Fó shuō pútísà běn yè jīng 佛說菩薩本業經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Bodhisattvas’ Original Practice by 支謙 Zhī Qiān (譯)
About the work
This one-fascicle proto-Avataṃsaka text by 支謙 Zhī Qiān (active mid-3rd c., dharma-name Yuèzhī Yōupósè 月氏優婆塞 — “Yuèzhī Lay Believer”) corresponds, on the Taishō apparatus’s authority, to chapters 7 and 11 of the [[KR6e0001|60-fascicle Buddhabhadra Huáyán]], to chapters 11 and 15 of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Śikṣānanda Huáyán]], and to the Western Jìn-period [[KR6e0030|Zhū pútísà qiú fó běn yè jīng 諸菩薩求佛本業經]] (T0282). It thus preserves an early Three-Kingdoms-period (吳) translation of bodhisattva-practice material that was later incorporated into the great Avataṃsaka compilations.
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. The Buddha was […] ” (聞如是) — the standard formula of a Buddhist sūtra opening.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the Taishō print preserves multiple variant attribution lines reflecting transmission history (the source notes indicate variants 月氏 / 支 in different witnesses), reading “吳月氏優婆塞支謙譯” — “translated by the Yuèzhī Lay Believer Zhī Qiān of the Wú [state].”
Abstract
Zhī Qiān (Yuèzhī, lay surname Zhī 支, active in the Wú state c. 222 – 253 CE) was the first major Chinese Buddhist translator of the southern Three-Kingdoms court. Native to a Yuèzhī family long resident in northern China, he was trained as a Buddhist scholar in the Lǔ-yáng / Cháng’ān milieu (where his ancestors had been active alongside 支婁迦讖 Lokakṣema and his disciples), and emigrated south to the Wú state c. 220 to escape the warfare of the late Hàn collapse. There, under Sun Quan’s 孫權 patronage, he produced a remarkable corpus of some thirty-six translations including the Wéi-mó-jié jīng 維摩詰經 (T0474), the Dà míng dù jīng 大明度經 (T0225, the first Wú translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā), the Dà ān-bān shǒu yì jīng 大安般守意經 (T0602, after Ān Shìgāo’s Eastern-Hàn version), and the present Pútísà běn yè jīng.
Zhī Qiān’s distinctive translation style — markedly more elegant and literarily polished than the early-translation roughness of Lokakṣema and his predecessors — set the standard for the literary Buddhist Chinese of the southern Three Kingdoms and Eastern Jìn periods, and through his disciple 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù exerted profound influence on the entire fourth-century translation enterprise. The Pútísà běn yè jīng is one of the texts in his Chinese Buddhist Avataṃsaka corpus that the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145) lists under his name; the běn yè (本業, “original practice / original karman”) topic — the bodhisattva’s foundational vow and consequent practice — corresponds to the central theme of the early chapters of the mature Avataṃsaka.
The dating bracket adopted here (222 – 253 CE) covers the conventional period of Zhī Qiān’s translation activity in the Wú court. The Taishō text is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Hàn and Three Kingdoms Periods. Tokyo: IRIAB Soka University, 2008. — The standard reference for early Chinese Buddhist translations, including the Pútísà běn yè jīng.
- Harrison, Paul. “The Translation of Buddhist Texts in Early China,” in Buddhist Translation: Studies in the Translation Process, ed. R. M. Davidson (Berkeley, 1990).
- Karashima, Seishi. “Some Features of the Language of Zhī Qiān.” Journal of the Pali Text Society 24 (1998): 75–104.
- Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
Other points of interest
- Zhī Qiān’s translation style is distinct from Lokakṣema’s: where Lokakṣema produces faithful but rough renderings, Zhī Qiān aims at a literarily polished Chinese that nonetheless preserves the doctrinal substance. The Pútísà běn yè jīng exemplifies this elegant compromise.
Links
- CBETA T10n0281
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (245) — Sakaino 1935 — Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. p. 115.