Wǔkǔ zhāngjù jīng 五苦章句經
Sūtra in Aphorisms on the Five Sufferings (Pañca-duḥkha-sūtra?) translated by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán, 譯)
About the work
T741 in one fascicle is an Eastern Jìn translation by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán) at the Xièzhènxī Monastery 謝鎮西寺 in Yangdu 楊都 (Jiànkāng), produced during his fifteen-year translation activity 381–395 CE. The genre — zhāngjù “aphoristic chapters” — indicates a text in compressed sentential form rather than continuous discourse, suitable for memorization.
Abstract
The text expounds the five kinds of kǔ 苦 (Skt. duḥkha, suffering): typically classified as the suffering of birth, of aging, of sickness, of death, and of separation from what is loved (or some variant of these — the “five sufferings” enumeration is variable across Indian Buddhist sources). Each kǔ is treated in compressed aphoristic form — zhāngjù — listing its causes, its phenomenal manifestations, and the practitioner’s response. The text is a brief contemplation manual on the first noble truth.
The aphoristic format reflects an Indian gāthā-and-prose mixed-genre source. Zhú Tánwúlán’s translation idiom favored semantic glosses over phonetic transliteration, and his Chinese is generally clear and pedagogically structured. The text fits into his broader translation programme of brief Buddhist instructional sūtras alongside KR6i0436 / T742 and KR6i0437 / T743 (also Tánwúlán translations).
Translations and research
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007). (Background on the Eastern Jìn translation circles.)
- Demiéville, Paul. “Sur le sens des duḥkha,” in Choix d’études bouddhiques (1929–1970). Leiden: Brill, 1973.