Fó shuō bàoēn fèngpén jīng 佛說報恩奉盆經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on Repaying Kindness by the Yúlánpén Offering translator unknown (失譯, 譯)
About the work
T686 in one fascicle is a very short alternate Chinese version of the Maudgalyāyana–Mother–Yúlánpén narrative parallel to [[KR6i0364|Fó shuō yúlánpén jīng 佛說盂蘭盆經]] (T685). The Taishō witness identifies the work as “闕譯附東晉錄” — “translator missing, attached to the Eastern Jìn 東晉 catalogue (317–420 CE)” — and gives the alternate title 報像功德經 (“Sūtra on the Merit of Image-Repayment”). The opening section reproduces the Yúlánpén narrative almost verbatim (“聞如是：一時，佛在舍衛國祇樹給孤獨園。大目揵連始得六通，欲度父母報乳哺之恩…”), differing only in minor phraseology.
Abstract
The text is one of the small Maudgalyāyana–Mother cluster (with KR6i0364 / T685 itself, and the contemporary filial-piety sūtras KR6i0363 / T684 and KR6i0377 / T687). Modern scholarship — Iwamoto Yutaka 岩本裕 (1968) and Stephen Teiser (1988) — treats T686 as either an alternate redaction of the same Chinese-composed apocryphon as T685, or a slightly later abridgement. The titular bàoēn fèngpén (“Repaying-kindness offering of the bowl”) makes the filial-piety frame even more explicit than the parent T685. The Eastern-Jìn dating reflects the catalogue attribution; the actual date of composition is uncertain and may post-date the Eastern Jìn. The alternate title 報像功德經 (registered in the Taishō header) reflects the medieval Chinese tradition of reading T686 alongside the image-veneration sūtras KR6i0382–KR6i0388 (T692–T698) on the merits of making, washing, and circumambulating Buddha-images.
Related canonical texts: parent / parallel KR6i0364 (T685); commentary cluster KR6i0365–KR6i0374.
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, 1988.
- Iwamoto Yutaka 岩本裕. Mokuren densetsu to urabon 目連伝説と盂蘭盆. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1968.
No standalone Western-language translation of T686 located.