Fó shuō dà fāngguǎng pútísà shí dì jīng 佛說大方廣菩薩十地經
The Great, Vast Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Bodhisattva’s Ten Stages by 吉迦夜 (Kiṅkara / Jíjiāyè, 譯)
About the work
This one-fascicle text by 吉迦夜 Kiṅkara (Jíjiāyè 吉迦夜, active c. 472 CE in Northern Wèi Píngchéng 平城 / modern Dàtóng) is a Northern-Wèi-period Chinese rendering of Daśabhūmika-related material. Distinct from the major translations of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra — Zhú Fǎhù’s T0285, Kumārajīva’s T0286, and Śīladharma’s T0287 — the present text appears to be a shorter independent recension of the same essential doctrinal material.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line attributes the translation to “元魏西域三藏吉迦夜譯” — “translated by the Western-Regions Tripiṭaka Jíjiāyè (Kiṅkara) of the Yuán-Wèi (Northern Wèi).”
Abstract
The translation is precisely datable to Yánxìng 延興 2 (472 CE) per the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (KR6s0084, juan 9) and the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (KR6r0011, juan 9), when 吉迦夜 Kiṅkara worked at Píngchéng under the patronage of the Northern Wèi Xiànwéndì 顯文帝 (later Xiàowéndì 孝文帝, who ascended in 471) with the assistance of the lay scholar 曇曜 Tányào. The bracket adopted here (472 – 472) reflects this precise date.
Kiṅkara is associated primarily with the Záyù běnshēng jīng 雜寶藏經 (KR6b0060) and the Dà fāngguǎng pútísà shí dì jīng (the present text); his collaborator 曇曜 Tányào was the abbot of the Yúngāng 雲岡 monastery and the guiding force behind the great Yúngāng cave-temple complex commissioned by the Northern-Wèi imperial house. The doctrinal substance of the present text — the bodhisattva’s ten-stage path — places it in the Daśabhūmika tradition, but the Chinese rendering is brief enough (1 fascicle, versus T0285’s 5 fascicles, T0286’s 4 fascicles, T0287’s 9 fascicles) that it must represent a substantially compressed Indic original or a deliberate Chinese epitome.
The Taishō text (T0308) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Wang Yi-t’ung, tr. A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-yang. Princeton University Press, 1984 — for context on Northern Wèi Buddhism.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆. Chūgoku Bukkyō tsūshi 中国仏教通史 vol. 1 — substantial treatment of Tányào and the Yúngāng project.
Other points of interest
- The text’s collaborator 曇曜 Tányào was the architect of the great Yúngāng cave-temple complex, one of the masterpieces of early Chinese Buddhist art. The translation thus stands at the intersection of textual and material Buddhist history in the early Northern Wèi.