漸備一切智德經

Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé jīng 漸備一切智德經

The Sūtra on the Gradual Provision of All Wisdom-Virtues (alternative titles: 十住 Shízhù; 大慧光三昧 Dà huì guāng sānmèi) — i.e. the Daśabhūmika-sūtra by 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù (譯)

About the work

The Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé jīng in 5 fascicles is 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù’s translation of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra — the foundational text on the daśabhūmi / Ten Stages of the bodhisattva path — and the first complete Chinese version of this work. The sūtra circulated independently before being incorporated into the Avataṃsaka compilation (where it forms chapter 22 of the 60-fascicle text and chapter 26 of the 80-fascicle text); two further independent Chinese translations of the Daśabhūmika exist as T0286 (by 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva, here KR6e0034) and T0287 (by Śīladharma 尸羅達摩 in the late Tang). The work’s alternative titles — Shízhù 十住 and Dà huì guāng sānmèi 大慧光三昧 — preserved in the Taishō print attest the Chinese tradition’s recognition that this is the Daśabhūmika.

Prefaces

The Taishō print has a brief sub-title-line preserving the alternative titles “(一名十住，又名大慧光三昧)” (“alternatively called Shízhù, also called Dà huì guāng sānmèi”), followed by the translator-attribution “西晉月支三藏竺法護譯” — “translated by the Yuèzhī Tripiṭaka Zhú Fǎhù of the Western Jìn.” The variant apparatus shows that 月支 (“Yuèzhī”) is omitted in some Sòng / Yuán / Míng editions.

Abstract

The translation is precisely datable: per the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, juan 7) and the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (T2034, juan 6), Zhú Fǎhù produced this version in Yuán-kāng 元康 7 (297 CE), 11th month, 21st day, at the Cháng’ān translation bureau. The bracket adopted here (297 – 297) reflects this precise dating. The translation was accomplished with the assistance of the lay scholar Niè Chéng-yuǎn 聶承遠 (father of 聶道真 Niè Dàozhēn, who later produced his own proto-Avataṃsaka translation T0282).

The Daśabhūmika is the doctrinal centre of the Avataṃsaka corpus. Its ten stages — Pramuditā 歡喜地 (“Joyful”), Vimalā 離垢地 (“Stainless”), Prabhākarī 發光地 (“Luminous”), Arciṣmatī 燄慧地 (“Radiant”), Sudurjayā 難勝地 (“Hard-to-Conquer”), Abhimukhī 現前地 (“Manifesting”), Dūraṃgamā 遠行地 (“Far-Going”), Acalā 不動地 (“Immovable”), Sādhumatī 善慧地 (“Beneficial Wisdom”), Dharmameghā 法雲地 (“Cloud of Dharma”) — describe a comprehensive bodhisattva path-doctrine that became the basis for all subsequent Mahāyāna stage-doctrines (and, through Vasubandhu’s Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna, the foundation of the Chinese Dìlùn 地論 school). The Sanskrit Daśabhūmika is well preserved (multiple manuscripts; standard editions by Rahder 1926 and Kondō 1936); the present Chinese text is among the earliest reliable witnesses to its early-Common-Era recension.

The Taishō text (T0285) is established on the standard apparatus including the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana and a particularly rich set of manuscript-witnesses (Shèng 聖, Shèng-yǐ 聖乙, etc.).

Translations and research

• Honda, Megumu. “Annotated Translation of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra.” Studies in South, East, and Central Asia, ed. D. Sinor (Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1968), 115–276. — The standard English translation, based on Sanskrit and consulting all Chinese and Tibetan versions.
• Rahder, Johannes, ed. Daśabhūmikasūtra et Bodhisattvabhūmi. Paris: Geuthner, 1926. — Standard critical Sanskrit edition.
• Kondō Ryūkō 近藤隆晃, ed. Daśabhūmīśvaro nāma Mahāyānasūtraṃ. Tokyo: Daijō Bukkyō Kenkyū-kai, 1936. — Alternative Sanskrit edition.
• Boucher, Daniel. “Gāndhārī and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered.” JAOS 118 (1998).
• Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. IRIAB Soka University, 2008.
• Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).

Other points of interest

• Zhú Fǎhù’s Jiàn bèi translation predates Kumārajīva’s much more polished Shídì jīng 十地經 T0286 by about a century and exemplifies the early-Chinese translation style — substantively faithful but stylistically rough — that gave way to Kumārajīva’s more elegant rendering of the same material.
• The triple title-set (Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé; Shízhù; Dà huì guāng sānmèi) reflects the Indian Daśabhūmika’s own multiple titles (Daśabhūmika-sūtra, Daśabhūmīśvara-sūtra, Buddhabhūmi-sūtra in some recensions), preserved in the Chinese transmission tradition.

Links

• CBETA T10n0285
• Kanseki DB
• Dazangthings date evidence (297, 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, p. 268.