Dàfāngguǎng shílún jīng 大方廣十輪經
The Mahāvaipulya Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra (older recension) by 失譯 (anonymous translator, conventionally assigned to the Northern Liáng register)
About the work
The Dàfāngguǎng shílún jīng in 8 fascicles is the older Chinese translation of the Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra — the great sūtra of the Ten Wheels of 地藏 Kṣitigarbha — corresponding to the Sanskrit Daśa-cakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra. The Taishō print signs the entry “失譯〔人名〕” with the cataloguer’s note “人名今附北涼錄” (“the translator’s name is now lost; appended to the Northern Liáng [Běi Liáng] register”), and the Taishō header explicitly cross-references No. 411 — KR6h0015, 玄奘 Xuánzàng’s later retranslation of the same Indic source. The dating window 397–439 follows the bracket of the Northern-Liáng register conventionally assigned by the catalogues.
Prefaces
No separate preface is preserved in the canonical print. The header indicates the lost-translator status with the standard register-attribution clause.
Abstract
The Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra is the principal scriptural source for the cult of the bodhisattva 地藏 Kṣitigarbha as guardian of beings in the mòfǎ (末法) age and patron of those bound for hell. The text expounds the ten wheels (十輪 shílún) — the ten classes of the bodhisattva’s protective dispensation — and develops at length the doctrine of Kṣitigarbha’s vow to redeem the inhabitants of the hells. The sūtra is a major source for the medieval East Asian Kṣitigarbha cult and pairs with the Bodhisattva-pratimokṣa / Brahmajāla-sūtra in providing the scriptural basis for monastic and lay Kṣitigarbha devotion.
The work is recorded in the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (T2034) and the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (T2154) as anonymous, with the cataloguer’s register-attribution to the Northern Liáng. Modern critical scholarship (cf. Wang-Toutain 1998, Zhiru 2007) is generally cautious about the precision of such register-attributions: the work is unambiguously pre-Suí, but its specific attribution to the Liángzhōu workshop of 曇無讖 Dharmakṣema or his contemporaries is a cataloguer’s reconstruction rather than documented fact.
The work is the principal pre-Táng Chinese version; 玄奘 Xuánzàng’s retranslation of 651 (KR6h0015) became the basis of the standard Táng and post-Táng Kṣitigarbha cult.
Translations and research
- Wang-Toutain, Françoise. Le Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha en Chine du Ve au XIIIe siècle. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1998. — Standard monograph on the Chinese Kṣitigarbha cult, with extensive treatment of the Shílún jīng.
- Zhiru, Ng. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. — Recent monograph on the development of the Chinese Kṣitigarbha cult.
Links
- CBETA online text
- DDB entry
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (430): [ T ] 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. dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1