Fó shuō jiào liàng yīqiè fóchà gōngdé jīng 佛說較量一切佛剎功德經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Comparing the Virtues of All Buddha-Fields by 法賢 Fǎxián (譯)
About the work
This one-fascicle text by 法賢 Fǎxián (the Northern Sòng-period imperial-translation-bureau monk, d. 1001) is the second Chinese translation of the Avataṃsaka-tradition material on Buddha-field cosmology — the topic that 玄奘 Xuánzàng’s [[KR6e0037|Xiǎn wú biān fó tǔ gōngdé jīng 顯無邊佛土功德經]] (T0289) had treated in the early Tang. The Taishō apparatus also notes the parallels with chapter 26 of the [[KR6e0001|60-fascicle Huáyán]] and chapter 31 of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]].
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. At one time…” — the standard sūtra-opening.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line preserves a fuller-than-usual official title for Fǎxián, attesting his official Sòng court rank: “西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試光祿卿明教大師臣法賢奉 詔譯” — “Translated by the Western-Heaven Sūtra-Translation Tripiṭaka, Court Gentleman of the Auxiliary Suite (朝散大夫), Acting Director of the Guāng-lù (試光祿卿), Brilliant-Teaching Great Master, Subject Fǎxián, by imperial command.”
Abstract
法賢 Fǎxián 法賢 (formerly known as Tiānxí-zài 天息災 / Devaśānti) was an Indian Buddhist scholar-monk of Kashmiri origin who arrived in Sòng China in 980 CE and was attached to the Northern Sòng imperial Buddhist translation bureau (the Yìjīng-yuàn 譯經院) in Kāifēng, where he served until his death in 1001. In 982 he was given the imperial honorific name Fǎxián 法賢 (under which all his post-982 translations are signed), with the official title Míngjiào dàshī 明教大師, and he became one of the most prolific translators of the Northern Sòng. The translation of the present text is conventionally placed in the bracket 982 – 1001, the period of his imperial-bureau activity.
The text is one of a substantial corpus of Northern Sòng Avataṃsaka-tradition translations produced under imperial patronage in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, mostly providing alternative Chinese versions of materials that had earlier been translated under the Tang. Their function in the Buddhist canon was to consolidate the textual basis for Buddhist study in the post-Tang period; few of them displaced the older translations as authoritative texts (Xuánzàng’s T0289, for example, retained doctrinal precedence over Fǎxián’s parallel version), but they provided important comparative apparatus.
The Taishō text (T0290) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003 — substantial treatment of the Northern Sòng imperial translation bureau.
- Jan Yün-hua. A Chronicle of Buddhism in China, 581–960 A.D.: Translations from Monk Chih-p’an’s “Fo-tsu T’ung-chi”. Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, 1966.
Other points of interest
- Fǎxián’s elaborate official title-line attests the formal Sòng imperial reception of foreign Buddhist translators as full members of the bureaucratic establishment — a practice that contrasts with the relatively informal status of Tang translation-bureau personnel.