Dà fāngguǎng pǔxián suǒ shuō jīng 大方廣普賢所說經
The Great, Vast Sūtra Spoken by Samantabhadra by 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda (譯)
About the work
This one-fascicle text by 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda is a short Mahāyāna sūtra in which the principal speaker is Samantabhadra (rather than the Buddha himself). The text belongs to the broader Avataṃsaka-family of materials that present Samantabhadra as the chief expositor of the cosmic-bodhisattva doctrine, paralleling but not directly corresponding to specific chapters of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]] which Śikṣānanda also translated.
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was at the place sustained by the Tathāgata’s spiritual power, together with bodhisattva-mahāsattvas equal in number to the dust-grains of ten unspeakable hundred-thousand-koṭi-nayuta Buddha-fields, who surrounded him front and back, and to whom he expounded the Dharma; all had…”
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line attributes the translation to “唐于闐三藏實叉難陀譯” — “translated by the Khotanese Tripiṭaka Śikṣānanda of the Tang.”
Abstract
The translation belongs to 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda’s mature period of Cháng’ān translation activity, c. 695 – 710 CE. The bracket adopted here reflects this window. The text is one of several short Avataṃsaka-family sūtras Śikṣānanda translated alongside the great [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]], including [[KR6e0050|Dà fāngguǎng rúlái bù sī yì jìngjiè jīng 大方廣如來不思議境界經]] (T0301).
The text is part of the wider Mahāyāna corpus of “Samantabhadra-sūtras” — sūtras in which Samantabhadra is the principal speaker and which collectively elaborate the Avataṃsaka’s programmatic vision of the bodhisattva path under the patronage of Samantabhadra. In the East Asian Buddhist tradition the Samantabhadra-cycle, as crystallised in the Pǔ-xián xíng-yuàn pǐn of the [[KR6e0041|40-fascicle Avataṃsaka]] and 不空 Amoghavajra’s verse-eulogy (KR6e0046), is one of the most influential bodies of devotional literature.
The Taishō text (T0298) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism (2007).
- Forte, Antonino. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. Naples / Kyoto, 1976/2005 — for context.
Other points of interest
- The text exemplifies the pattern, characteristic of Wǔ Zétiān-period imperial Buddhist patronage, of producing multiple parallel Chinese versions of Avataṃsaka-family material — providing the broadest possible textual basis for the imperially-favoured Huáyán doctrinal tradition.