Jìngdù sānmèi jīng 淨度三昧經
Sūtra on the Samādhi of Pure Salvation
About the work
The Jìngdù sānmèi jīng (X01n0015, one fascicle in the surviving Xùzàngjīng version) is one of the most important and influential apocryphal (yíwěi 疑偽) sūtras of medieval Chinese Buddhism — that is, a sūtra composed in China but presented as a translation from an Indic original. The text was widely cited from the late fifth century onward but was already classified as suspicious by 僧祐 Sēngyòu’s [[KR6s0084|Chū sānzàng jì jí]] (T2145, juan 5, Yíjīng lù 疑經錄). It survives only in fragments collected from later citations and Dunhuang manuscripts; the version preserved in the Xùzàngjīng is itself a partial reconstruction.
Abstract
The Jìngdù sānmèi jīng expounds an elaborate cosmology of the hells and a system of “purifying salvation” (jìngdù 淨度) by which beings can be liberated from the bad realms through bodhisattva intervention and ritual recitation. It is a foundational text of Chinese Buddhist eschatology and of the iconography of the ten kings of hell (shíwáng 十王) — though those iconographic features themselves are later embellishments. The text was widely cited in Tang and pre-Tang Chinese exegesis (notably by 智顗 in the [[KR6d0130|Móhē zhǐguān]]) before being suppressed in canonical bibliography as apocryphal.
The standard modern critical reconstruction is by Ōuchi Fumio 大內文雄, Jōdo zanmaikyō no kenkyū 浄度三昧経の研究 (1980s, multiple articles), reflected separately in the Kanripo corpus as KR6v0076. The text is now firmly established as a Chinese composition, most plausibly of the early Northern and Southern dynasties (early to mid-fifth century, with later expansions). Date bracket: 420–530, the consensus window for the text’s composition. Scholarship (Strickmann 1982, Teiser 1994, Ōuchi 1980s) has shown that the text combines Buddhist elements with Daoist purgatorial cosmology and was a key conduit by which Buddhist eschatology was indigenized into Chinese culture.
Translations and research
- Ōuchi, Fumio 大內文雄. Jōdo zanmaikyō no kenkyū 浄度三昧経の研究. Series of articles in Bukkyō shigaku kenkyū and Tōhō gakuhō, 1970s–1980s. — the standard modern reconstruction; reflected in KR6v0076.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et Mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. — discusses Jìngdù sānmèi in the apocryphal-sūtra tradition.
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. — key context for the eschatological tradition that the Jìngdù sānmèi helped initiate.
- Mochizuki, Shinkō 望月信亨. Bukkyō kyōten seiritsushi-ron 仏教経典成立史論. — early identification of the text as apocryphal.
Other points of interest
The Kanripo corpus contains a separate entry KR6v0076 — also titled Jìngdù sānmèi jīng — corresponding to Ōuchi Fumio’s modern critical reconstruction (published in Wakō Daigaku jinbun gakubu kiyō and reissued under the W series of the CBETA “outside-canon” sub-corpus).