Fó shuō lóugé zhèngfǎ gānlù gǔ jīng 佛說樓閣正法甘露鼓經
The Buddha’s Sūtra of the Storied Pavilion: Drum of the Ambrosia of the True Dharma translated by 天息災 (Tiānxīzāi, 譯)
About the work
T704 in one fascicle is a Northern-Sòng-period Mahāyāna sūtra translated by 天息災 (later Fǎxián 法賢; fl. late 970s through 1000) at the Yìjīngyuàn 譯經院 (Translation Institute) at Kāifēng. The Taishō witness colophon — “西天中印度惹爛馱囉國密林寺三藏明教大師賜紫沙門臣天息災奉詔譯” — gives 天息災’s full Sòng-imperial honorific: “Tripiṭaka Master Míngjiào dàshī of the Mìlín Monastery in Jálandhara state in central India, the bhikṣu and minister Tiānxīzāi, who has been granted the purple, has translated [this sūtra] by imperial decree.”
Abstract
The text takes its imagery from the Lóugé 樓閣 (kūṭāgāra, “storied pavilion / multi-eaved hall”) of the Mahāvairocana / Vairocana-sūtra tradition — a many-storied jewel-pavilion at the aśoka-tree assembly — and frames the Buddha’s instruction to Ānanda on the zhèngfǎ-gānlù-gǔ 正法甘露鼓 (“drum of the ambrosia of the true Dharma”) as the auditory ingestion of the ambrosial teaching that liberates from death. The doctrinal content is short, with short verse-summaries, and emphasizes refuge in the three jewels and the meritorious recitation of the sūtra itself. The text exemplifies the late-Indian / early-Pāla devotional sūtra literature that the Northern-Sòng imperial Translation Institute principally rendered into Chinese under 天息災’s supervision, c. 980–1000.
The Northern-Sòng Translation Institute, founded by Emperor Tàizōng 太宗 in 982 and operating through the 1030s, was the imperial Chinese Buddhist response to the late-Pāla flourishing of Indian Mahāyāna and tantric literature; it produced over two hundred translations during the late tenth and eleventh centuries, of which 天息災’s output forms the central foundational tranche.
Translations and research
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. The principal English-language study of the Sòng imperial Translation Institute and Tiānxīzāi’s role in it.
- Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra. Le canon bouddhique en Chine. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1927–1938.
- Jan Yün-hua. “Buddhist Relations between India and Sung China”. History of Religions 6.1–2 (1966).
No standalone English translation located.