Fó shuō fēnbié shànè suǒqǐ jīng 佛說分別善惡所起經
The Buddha’s Sūtra Discriminating the Origins of Good and Evil translated by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)
About the work
T729 in one fascicle is attributed to 安世高 (fl. 148–170 CE at Luòyáng), one of a cluster of short karma-vipāka and moral-discrimination sūtras carrying his name in the Taishō. As with KR6i0418 / T724, modern critical scholarship views the attribution with caution, but the Eastern-Hàn vocabulary of this text is consistent with the period.
Abstract
The text expounds the karmic causes (suǒqǐ 所起 = “that which arises from”) of good (shàn 善) and evil (è 惡) — the standard Buddhist moral discrimination as taught in the early period. The structure pairs ten paths of unwholesome action (akuśala-karmapatha) with their negative karmic consequences and the ten paths of wholesome action with their positive consequences. This is a foundational text for the early Chinese reception of Buddhist karma-doctrine.
The text is one of the most-read works in the early Chinese Buddhist canon and one of the principal sources of Eastern-Hàn-period Chinese Buddhist moral vocabulary. Its formulation of the shànè 善惡 dichotomy — “good and evil” — drawing on Buddhist karmapatha but rendered in language compatible with Confucian moral discourse, was foundational for the lexical and conceptual translation of Buddhist ethics into Chinese.
The cluster of 安世高 / pseudo-Ān Shìgāo karma-doctrine sūtras: KR6i0418 / T724, this work KR6i0423 / T729, KR6i0424 / T730 Fó shuō chùchù jīng 佛說處處經, KR6i0425 / T731 Fó shuō shíbānílí jīng 佛說十八泥犁經, KR6i0426 / T732 Fó shuō màyì jīng 佛說罵意經, KR6i0427 / T733 Fó shuō jiānyì jīng 佛說堅意經, KR6i0428 / T734 Fó shuō guǐwènmùlián jīng 佛說鬼問目連經.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2008. The principal modern critical assessment.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).