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十住經

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Text ID
KR6e0034
Date
402–409
Dynasty
後秦

Shí zhù jīng 十住經

The Sūtra on the Ten Abodes — i.e. the Daśabhūmika-sūtra, Kumārajīva’s translation by 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva (譯)

About the work

The Shí zhù jīng in 4 fascicles is 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s translation of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra — the second complete Chinese version of this fundamental bodhisattva-path text, after [[KR6e0033|Zhú Fǎhù’s Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé jīng 漸備一切智德經]] (T0285) of the Western Jìn. It is conventionally regarded as the most stylistically polished of the Chinese translations, and (because of Kumārajīva’s wide influence in subsequent Chinese Buddhism) was the basis for much of the Daśabhūmika-related doctrinal exegesis in the fifth- and sixth-century Chinese Buddhist tradition. The same material appears, in subtly different recensions, as chapter 22 of the [[KR6e0001|60-fascicle Huáyán]] and chapter 26 of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]].

The opening reads: “Huānxǐ dì (Pramuditā), the first” (歡喜地第一) — the first of the ten bhūmi-stages — followed by the standard sūtra-opening “Thus have I heard” (如是我聞).

Prefaces

No formal preface; the title-line attributes the translation to “後秦龜茲國三藏鳩摩羅什譯” — “translated by Kumārajīva, Tripiṭaka of Kuchā, of the Later Qín.”

Abstract

鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva (Jīumóluóshí 鳩摩羅什, 344 – 413 CE — but more recent scholarship (Pelliot, Tsukamoto Zenryū, Lu Yang) refines the dates to ~344 – 413 with substantial uncertainty) was the most consequential translator of Mahāyāna Buddhist texts in Chinese history. Born in Kuchā 龜茲 (modern Kuqa, Xinjiang) of an Indian Brahmin father and a Kuchanese princess mother, he was abducted to Liángzhōu 涼州 by the warlord Lü Guāng 呂光 in 384 and held there for nearly two decades, until in 401 he was conveyed to Cháng’ān by Yáo Xìng 姚興 of the Later Qín. Between 402 and 413 he led the great Cháng’ān translation bureau that produced the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, T0262), the Vimalakīrti-sūtra (T0475), the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-mahāvibhāṣā (T1521), the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (大智度論, T1509), the Madhyamaka-śāstra (中論, T1564), and many others. The Shí zhù jīng belongs to this corpus.

The translation is conventionally dated to the early years of Kumārajīva’s Cháng’ān bureau, c. 402 – 409 CE; the bracket adopted here reflects this window. The team included 僧叡 Sēngrúi, 僧肇 Sēngzhào, 道融 Dàoróng, and 竺道生 Zhú Dàoshēng — all of whom would become major Buddhist figures in their own right.

The text is one of the most important sources for the doctrine of the ten bodhisattva stages (daśabhūmi) in the Chinese Buddhist tradition; it was one of the texts whose translation by 勒那摩提 Ratnamati and 菩提流支 Bodhiruci into the Shídì jīng lùn 十地經論 (KR6e0060, T1522, the Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna of Vasubandhu) founded the Dìlùn 地論 school of the Northern Wèi, and indirectly the Chinese Huáyán school. Modern scholarship (Hamar 2007, Liú 2009) treats Kumārajīva’s Shí zhù jīng as the linguistic-doctrinal benchmark against which all later Chinese versions of the Daśabhūmika (including those embedded in T0278 and T0279) must be assessed.

The Taishō text (T0286) is established on the standard apparatus including the Sēn 森 (Senno-ji) Japanese alternate witness, an unusually rich apparatus reflecting the work’s continuing scholastic importance.

Translations and research

  • Honda, Megumu. “Annotated Translation of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra.” Studies in South, East, and Central Asia (1968), 115–276 — references all Chinese versions including Kumārajīva’s.
  • Rahder, Johannes, ed. Daśabhūmikasūtra et Bodhisattvabhūmi. Paris: Geuthner, 1926.
  • Kumarajiva and the Translation Bureau (general literature):
  • Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967 — substantial chapters on Kumārajīva’s translation methodology.
  • Lu Yang. The Translation of Buddhist Texts in Early Medieval China. (Several articles in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies).
  • Lamotte, Étienne, tr. Le traité de la grande vertu de sagesse (5 vols., Louvain, 1944–1980) — translation of Kumārajīva’s Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra with extensive comparative apparatus.
  • Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).

Other points of interest

  • The doctrinal terminology of the ten bhūmi-stages — Pramuditā / 歡喜地 etc. — is in this version standardised in a Chinese rendering that became canonical in subsequent Buddhist literature; Kumārajīva’s choices here directly shaped the doctrinal vocabulary of medieval Chinese Mahāyāna.
  • The text was foundational for the doctrinal teaching of 僧叡 Sēngrúi (Kumārajīva’s senior disciple), whose own writings on bodhisattva-stage doctrine derive directly from it.

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