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佛說弘道廣顯三昧經

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Text ID
KR6i0272
Date
266–308
Dynasty
西晉

Fóshuō hóngdào guǎngxiǎn sānmèi jīng 佛說弘道廣顯三昧經

Sūtra on the Samādhi That Spreads the Way and Manifests the Vast as Spoken by the Buddha translated by 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù / Dharmarakṣa, 譯)

About the work

T635 (four fascicles, alt. titles 香王經 and 入金剛問定意經; Sanskrit Anavataptanāgarājaparipṛcchasūtra, “Sūtra Asked about by the Naga-king Anavatapta”) is 竺法護’s Western Jin translation of a major Mahāyāna paripṛcchā-sūtra in which the naga-king Anavatapta 阿耨達 invites the Buddha and his entourage to his lake palace and asks for instruction on the bodhisattva path. The text is one of Dharmarakṣa’s larger and most narratively-rich works.

Structural Division

T635 is divided into twelve chapters:

  1. 得普智心品 (Dé pǔzhì xīn pǐn) — Chapter on Attaining the Mind of Universal Wisdom
  2. 清淨道品 (Qīngjìng dào pǐn) — Chapter on the Pure Path
  3. 道無習品 (Dào wúxí pǐn) — Chapter on the Pathlessness-of-Habit
  4. 請如來品 (Qǐng rúlái pǐn) — Chapter on Inviting the Tathāgata
  5. 無欲行品 (Wúyù xíng pǐn) — Chapter on Desireless Practice
  6. 信值法品 (Xìnzhí fǎ pǐn) — Chapter on Faith Encountering the Dharma
  7. 轉法輪品 (Zhuǎn fǎlún pǐn) — Chapter on the Turning of the Dharma Wheel
  8. 決諸疑難品 (Jué zhū yínán pǐn) — Chapter on Resolving All Doubts and Difficulties
  9. 不起法忍品 (Bùqǐ fǎrěn pǐn) — Chapter on the Non-Arising Forbearance of Dharmas
  10. 眾要法品 (Zhòng yàofǎ pǐn) — Chapter on the Essential Dharmas
  11. 受封拜品 (Shòu fēngbài pǐn) — Chapter on Receiving the Investiture
  12. 囑累法藏品 (Zhǔlèi fǎzàng pǐn) — Chapter of Entrusting the Dharma-Treasury

Abstract

T635 is unanimously ascribed to Dharmarakṣa in the canonical bibliographies; the [[KR6s0084|Chū sānzàng jì jí]] (T2145) lists it among his works. Date bracket follows his productive period (266–308). The text is the Anavataptanāgarājaparipṛcchasūtra — known in Tibetan and from later Sanskrit fragments — which preserves an extensive bodhisattva-path treatise framed by the naga-king Anavatapta’s questions. Boucher (2008) discusses Dharmarakṣa’s translation technique here in some detail. The naga-king’s lake-palace setting is one of the most-cited cosmological features of the early Mahāyāna and underlies later iconography of Anavatapta as the source of the four great rivers of the Indian world.

Translations and research

  • Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
  • Salomon, Richard, and Andrew Glass. Two Gāndhārī Manuscripts of the Anavatapta-gāthā. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 5. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. — discusses parallel Anavatapta literature.

No book-length Western translation located.

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