Yùfó gōngdé jīng 浴佛功德經
Sūtra on the Merit of Bathing the Buddha translated by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
T698 in one fascicle is 義淨’s retranslation, slightly later than Yùxiàng gōngdé jīng 浴像功德經 (T697 by 寶思惟 / Ratnacinta), of essentially the same Indian sūtra on the Buddha’s-Birthday image-bathing ritual. Translated by 義淨 (635–713) — the great pilgrim-translator who returned from India in 695 and worked at Cháng’ān and Luòyáng under imperial patronage from 695 until his death — at his Cháng’ān translation programme, dated by the Kāiyuán Catalogue to Jǐngyún 1 (710 CE).
Abstract
義淨’s 710 version is in many places more careful in its rendering of Sanskrit technical vocabulary than the Ratnacinta version T697; the doctrinal content is the same — the bodhisattva Viśuddhamati / 清淨慧 asks the Buddha by what means buddhas obtain a pure body, and the Buddha’s reply enumerates the merits of image-bathing — but 義淨’s text is shorter and more rigorously parallel-structured, with explicit ritual prescriptions for the bathing-water (cool, scented, mixed with sandalwood and flowers) that became the standard liturgical recipe in East-Asian Buddhism. The text was widely cited in Tang and Sòng Vinaya and Shūifǎ 受戒法 manuals and is the principal scriptural authority for the Buddha’s-Birthday rite as still practised in East-Asian and Vietnamese Buddhism.
The pairing of T697 and T698 (KR6i0387 / KR6i0388) is again a typical Tang case of two parallel renderings of the same Indian sūtra by different imperial translation programmes within a single generation.
Related canonical texts: alternate version KR6i0387 (T697); related image-cult cluster KR6i0385 (T695), KR6i0386 (T696).
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- Hamada Yoshie 浜田吉江. Yokubutsu shiki no shisō to bunka. Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 2009.
- Hwang, Su-Mi. The Significance of the Bathing of the Buddha Ritual in East Asian Buddhism. (PhD thesis, Princeton, 2003.)
No standalone English translation located.