Fó shuō lúnzhuǎn wǔdào zuìfú bàoyìng jīng 佛說輪轉五道罪福報應經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on the Karmic Recompense for Sin and Merit Across the Five Cycling Destinies (recension b) translated by 求那跋陀羅 (Guṇabhadra, 譯)
About the work
T747b in one fascicle is the second of two related Liú Sòng karma-recompense sūtras paired in the Taishō as 747a / 747b. The expanded title of this version — lún-zhuǎn wǔ-dào “the cycling five-destinies” — frames the karma-vipāka exposition explicitly within the five-gati (or six-gati) cosmology of saṃsāra.
Abstract
The text expounds the cycling of beings through the five destinies (pañca-gati: hells, preta, animals, humans, gods — the five-gati enumeration that subsumes the asura under either gods or preta) and the karmic actions that drive the cycle. The Buddha addresses the assembled disciples, listing the unwholesome actions that lead to descent and the wholesome actions that lead to ascent. The text is doctrinally close to KR6i0441 / T747a but uses the cycling-destinies frame to emphasize the cosmological dynamic.
The five-gati enumeration (rather than the six-gati including asura) is the early Buddhist standard, preserved in the Pāli Nikāya and in the early Chinese Āgama translations. The six-gati enumeration developed later, particularly in Mahāyāna abhidharma. The use of wǔdào “five destinies” in this text reflects the early Indian register.
Related: KR6i0441 / T747a (parallel recension by Guṇabhadra), KR6i0418 / T724 (Ān Shìgāo).
Translations and research
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).
- Demiéville, Paul. “Études sur la traduction des termes bouddhiques,” in Choix d’études bouddhiques. Leiden: Brill, 1973.