Liǎo běnshēngsǐ jīng 了本生死經
Sūtra of Comprehending the Root of Birth and Death (Śālistamba-sūtra, earliest Chinese version) translated by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)
About the work
T708 in one fascicle is the earliest of seven Chinese versions of the Śālistamba-sūtra — the Mahāyāna sūtra on dependent-origination delivered as a discourse on a stalk of rice (śāli-stamba) — translated by the Yuèzhī-state lay translator 支謙 (active in the Wú 吳 capital Jiànyè 建業 c. 222–252 CE). The Taishō witness lists this sūtra together with five later parallel translations: T709, T710 (Amoghavajra), T711 (Dānapāla), T712 (anonymous, Tang), and T713 (Zhī Qiān again, but a different rendering) — a striking case of one short sūtra rendered seven times across nearly a millennium of Chinese Buddhist history.
Abstract
The opening passage delivered by Śāriputra to the bhikṣu-saṅgha unfolds the central Mahāyāna doctrinal claim: “若見緣起為見法，已見法為見我” (“To see dependent-origination is to see the dharma; to see the dharma is to see me [the Buddha]”). This formula — a paraphrase of the canonical Pāli yo paṭiccasamuppādaṃ passati so dhammaṃ passati (Majjhima-nikāya 28) but here in a distinctly Mahāyāna register equating dharma-vision with Buddha-vision — constitutes the foundational Mahāyāna statement that pratītyasamutpāda IS dharmakāya. The sūtra then expounds the twelve-link chain of dependent origination through the specific image of a stalk of rice growing from a seed: the seed-vs-shoot relation as illustration of the absence of jīva / non-jīva (命/非命) and the structural absence of a self.
The Śālistamba is one of the most extensively translated and re-translated Indian Buddhist texts in Chinese, paralleled in this respect only by the Heart Sūtra and the Amitābhasūtra. The seven Chinese versions (KR6i0400 / T708, KR6i0401 / T709, KR6i0402 / T710, KR6i0403 / T711, KR6i0404 / T712, KR6i0405 / T2782 commentary, KR6i0407 / T713) span from the third-century Wú Zhī Qiān rendering (T708, this work) through the Tang-period Amoghavajra (T710) and the late-tenth-century Sòng Dānapāla (T711) — a long history of canonical re-engagement.
支謙’s active period at Jiànyè under Wú 孫權 Sūn Quán (r. 222–252) gives the date bracket. The translation predates Kumārajīva’s foundational fifth-century renderings by some two centuries, and is one of the first complete Chinese renderings of the Mahāyāna doctrine of dependent-origination.
Related canonical recensions: KR6i0401 (T709), KR6i0402 (T710), KR6i0403 (T711), KR6i0404 (T712), KR6i0407 (T713 by Zhī Qiān himself); commentary KR6i0405 (T2782 by Fǎchéng).
Translations and research
- Schoening, Jeffrey D. The Śālistamba-sūtra and Its Indian Commentaries. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, 1995. The principal English-language monograph on the Śālistamba and its multiple translations.
- Frauwallner, Erich. Die Philosophie des Buddhismus. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1956.
- Reat, N. Ross. The Śālistamba Sūtra: Tibetan Original, Sanskrit Reconstruction, English Translation, Critical Notes. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993.
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo, 2008. (Treats Zhī Qiān’s translation activity, including this work.)
Other points of interest
The opening paraphrase — “若見緣起為見法，已見法為見我” — became one of the most quoted Mahāyāna scriptural formulae in Chinese Buddhist literature, cited extensively in Tang and Sòng Mádhyamika and Chán literature as the canonical scriptural authority for the equation of dependent-origination, dharma, and Buddha. The text is brief but doctrinally pivotal.