Dà fāng guǎng sān jiè jīng 大方廣三戒經
The Great, Vast Sūtra on the Three Precepts (Trisaṃvara-nirdeśa) by 曇無讖 (Dharmakṣema, 譯)
About the work
This 3-fascicle text by 曇無讖 Dharmakṣema (the great Northern-Liáng 北涼 translator of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra) is the Trisaṃvara-nirdeśa — the Mahāyāna sūtra on the three precept-vows (the prātimokṣa / monastic precepts, the bodhisattva-precepts, and the buddhānuvṛtti / Buddha-emulation precepts). The text is the first Chinese-titled assembly of the larger Mahā-ratnakūṭa (where it appears as assembly 1, the Sān lǜ yí huì 三律儀會 in 菩提流志 Bodhiruci’s revision), and circulated independently before being incorporated into the larger compendium.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line attributes the translation to “北涼天竺三藏曇無讖譯.”
Abstract
曇無讖 Dharmakṣema (385 – 433 CE; conventional dates per DILA), the central Indian Buddhist translator who became the principal scholar of the Northern-Liáng court, is best known for his foundational Chinese translation of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (T0374), but his corpus also includes important Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Sūvarṇaprabhāsa (T0663), the Bodhisattva-bhūmi-sūtra, and the present Trisaṃvara-nirdeśa. The translation is conventionally dated to the period 414 – 433 CE, the bracket of his Cāozhōu 涼州 / Gūzàng 姑臧 translation activity. The bracket adopted here reflects this window.
The doctrinal substance — the integration of monastic, bodhisattva, and Buddha-emulation precepts into a single triadic vow-structure — is one of the foundational bodhisattva-vinaya texts of Chinese Mahāyāna and was widely studied alongside the Fànwǎng (Brahmajālasūtra) tradition.
The Taishō text (T0311) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Schopen, Gregory. Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. Honolulu: UHP, 1997 — for bodhisattva-vinaya context.
- Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Daichidoron no kenkyū — for the Trisaṃvara-nirdeśa tradition.
Other points of interest
- The work’s incorporation as assembly 1 of the Mahā-ratnakūṭa gave it a doctrinally programmatic role in the larger compendium, framing the entire 49-assembly corpus around the foundational topic of the bodhisattva’s vows.
Links
- CBETA T11n0311
- Kanseki DB
- 曇無讖 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (430) — T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014.