Fóshuō Wénshūshīlì xíng jīng 佛說文殊師利行經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Mañjuśrī’s Practice translated by 豆那掘多 Dòunàjuéduō (Jñānagupta, 譯)
About the work
The Fóshuō Wénshūshīlì xíng jīng (T471) is a one-fascicle Mahāyāna sūtra parallel to KR6i0071 (T470). Both translate the same Indic Mañjuśrī-vihāra-sūtra. The translator, Jñānagupta 豆那掘多 (豆那掘多; ca. 523–600 CE) — also written 闍那崛多 in standard Chinese transcription, but here in the variant 豆那掘多 — was a Gandhāran monk who came to China in the late Northern Zhōu and was active as a Sui translator.
Prefaces
The text opens with rúshì wǒwén. The colophon attributes translation to Jñānagupta in the Sui period.
Abstract
This is the second translation of the Mañjuśrī-vihāra-sūtra into Chinese, complementing Bodhiruci’s KR6i0071 (T470). The two translations show interesting divergences in vocabulary and syntactic choices; comparison provides a window into the evolution of Chinese Buddhist translation idiom from the Northern Wei to the Sui.
Jñānagupta is the same translator whose name is more commonly written 闍那崛多 — note that the catalog meta uses the alternate transcription 豆那掘多, while related texts in this division (e.g., KR6i0108, KR6i0109) and the Fómíng jīng (KR6i0006) use 闍那崛多. The two transcriptions likely arose because the Sanskrit Jñ- consonant cluster was difficult to render and inconsistent. Jñānagupta arrived at Cháng’ān around 559 CE and worked at the Sui imperial translation institute through the Kāihuáng 開皇 (581–600) and Rénshòu 仁壽 (601–604) eras until his death in 600 (some sources 605).
The catalog meta gives the dynasty as 隋; the translation activity is bracketed within Jñānagupta’s Sui-era productivity (581–600 CE).
Translations and research
- Tribe, Anthony. “Mañjuśrī: Origins, Role and Significance.” The Buddhist Forum II (1991): 1–25.
- Lamotte, Étienne. Mañjuśrī. Bruxelles, 1960.