Fóshuō Āshéshìwáng jīng 佛說阿闍世王經
Sūtra on King Ajātaśatru as Spoken by the Buddha translated by 支婁迦讖 (Zhī Lóujiāchèn / Lokakṣema, 譯)
About the work
T626 (two fascicles; Sanskrit Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodana-sūtra, “Sūtra on the Removal of King Ajātaśatru’s Remorse”) is the earliest of four Chinese versions of the Ajātaśatru-paripṛcchā — a major Mahāyāna sūtra concerned with the bodhisattva 文殊 (Mañjuśrī)‘s instruction of King Ajātaśatru of Magadha, whose remorse for the murder of his father is healed through the realization that all dharmas are devoid of intrinsic nature. The other Chinese versions are T627 (Dharmarakṣa, Wénshūzhīlì pǔchāo sānmèi jīng), T628 (Fǎtiān, Wèicéngyǒu zhèngfǎ jīng), and T629 (anonymous Han, Fàngbō jīng).
Abstract
T626 belongs to Lokakṣema’s reliably-attested early-Mahāyāna corpus, and is one of the foundational documents of the Chinese reception of Mañjuśrī as the bodhisattva of prajñā. Jan Nattier (2008) confirms the attribution on philological grounds. Date bracket follows Lokakṣema’s translation period at Luòyáng under emperors Huán and Líng of Later Han (168–189). The text develops at length the theme that Ajātaśatru’s killing of his father, Bimbisāra, cannot in absolute reality be a transgression because no agent, act or object inherently exists; the radical prajñāpāramitā analysis is here narrativized through royal repentance and forgiveness, an arrangement that would prove highly influential in Chinese Buddhist hagiography. T626 is the underlying source for the Ajātaśatru episode in [[KR6c0005|the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra]] (T1509, Dà zhìdù lùn) and for the kingship-and-Buddhism literature of the Six Dynasties.
Translations and research
- Harrison, Paul, and Jens-Uwe Hartmann (eds.). From Birch Bark to Digital Data: Recent Advances in Buddhist Manuscript Research. Vienna: ÖAW, 2014. — discussion of Sanskrit Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodana fragments.
- Miyazaki, Tenshō. Translation Studies of Lokakṣema’s Aśokarājasūtra. (Various Japanese-language studies.)
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB, 2008.
Links
- CBETA T15n0626
- Kanseki DB
- 支婁迦讖 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (186) — Miyazaki Tenshō 宮崎展昌. “Tonshindara shomon nyōrai sammai kyō no kan’yaku ni tsuite 『伅真陀羅所問如來三昧經』の漢訳について.” Bukkyō bunka kenkyū ronshū 仏教文化研究論集 11 (2007): 18–39.