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地藏菩薩本願經

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Text ID
KR6h0016
Date
700–720
Dynasty
唐

Dìzàng púsà běnyuàn jīng 地藏菩薩本願經

The Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha by 實叉難陀 (Śikṣānanda, 譯) — attributed; possibly Chinese-composed

About the work

The Dìzàng púsà běnyuàn jīng in 2 fascicles — the most popular 地藏 Kṣitigarbha sūtra in the medieval and modern East Asian tradition — is conventionally attributed to 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda, the Táng translator from Khotan whose principal canonical contribution is the eighty-fascicle [[KR6e0002|Táng Avataṃsaka]]. The Taishō print signs the entry “唐于闐國三藏沙門實叉難陀譯”. The text is structured in 13 chapters (品), beginning with the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven Spiritual Powers chapter (忉利天宮神通品) — set, atypically for canonical sūtras, in the Trāyastriṃśa heaven where the Buddha is preaching to his deceased mother — and proceeding through detailed expositions of Kṣitigarbha’s original vows (běnyuàn 本願 / pūrva-praṇidhāna) made over numerous past lives, his role as guardian of beings in the hells and the mòfǎ 末法 age, and the merit of devotional practice toward him.

Prefaces

No separate preface is preserved in the canonical print, only the standard signature.

Abstract

The work’s authenticity as a Táng translation has been a long-standing scholarly issue. The Kāiyuán shìjiào lù (T2154, completed 730) does not list the Běnyuàn jīng among Śikṣānanda’s translations; the work first appears in the Buddhist catalogues only later — definitively in the Northern Sòng — and exhibits stylistic features (a high proportion of vernacular Chinese narrative, a relatively low density of Sanskrit phonetic transcriptions, a markedly Chinese-style narrative scaffolding around the xiàodào 孝道 / filial-piety theme) that have led most modern Buddhological scholarship — Mochizuki, Wang-Toutain, Zhiru — to regard the work as either substantially Chinese-composed or compiled from earlier Chinese Kṣitigarbha materials at some point between the late Táng and the early Sòng. The catalog meta and the Taishō header preserve the traditional attribution to Śikṣānanda; modern critical opinion regards the attribution as devotionally well-established but historically uncertain.

The frontmatter date-bracket 700–720 is given with deliberate looseness: it corresponds to the period during which Śikṣānanda was active in China (he died in 710), and reflects the attributed dating, not a securely documented one. A pseudepigraphic dating into the late Táng or Five Dynasties period is in fact more likely on stylistic grounds. The xiàodào (filial piety) framing of the text — Kṣitigarbha as the bodhisattva who in past lives, as a brahman maiden and as a king’s daughter, descended to the hells to redeem his/her mother — is the principal scriptural foundation for the yúlánpén 盂蘭盆 / Ullambana festival’s later association with Kṣitigarbha and is one of the most striking instances of Buddhist-Confucian doctrinal convergence in medieval East Asian Buddhism. This sinitic devotional structure is itself part of the philological argument for the text’s likely Chinese composition.

In devotional importance the work entirely surpasses its canonical predecessors: it is the most widely chanted Kṣitigarbha sūtra in the contemporary Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhist communities, and is the principal scriptural source of the popular East Asian Kṣitigarbha cult.

Translations and research

  • Heng Ching, tr. Sūtra of the Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva. New York: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1974. — The standard English translation, prepared in Hsuan Hua’s circle.
  • Wang-Toutain, Françoise. Le Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha en Chine du Ve au XIIIe siècle. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1998. — Includes the most detailed examination of the authenticity question.
  • Zhiru, Ng. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.
  • Mochizuki, Shinkō. Bukkyō kyōten seiritsushi-ron 仏教経典成立史論. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1946. — Classic argument for non-Indic origin.

Other points of interest

  • The work has commentarial traditions dating from the Míng and Qīng — the 靈椉 Kēzhù (科註) of KR6h0019, the Kēwén (科文) of KR6h0017, and the Lúnguàn (綸貫) of KR6h0018 — together constituting the major Qīng-period commentarial apparatus for the work.

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