Dù zhū fó jìngjiè zhì guāng yán jīng 度諸佛境界智光嚴經
The Sūtra on the Wisdom-Light Adornment of Crossing Over to the Buddha-Realms by anonymous translator (attributed to the Qín 秦 period)
About the work
This one-fascicle anonymous text — classified by the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145) and subsequent catalogues as a Qín-lù 秦錄 (“Qín-period catalogue”) attribution, i.e. a translation made during the Former Qín or Later Qín period (mid-late 4th c. to early 5th c.) but no longer attributable to a specific translator — corresponds, on the Taishō apparatus’s authority, to the same material as T0303 (Jñānagupta’s Fó huáyán rù rúlái dé zhì bù sī yì jìngjiè jīng) and T0304 (Bodhiruci’s later version).
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha dwelt in Mójiātí guó 摩伽陀國 (Magadha), in the Fǎlín pútí guāng 法林菩提光 (‘Dharma-Forest Bodhi-Light’)…”
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line preserves complex variant attributions, the standard reading being “失譯〔人名附秦錄〕” — “translator’s name lost; attributed to the Qín catalogue.”
Abstract
The text is one of the substantial corpus of “anonymous translator” (shī yì 失譯) texts in the early Chinese Buddhist canon — works that were preserved in transmission but for which the named translator had been lost by the time of the early bibliographic catalogues (5th and 6th c.). The Qínlù attribution places the text in the bracket 384 – 417 CE, the period of the two Qín states’ translation activity (Former Qín 384, Later Qín 384 – 417); the bracket adopted here reflects this maximum window.
The doctrinal substance is part of the Avataṃsaka-family of materials concerning the Buddha-realms (佛境界) and their wisdom-light adornments (智光嚴) — a topic on which the Taishō preserves three parallel Chinese versions (T0302 / T0303 / T0304), suggesting the importance of the underlying Indic text in the Chinese Buddhist tradition. The three versions provide important comparative apparatus for the recension-history of this body of material.
The Taishō text (T0302) is established on a particularly rich apparatus including the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana, the Sòng (宋), Yuán (元), Míng (明), Palace (宮), Shèng (聖), Shèng-yǐ (聖乙), and other witnesses.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB Soka University, 2008 — methodology for shī yì texts.
- Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
Other points of interest
- The triple translation of this material (T0302 anonymous Qín-period; T0303 Suí by Jñānagupta; T0304 Tang by Bodhiruci) provides a rare case where a single Indic work has three distinct Chinese translations from three successive centuries, allowing detailed text-critical comparison.