Èguǐ bàoyìng jīng 餓鬼報應經
Sūtra on the Karmic Recompense [Leading to] Rebirth as a Hungry Ghost (Preta-vipāka-sūtra?) translator unknown (失譯, 譯)
About the work
T746 in one fascicle is an anonymous Chinese sūtra on the karmic recompense leading to rebirth as a preta (餓鬼 èguǐ, “hungry ghost”). The translator is unknown; the text is dated by linguistic register to the broad Han-Six Dynasties translation period.
Abstract
The text is structurally similar to KR6i0428 / T734 (Fó shuō guǐwènmùlián jīng) — a series of preta-confessions and karmic case-studies — but anonymous and likely later in date. The narrative format presents preta describing their suffering (the canonical preta phenomenology of unrelievable hunger and thirst, food-that-turns-to-fire, etc.) and recounting the prior-life unwholesome actions — typically miserliness, refusal of charity, hoarding of food — that led to the rebirth.
The genre and content are continuous with the broader Chinese Buddhist preta-tradition that culminates in the Tang-Sòng Yúlánpén 盂蘭盆 ritual cycle. The anonymous transmission and the late-Six Dynasties / early Tang catalogue placement suggest the text may have been composed or translated during the period when the preta-and-merit-transfer cluster was crystallizing in East Asian Buddhism, providing scriptural support for the popular Buddhist liturgy of the Ghost Festival.
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. The standard study of the preta / Yúlánpén tradition and its scriptural sources.
No standalone English translation located.