumu’s translation in SCBA (1968) is also standard.

Other points of interest

  • The colophon’s mention of 支法領 Zhī Fǎlǐng and the Khotanese provenance of the manuscript is a key data-point for the Khotan-Mahāyāna question; the Avataṃsaka is the most prominent example of a Mahāyāna scripture for which the Central Asian (rather than purely Indian) compilation is well-attested.
  • The Daśabhūmika chapter (《十地品》) of T278 is essentially a re-edition of the independently transmitted Shídì jīng 十地經 / T286 (translated by Kumārajīva and others), as has been demonstrated by parallel-line collation; readers therefore have, in the Daśabhūmika and its commentary tradition (Vasubandhu’s Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna, Shí dì jīng lùn 十地經論 (KR6e0060, T1522), translated by 菩提流支 Bodhiruci et al.), a textual sub-stratum that can be cross-checked against the Sanskrit (manuscript and Rahder’s edition).
  • The 8-fascicle Rù fǎjiè pǐn (Sudhana pilgrimage) was reissued as the Sì shí Huáyán 四十華嚴 (KR6e0041, T293) by 般若 Prajñā in 798 CE; this 40-fascicle version is the source of the Pǔxián xíngyuàn pǐn 普賢行願品 absent from T278 and T279.

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