Wúmíng luóchà jí 無明羅剎集
Compendium on the Rākṣasa of Ignorance (Avidyā-rākṣasa-saṃcaya) translator unknown (失譯, 譯)
About the work
T720 in three fascicles is an anonymous Chinese rendering of an Indian text personifying ignorance (avidyā, 無明) — the first link of the twelve nidāna chain — as a rākṣasa (羅剎, demon-flesh-eater) who must be vanquished to attain liberation. The translator-attribution is lost; the catalogue dating to the late Six Dynasties / early Northern Wèi period is conventional. The genre — extended doctrinal-narrative on a single nidāna treated as an antagonist — is unusual and links the text to the tradition of Buddhist avadāna literature with a strong allegorical / dramatic component.
Abstract
The text personifies avidyā as a rākṣasa — the demon of ignorance — who is the cosmic adversary to be overcome by the practitioner of the bodhi-path. Through three fascicles the text expounds the structure of the twelve nidānas as an extended battle: the rākṣasa of ignorance generates the chain of saṃskāra → vijñāna → nāmarūpa …, each link giving birth to its own demonic forces. The hero-bodhisattva, armed with the weapons of prajñā (wisdom) and the practices of śīla, samādhi, and prajñā, fights the rākṣasa until the chain is severed at its root.
The dramatic-allegorical mode is distinctive in the Chinese Buddhist canon and may reflect an Indian tantric-yogic substrate (cf. the Mahābhārata’s Bhagavadgītā-influenced personifications of rāga, dveṣa, moha as cosmic forces). The text is one of the earliest Chinese Buddhist works in this allegorical mode and may have influenced later Chinese Buddhist allegorical literature, including aspects of the Xīyóu jì tradition’s personification of vices.
The Taishō catalogues this anonymously among the Eastern Jìn or Northern Liáng translations; the broader date bracket 350–431 (early-fourth to early-fifth century) reflects the linguistic register of the translation, which is in the standard Buddhist Chinese of that period.
Translations and research
- Demiéville, Paul. “L’allégorie dans le bouddhisme chinois,” in Choix d’études bouddhiques (1929–1970). Leiden: Brill, 1973, 245–270.
- Mair, Victor H. Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1988. (Background on Indian-Chinese narrative-allegorical genres.)
No standalone English translation located.