Fó shuō shí dì jīng 佛說十地經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Ten Stages — i.e. the Daśabhūmika-sūtra, late-Tang translation by 尸羅達摩 Śīladharma (譯)
About the work
The Fó shuō shí dì jīng in 9 fascicles is the third complete Chinese version of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra, after [[KR6e0033|Zhú Fǎhù’s Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé jīng 漸備一切智德經]] (T0285, Western Jìn, 297 CE) and [[KR6e0034|Kumārajīva’s Shí zhù jīng 十住經]] (T0286, Later Qín, c. 402 – 409). It also corresponds to chapter 22 of the [[KR6e0001|60-fascicle Huáyán]] and chapter 26 of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]]. This particular version is the most expansive of the three independent translations and preserves a fuller text than the earlier versions, attesting to the textual development of the Daśabhūmika in the centuries between Zhú Fǎhù and Śīladharma.
The opening reads: “Pútísà jí xǐ dì, first (chapter)” (菩薩極喜地第一之一) — Pramuditā “Joy-stage”, with the jí 極 (“supreme”) added to the standard Huānxǐ 歡喜 (“joyful”); “Thus have I heard. At that time the Bhagavān had not long attained the Way; in the second seven-day [period]…”
Prefaces
The Taishō print preserves a brief contextual note in the title-line: “大唐國僧法界從中印度持此梵本請于闐三藏沙門尸羅達摩於北庭龍興寺譯” — “The Great Tang monk Fǎjiè brought this Sanskrit manuscript from Central India and invited the Khotanese Tripiṭaka śramaṇa Śīladharma to translate it at the Lóngxīng Monastery of the Northern Court [Běi-tíng].” This note is the principal documentary witness to the circumstances of the translation.
Abstract
The translation is conventionally dated to the period c. 789 – 798 CE, late in the reign of Tang Dézōng 德宗 (r. 779 – 805). The bracket adopted here reflects this window. The setting is the Běi-tíng 北庭 / Beš-baliq, the western Tang frontier post in modern Xinjiang — the second time after Buddhabhadra’s translation of the [[KR6e0001|Huáyán]] in Yángzhōu that a major Avataṃsaka-tradition translation was undertaken outside the imperial-court translation bureaus of Cháng’ān and Luòyáng. The manuscript was procured by the Chinese monk 法界 Fǎjiè, who, like the contemporary 悟空 Wùkōng, had travelled to India and returned with Sanskrit (or Khotanese) Buddhist materials.
The text is doctrinally important as the most extensive Chinese version of the Daśabhūmika; it preserves descriptive material on the ten bhūmi-stages that is more elaborate than the corresponding sections in T0285 or T0286, and which therefore forms an important comparative witness for the textual development of the work. It was, however, less widely studied in subsequent Chinese Buddhist tradition than Kumārajīva’s T0286 (whose more polished prose retained authoritative status) or the Daśabhūmika embedded in the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]] (which had the prestige of imperial-court patronage).
The Taishō text (T0287) is established on the standard apparatus, principally the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana.
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 Śīladharma’s.
- Rahder, Johannes. Daśabhūmikasūtra et Bodhisattvabhūmi. Paris: Geuthner, 1926.
- Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Forte, Antonino. The Hostage An Shigao and his Offspring. Kyoto: ISEAS, 1995 — context for Tang frontier translation work.
- Chen, Jinhua. Crossfire: Shingon-Tendai Strife as Seen in Two Twelfth-Century Polemics. Tokyo: IIBS, 2010 — methodological background for late-Tang translator-monk biographies.
Other points of interest
- The Beš-baliq translation enterprise of Śīladharma is one of the most westerly extensions of Chinese Buddhist textual scholarship in the Tang period, paralleling the contemporaneous work of 悟空 Wùkōng (a Chinese pilgrim who returned to Cháng’ān with Sanskrit manuscripts) and providing a key piece of evidence for the continuing vitality of Buddhist learning on the Tang western frontier.
- The translation of jí xǐ dì 極喜地 (extreme-joy-stage) for the first bhūmi, rather than the huānxǐ dì 歡喜地 (joyful-stage) used in earlier translations, represents a more literal Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit Pramuditā.