Fó shuō wú liàng shòu jīng 佛說無量壽經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Amitāyus (the Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha) by 康僧鎧 (Saṅghavarman, 譯)
About the work
The Wú liàng shòu jīng in 2 fascicles is the classic Chinese translation of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra — the foundational scripture of Pure Land Buddhism, recounting the bodhisattva Dharmākara’s Forty-Eight Vows (四十八願) by which he became Amitābha Buddha (Wúliàngshòu 無量壽 / Amitāyus) and established the Western Pure Land of Sukhāvatī 極樂. Together with the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha (T0366) and the Visualization-of-Amitāyus Sūtra (Guān wú liàng shòu fó jīng 觀無量壽佛經, T0365), the present text constitutes the Three Pure Land Sutras (淨土三經) — the foundational corpus of East Asian Pure Land Buddhism.
Prefaces
No formal preface.
Abstract
The traditional ascription places this translation in the Cáo-Wèi 曹魏 period under the Indian translator 康僧鎧 Saṅghavarman, dated 252 CE. The bracket adopted here reflects this conventional date. Modern scholarship (Inagaki, 藤田宏達 Fujita Kōtatsu, et al.) has questioned the Saṅghavarman attribution — some argue the actual translator was the slightly later 佛馱跋陀羅 Buddhabhadra or 寶雲 Bǎoyún (Eastern-Jìn period); but the traditional Saṅghavarman attribution is preserved by the canonical East Asian tradition and is followed here.
The doctrinal substance — the Forty-Eight Vows of Dharmākara, the cosmology of Sukhāvatī, and the niàn fó (recollection of the Buddha) practice as the path to rebirth there — is the foundation of the entire East Asian Pure Land Buddhist tradition. The work was studied, recited, and meditated upon throughout East Asia from the early-medieval period to the present, and remains the most extensively used single text in modern East Asian Buddhist devotional practice.
The Taishō text (T0360) is established on a particularly rich apparatus including the Liúbù běn 流布本 (“Disseminated Edition”) and Liúbù bié běn 流布別本 (“Disseminated Alternate Edition”) — exceptional witness-richness reflecting the work’s centrality.
Translations and research
- Inagaki, Hisao, tr. The Three Pure Land Sutras. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1995. — The standard recent English translation.
- Müller, F. Max, tr. The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha. SBE 49 (1894).
- Gómez, Luis O., tr. The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light. Honolulu: UHP, 1996. — Critical edition and translation, with substantial scholarly apparatus.
- Schopen, Gregory. “Sukhāvatī as a Generalized Religious Goal in Sanskrit Mahāyāna Sūtra Literature.” IIJ 19 (1977): 177–210.
- 藤田宏達 Fujita Kōtatsu. Genshi Jōdo shisō no kenkyū 原始浄土思想の研究. Iwanami shoten, 1970 — the foundational Japanese study.
- Ducor, Jérôme. Le sūtra des contemplations du Buddha Vie-Infinie. Brepols, 2005.
- Pas, Julian F. Visions of Sukhāvatī: Shan-Tao’s Commentary on the Kuan Wu-liang-shou Fo Ching. SUNY Press, 1995.
- Tanaka, Kenneth K. The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine: Ching-ying Hui-yuan’s Commentary on the Visualization Sutra. SUNY Press, 1990.
Other points of interest
- The Forty-Eight Vows of Dharmākara — at the heart of this scripture — became the foundation of all East Asian Pure Land devotional practice; the 18th Vow in particular (“If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings… should not be born there [in Sukhāvatī], may I not attain perfect awakening”) became the canonical doctrinal anchor of Hōnen’s and Shinran’s Japanese Pure Land soteriology.
- The work’s textual history is one of the most debated topics in Buddhist studies: at least 12 distinct Chinese translations are recorded in the catalogues, of which 5 are extant — the present T0360, T0361, T0362, T0363, and the Mahā-ratnakūṭa assembly 5 ( juan 17–18).