Fóshuō fàngbō jīng 佛說放鉢經
Sūtra on Letting Go of the Begging-Bowl as Spoken by the Buddha translator unknown (失譯)
About the work
T629 (one fascicle; Sanskrit Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodana-sūtra) is a short Chinese version of an episode from the Ajātaśatru cycle, transmitted as an anonymous translation. The [[KR6s0084|Chū sānzàng jì jí]] (T2145) lists it among the texts whose translator was already lost by 僧祐 Sēngyòu’s day; the Taishō edition assigns it conventionally to the Western Jin (265–316) on the basis of its translation style.
Abstract
T629 is a single episode — the “letting go of the bowl” miracle, in which the Buddha causes Mahāmaudgalyāyana to attempt to retrieve a begging-bowl that has descended to the bottom of the universe, only for the bowl to remain immovable in defiance of all śrāvaka power until the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī retrieves it with his fingertip. This narrative occurs in expanded form in T626, T627 and T628 as part of the larger Ajātaśatru-paripṛcchā; T629 isolates and circulates this episode separately. The Sēngyòu catalog already classes it as 失譯 (“translator unknown”); modern philological work has not been able to attach it to any known translator with confidence. The [[KR6s0093|Kāiyuán]] catalog (T2154) and the Zhēnyuán catalog (T2157) follow Sēngyòu’s classification. Date bracket follows the Taishō convention of placing it in the Western Jin on stylistic grounds.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB, 2008.
- Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. — discusses the bowl-miracle in early Mahāyāna.
No book-length Western translation located.