Fó shuō zuìyè yìngbào jiàohuà dìyù jīng 佛說罪業應報教化地獄經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on the Hells of Karmic Recompense for Sinful Actions, for Edification (sometimes “Sūtra on the Hells of Karmic Recompense as Pedagogical Means”) translated by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)
About the work
T724 in one fascicle is attributed in the Taishō to the founding figure of Chinese Buddhist translation, 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, fl. 148–170 CE at Luòyáng). Modern critical scholarship (Nattier, Zürcher, Zacchetti) takes a sceptical line on a number of texts traditionally attributed to Ān Shìgāo: the Eastern-Hàn vocabulary and translation style of this text are consistent with the early period but the attribution may be conventional rather than philologically secure. The text expounds the karmic origins of the various hells in narrative-doctrinal mode.
Abstract
The text recounts the Buddha’s teaching on the karmic causes of rebirth in the various hells. The framework — listing types of sinful actions and their corresponding hellish recompense — is a standard karma-vipāka genre, but the structuring as direct didactic teaching by the Buddha (rather than as analytical śāstra) gives it the character of a popular sermon. The genre is foundational for the East Asian Buddhist hell-traditions: it provides the basic vocabulary of karma → hell mapping that becomes central in medieval Chinese popular Buddhism (cf. the Shíwáng jīng 十王經 tradition).
The attribution to 安世高 places the text — if authentic — among the earliest Chinese Buddhist works on hell cosmology, predating both the Tiěchéng nílí jīng 鐵城泥犁經 (T42) and the Nílí jīng 泥犁經 (T86). It would be one of the formative texts shaping the Chinese conception of naraka / dìyù 地獄. The compositional form — anonymous-Buddha discourse with karma-cause + hell-recompense pairs — became the standard for the genre.
The thematic cluster of Ān Shìgāo / pseudo-Ān Shìgāo karma-doctrine sūtras includes: this work KR6i0418 / T724, KR6i0423 / T729 Fó shuō fēnbié shànè suǒqǐ jīng 佛說分別善惡所起經, KR6i0424 / T730, KR6i0425 / T731, KR6i0426 / T732, KR6i0427 / T733, KR6i0428 / T734.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢 and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2008. The principal modern critical assessment of attributions to Ān Shìgāo.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).
- Zacchetti, Stefano. “Han Buddhist Translations: Some Texts and Their Translators,” in The Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Damien Keown and Charles S. Prebish. London: Routledge, 2007.