Yuánshēng chūshèngfēn fǎběn jīng 緣生初勝分法本經
Sūtra on the Initially Excellent Categories of Dependent-Origination (Pratītyasamutpāda-ādivibhaṅga-nirdeśa-sūtra) translated by 達摩笈多 (Dharmagupta, 譯)
About the work
T716 in two fascicles is the Suí-period rendering of the Pratītyasamutpāda-ādivibhaṅga-nirdeśa-sūtra by the South-Indian translator-monk 達摩笈多 (Dharmagupta, d. 619), produced at the Suí Fān-jīng-guǎn 翻經館. Dharmagupta arrived in Chang-an in 590 and worked under both Suí Wén-dì and Suí Yáng-dì; the date bracket 605–619 reflects his attested Chang-an translation activity. The title-component chū-shèng-fēn 初勝分 (“initially excellent categories”) translates ādi-vibhaṅga — “first-stage analytical division” — the Yogācāra technical analysis of dependent-origination by the eleven types of excellence (viśeṣa).
Abstract
The sūtra, set as a discourse of the Buddha to the assembled bodhisattvas, presents the Yogācāra analytical schema for the doctrine of dependent-origination: not the bare twelve-link chain, but the eleven viśeṣa (excellences) by which dependent-origination is to be understood as superior to other doctrinal frames. This is the Yogācāra-Mādhyamaka synthesis characteristic of fifth- to sixth-century Indian scholastic Buddhism, and the text was attributed in Indian tradition to the lineage stemming from Asaṅga.
The text was retranslated by Xuánzàng under the title Fēnbié yuánqǐ chūshèngfǎmén jīng (KR6i0411 / T717) — a clearer rendering of the Yogācāra analytical structure. Comparison of the two translations is one of the standard examples cited in studies of the philological progress between the Suí “old translation” and the Tang “new translation” traditions: Dharmagupta’s version is more lexically faithful to the Sanskrit but obscures the doctrinal structure; Xuánzàng’s clarifies the structure at the cost of lexical liberty.
The sūtra is one of the canonical Yogācāra treatments of pratītyasamutpāda alongside the Yogācārabhūmi exposition and the Maitreya-Asaṅga commentaries on it. Its preservation in two complete Chinese versions but only fragments in Sanskrit makes the Chinese tradition the principal philological witness.
Related canonical Chinese versions: this work KR6i0410 / T716 (Dharmagupta, Suí), KR6i0411 / T717 (Xuánzàng, Tang).
Translations and research
- Tucci, Giuseppe. “A Fragment from the Pratītyasamutpāda-vyākhyā of Vasubandhu,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1930, 611–623. (On the Sanskrit fragments of related Vasubandhu materials.)
- Frauwallner, Erich. Die Philosophie des Buddhismus. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1956.
- Yoshimura Shūki 芳村修基, Indo daijō bukkyō shisō kenkyū インド大乗仏教思想研究. Kyoto: Hyakkaen, 1974.