Fó shuō shíbā nílí jīng 佛說十八泥犁經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on the Eighteen Hells (Aṣṭādaśa-naraka-sūtra) translated by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)
About the work
T731 in one fascicle is attributed to 安世高 and is one of the earliest Chinese Buddhist treatments of the naraka (hell) cosmology. The title-component nílí 泥犁 transliterates Skt. naraka (hell) — one of the standard early Chinese transliterations alongside dìyù 地獄 (a calque). The text expounds the eighteen hells (aṣṭādaśa-naraka), a canonical Indian Buddhist enumeration.
Abstract
The text systematically describes the eighteen hells, their location, the duration of suffering in each, and the karmic actions that lead to rebirth there. The eighteen-hell schema — eight hot hells + ten cold/peripheral hells — was the canonical Indian Buddhist cosmography, later elaborated in the much-fuller hell-catalogues of the Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna-sūtra (KR6i0415 / T721) and the Cháng āhán / Dīrghāgama hell-sūtras.
The text is one of the principal early Chinese Buddhist sources for hell cosmology, predating the elaborated cosmography of the Six Dynasties period. Its early date and characteristic Eastern-Hàn translation register make it a key witness to the introduction of the Indian naraka tradition into China. The transliteration nílí (rather than the eventually-dominant dìyù) is one of the markers of the early translation period — by the Six Dynasties period, the calque dìyù had largely displaced the transliteration in canonical translation.
The cluster of 安世高 / pseudo-Ān Shìgāo karma- and hell-cosmology sūtras: KR6i0418 / T724, KR6i0423 / T729, KR6i0424 / T730, this work KR6i0425 / T731, KR6i0426 / T732, KR6i0427 / T733, KR6i0428 / T734.
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. (Treats the development of Chinese hell cosmology, with reference to the early naraka sūtras.)
- Howard, Angela. The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha. Leiden: Brill, 1986.
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo, 2008.