Fóshuō Wéimójié jīng 佛說維摩詰經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Vimalakīrti translated by 支謙 Zhī Qiān (譯)
About the work
The Fóshuō Wéimójié jīng (T474) is the earliest surviving Chinese translation of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra (Wéimójié suǒshuō jīng 維摩詰所說經), produced by the Yuèzhī-descended layman-translator Zhī Qiān 支謙 (支謙) at Wǔchāng 武昌 / Jiànyè 建業 under the Eastern Wú between approximately 222 and 252 CE. It is one of the foundational texts of Chinese Mahāyāna and was the most widely studied Mahāyāna sūtra in fourth- and fifth-century China before Kumārajīva’s later translation KR6i0076 (T475) eclipsed it. The Taishō header cross-references Nos. 475 and 476 — Kumārajīva’s and Xuánzàng’s parallel translations.
Prefaces
The text opens with the variant Wú-era jīngshǒu formula. The colophon identifies the translator as “吳月支居士支謙譯” or similar — Zhī Qiān, layman of Yuèzhī ancestry, of the Wú. There is no surviving translator’s preface; however, the Chū sānzàng jì jí records a separate Wú-period preface (now lost) that praised the text.
Abstract
The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra is one of the most important and influential Mahāyāna sūtras in East Asian Buddhism. Its narrative — the wealthy lay bodhisattva Vimalakīrti feigning illness to draw the Buddha’s monastic disciples and the bodhisattvas to his bedside, where he expounds the Mahāyāna doctrine of non-duality — became foundational for Chinese conceptions of jūshì 居士 (lay Buddhism), the bùèr fǎmén 不二法門 (gateway of non-duality), and upāya (skillful means). The chapter culminating in Vimalakīrti’s “thunderous silence” in response to the question “What is the gateway of non-duality?” is one of the most quoted moments in Chinese literature.
Zhī Qiān (fl. 222–252 CE) was descended from Yuèzhī immigrants to Han China; his grandfather had moved to Luòyáng. He was educated in Chinese and Sanskrit and is recorded in Sēngyòu’s catalog as the producer of about thirty translations. His translation idiom is more polished than Lokakṣema’s but still phonetically heavy. This Wéimójié translation — the first of three Chinese versions, followed by Kumārajīva’s KR6i0076 (T475) and Xuánzàng’s KR6i0077 (T476) — preserves the earliest stratum of the text’s transmission and is essential for studies of the Vimalakīrti’s textual history. The recent Sanskrit recovery of the text from Tibet (Potala Palace, 2002) has confirmed many of Zhī Qiān’s apparently archaic readings as authentic.
Translations and research
- Lamotte, Étienne. L’enseignement de Vimalakīrti. Louvain: Université de Louvain, Institut Orientaliste, 1962 — magisterial study based on parallel Chinese, Tibetan, and (partial) Sanskrit witnesses.
- Watson, Burton. The Vimalakirti Sutra. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
- Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2008.
- Study Group on Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, Taisho University. Vimalakīrtinirdeśa: Transliterated Sanskrit Text Collated with Tibetan and Chinese Translations. Tokyo: Taisho University Press, 2004 — uses T474 in the apparatus.
Other points of interest
The recovery of the Sanskrit Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa in 2002 by the Taishō University team (working from a 12th-century palm-leaf manuscript discovered in the Potala Palace) confirmed that Zhī Qiān’s translation, though stylistically rough, often reflects readings closer to the Indic original than Kumārajīva’s polished version.