Shāmíluó jīng 沙彌羅經
Sūtra of Śāmilā (a personal-name title; Śāmilā / Śāmika / Sāmaṇera?) translator unknown (失譯, 譯)
About the work
T750 in one fascicle is an anonymous Chinese rendering of a brief Buddhist avadāna on a young novice (Skt. śrāmaṇera — perhaps the source of the transliteration shāmíluó 沙彌羅, though the form preserves an unusual final vowel; possibly the personal name Śāmika or similar). The translator and date are unknown; the catalogue placement is broad-Han-Six-Dynasties.
Abstract
The text recounts the avadāna of a young Buddhist novice (shā-mí, Skt. śrāmaṇera) who through his deeply-rooted faith and practice attains a remarkable spiritual achievement at a young age. The narrative format is that of a bāla-avadāna — a “youth avadāna” — paralleling the Sāmaṇera-vagga in the Pāli Theragāthā tradition. The story illustrates the doctrine that spiritual achievement is independent of age and conventional status; even a young novice may, through right practice, attain advanced states.
The text is one of a small number of Chinese avadāna of young novices, complementing the better-known stories of young arhats in the canonical Vinaya and Avadāna literature. The brief extent (one fascicle) and the standard avadāna narrative format suggest the text was a free-standing rendering of a single Indian avadāna episode.
Translations and research
- Strong, John S. The Legend of King Aśoka. Princeton, 1983.
- Walters, Jonathan S. “Stūpa, Story, and Empire: Constructions of the Buddha Biography in Early Post-Aśokan India,” in Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Juliane Schober. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.