Shí dì jīng lùn 十地經論
Treatise on the Daśabhūmika-sūtra (Skt. Daśabhūmika-sūtra-vyākhyāna / Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā) by 天親菩薩 (Vasubandhu, 造) and 菩提流支 (Bodhiruci, et al., 等譯)
About the work
The Shí dì jīng lùn in 12 fascicles is 天親菩薩 Vasubandhu’s great commentary on the Daśabhūmika-sūtra — the foundational śāstra of the Yogācāra-Mahāyāna interpretation of the bodhisattva path-stages — translated into Chinese by 菩提流支 Bodhiruci and his Northern-Wèi-period collaborators in 508 – 511 CE. The work is the founding text of the Chinese Dìlùn 地論 school (so named after this Lùn / 論 / śāstra); through its disciple 慧光 Huìguāng’s lineage it became the doctrinal precursor to the Sui-Tang Huáyán 華嚴 synthesis.
Prefaces
The Taishō print is preceded by a substantial preface by 崔光 Cuī Guāng (450–523), the senior Northern Wèi court official and a leading lay Buddhist scholar of his time. The preface — one of the great preface-pieces of the Northern-Dynasties Chinese Buddhist tradition — is one of the principal contemporary witnesses to the institutional context of the translation.
In summary, Cuī Guāng’s preface argues: (i) The Shí dì jīng 十地經 is “the profound park of spiritual awakening, the wondrous dwelling of the numinous wisdom; the ground-and-vehicle of a hundred-million good [practices], the framework of the myriad measures [of the Path]; in principle it embraces the secret of the multitudinous treasuries, in meaning it crowns the depths of the various scriptures.” (ii) The treatise was authored by the Indian mahāsattva Vasubandhu (Skt. Vasubandhu; transliterated as 婆藪槃豆 Pósǒu pándòu; rendered into Chinese as 天親 Tiānqīn, “Heavenly-Kin”), described as “tracing his elevation in the era of images (xiàng 像, the second of the three-period Buddhological scheme), drawing his inheritance from the foulness of the latter age” — i.e. a post-Buddha ārya who composed his commentary because he found the parent sūtra “concise in word but rich in meaning, near in language but far in import.” (iii) The translation was undertaken on imperial command in Yǒngpíng 永平 1 (508 CE), 4th month, first day, when Northern Wèi Xiàomíngdì 孝明帝 commanded the Tripiṭaka master Pútíliúzhī 菩提流支 (Northern Indian, Chinese rendering 道希 Dàoxī), the Tripiṭaka master Lènà Mótí 勒那摩提 (Central Indian, Chinese rendering 寶意 Bǎoyì), and the translation-assistant śramaṇa 佛陀扇多 Buddhaśānta (伏陀扇多 / 佛陀扇多, Northern Indian) — together with more than ten further scholar-monks — to translate the treatise at the Tài-jí Zǐ-tíng 太極紫庭 of the Wèi imperial palace. (iv) Translation was completed in Yǒngpíng 4 (511 CE), early summer.
The preface is followed by the standard work-attribution: “天親菩薩造 / 後魏北印度三藏菩提流支等譯” — “composed by Vasubandhu Bodhisattva, translated by the Northern-Indian Tripiṭaka Bodhiruci et al. of the Later Wèi” — with apparatus showing variant readings (流 / 留 in different witnesses; 等 / 奉詔 in different witnesses).
The first fascicle opens with a verse-eulogy followed by the doctrinal exposition of the first bhūmi-stage.
Abstract
The translation is precisely datable through Cuī Guāng’s preface and the Lìdài sānbǎo jì (KR6r0011) to Yǒngpíng 1 to 4 (508 – 511 CE). The bracket adopted here reflects this exact dating. The doctrinal-historical importance of the work is foundational: it provides Vasubandhu’s authoritative Yogācāra reading of the bodhisattva path-stages of the Daśabhūmika, introducing the doctrinal apparatus of ālayavijñāna (storehouse-consciousness), the six characteristics (liù xiàng 六相, drawn out by 慧光 Huìguāng and developed in mature Huáyán doctrine), and the systematic Yogācāra analysis of the bodhisattva career.
The translation enterprise itself is one of the most significant institutional events in Chinese Buddhist history: the joint work of 菩提流支 Bodhiruci and 勒那摩提 Ratnamati produced two distinct translations from the same Sanskrit Vorlage, which were subsequently collated and unified by 慧光 Huìguāng, founding the Dìlùn 地論 school. The school split into two branches — the northern lineage 北道派, which followed Bodhiruci’s reading and emphasised the ālayavijñāna as the conditioned ground of consciousness, and the southern lineage 南道派, which followed Ratnamati’s reading (under Huìguāng’s guidance) and emphasised the tathāgatagarbha as the unconditioned ground. This split into the northern and southern Dìlùn lineages is one of the foundational schisms of Chinese Buddhist intellectual history, the resolution of which (in the late Northern-Dynasties / early Suí period) prepared the ground for the Tang Huáyán school’s distinctive synthesis.
The Taishō text (T1522) is established on a particularly rich apparatus including the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana, the Sòng (宋), Yuán (元), Míng (明), Palace (宮), Southern Míng (南藏), Shèng (聖), Shèng-bǐng (聖丙), Shèng-yǐ (聖乙), and Chí (知) witnesses.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Aoki Takashi 青木隆. Articles on Northern-Dynasties Dìlùn studies in Komazawa Daigaku Bukkyō Gakubu Kenkyū Kiyō.
- Lai, Whalen. “Sinitic Mahāyāna and the Origins of Hua-yen,” in The Sinitic Encounter in Southeast China through the First Millennium of the Common Era, ed. T. Brook (Harvard, 2002).
- Liu, Ming-Wood. “The Mind-Only Teaching of Ching-ying Hui-yuan: An Early Interpretation of Yogācāra Thought in China.” Philosophy East and West 35.4 (1985).
- Sakamoto Yukio 坂本幸男. Kegon kyōgaku no kenkyū 華厳教学の研究. Heirakuji shoten, 1956 — chapters on the Dìlùn school.
Other points of interest
- Cuī Guāng’s preface is one of the most distinguished pieces of Chinese Buddhist preface-literature; its parallel-prose style and its institutional documentation make it a major piece of evidence for the elite Buddhist culture of the early-sixth-century Northern Wèi court.
- The split of the Dìlùn school into northern and southern lineages — one of the foundational schisms in Chinese Buddhist intellectual history — is documented through this work and its subsequent commentaries.