Fó shuō zuò fó xíngxiàng jīng 佛說作佛形像經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on Making Buddha-Images translator unknown (失譯, 譯)
About the work
T692 in one fascicle is the older of two early Chinese versions of the Udayana / Tathāgata-bimba-pratimā-praveśa-sūtra — a foundational sūtra of the Buddha-image cult, recounting how King Udayana 優填 of Kauśāmbī 拘鹽惟 (variantly 拘羅懼) commissioned the first Buddha-image in sandalwood when the Buddha was absent in Tāvatiṃśa Heaven preaching to his mother. The Taishō witness identifies this version as “闕譯人名出後漢錄” — “translator’s name unknown, attributed to the Later Hàn from the [Old] Catalogue.”
Abstract
The narrative — King Udayana 優填, only fourteen years old, commissioning the first Buddha-image in sandalwood when the Buddha is absent — is one of the most influential stories in East Asian Buddhist art-historical mythology, generating the entire iconographic tradition of the Yōutián wáng zào fó xiàng 優填王造佛像 (“King Udayana made the Buddha-image”). The text is closely paired with [[KR6i0383|Fó shuō zàolì xíngxiàng fúbào jīng 佛說造立形像福報經]] (T693), which the Taishō itself flags as a near-parallel (“[No. 693]”). Comparison of the two openings shows minor textual variation: T692 has “佛至拘鹽惟國” while T693 has “佛至拘羅懼國” — same Indic toponym Kauśāmbī (Sanskrit Kauśāmbī, Pāli Kosambī), differently transliterated.
The Han-dynasty attribution is — per Jan Nattier (2008) — likely conventional; the actual date may be Three Kingdoms or early Western Jìn. The work is one of three early-medieval Chinese renderings of the Udayana legend; in addition to T692 / T693, the legend is told in expanded form in the Pǔyào jīng 普曜經 (KR6b0042, T186) and in the late Dàshèng zàoxiàng gōngdé jīng 大乘造像功德經 (KR6i0384 / T694).
Related canonical texts: parallel KR6i0383 (T693); related sūtras KR6i0384 (T694), KR6i0385 (T695), KR6i0386 (T696), KR6i0387 (T697), KR6i0388 (T698).
Translations and research
- Carter, Martha L. The Mystery of the Udayana Buddha. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1990. The principal English-language monograph on the Udayana image tradition.
- Soper, Alexander C. “Aspects of Light Symbolism in Gandhāran Sculpture”. Artibus Asiae 12 (1949).
- McCallum, Donald F. Zenkōji and Its Icon: A Study in Medieval Japanese Religious Art. Princeton, 1994 (treats the Udayana image as transmitted to Japan).
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: Soka University, 2008.
No standalone English translation of T692 located.