Shíèrpǐn shēngsǐ jīng 十二品生死經
Sūtra on the Twelve Categories of Birth and Death translated by 求那跋陀羅 (Guṇabhadra, 譯)
About the work
T753 in one fascicle is one of 求那跋陀羅’s shorter Liú Sòng renderings, expounding twelve categories of the saṃsāra cycle. The date bracket of 435 (his arrival in China) – 468 (his death) gives the Liú Sòng translation window. The “twelve categories” of birth-and-death — shí-èr-pǐn shēng-sǐ — is a non-canonical-numbered exposition; it does not directly correspond to the twelve nidānas (which would be shí-èr yīn-yuán).
Abstract
The text discriminates twelve modes by which beings undergo birth-and-death (saṃsāra). The exposition is structured as twelve pǐn “categories” or “chapters” — one of the standard Indian Buddhist didactic-classification schemas — each treating a specific aspect of the saṃsāra dynamic: the modes of conception, the kinds of birth (caturyoni: viviparous, oviparous, moisture-born, spontaneous), the modes of death, the kinds of intermediate state (antarābhava), the categories of gati, and so forth.
The text fits Guṇabhadra’s broader translation programme of brief moral-doctrine sūtras alongside his major Mahāyāna works (Laṅkāvatāra, Śrīmālādevī, Saṃyukta-āgama). The twelve-fold classification of saṃsāra is one of the analytical-classification schemas typical of early Yogācāra-influenced Buddhist scholasticism, of which the Laṅkāvatāra (Guṇabhadra’s most famous translation) is itself a major exemplar.
Translations and research
- Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro. Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra. London: Routledge, 1930.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).