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惟日雜難經

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Text ID
KR6i0457
Date
222–252
Dynasty
吳

Wéirì zánán jīng 惟日雜難經

Sūtra of Miscellaneous Difficulties [Asked of] Wéirì translated by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)

About the work

T760 in one fascicle is one of the small group of brief doctrinal collections preserved under the name of the early Wú translator 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, fl. 222–252). The title 惟日雜難 (Wéirì zánán) — “the miscellaneous difficulties of Wéirì” — appears to name the interlocutor Wéirì, possibly a phonetic transcription of an Indic name (modern reconstructions have included Vaira and similar but none is secure). The text is a zánán-genre piece: a collection of short doctrinal questions and answers exchanged between an interlocutor and the Buddha (or another spokesman of the Dharma).

Abstract

The Wéirì zánán jīng preserves a sequence of short, mostly unrelated doctrinal exchanges in question-and-answer format. Topics range over standard Mahāyāna and abhidharma concerns: the workings of karma, the nature of meditation-states, points of vinaya practice, definitions of doctrinal categories, and so on. The zánán (miscellaneous-difficulties) genre is well-attested in third-century Chinese Buddhist translation literature: it provides an early Chinese-language window onto the way Indian-language popular catechetical material was being adapted for a Chinese audience just beginning to study Buddhism. Stylistically the text retains many Hàn-period phonetic transcriptions and pre-standardized doctrinal renderings, characteristic of Zhī Qiān’s earlier translation phase.

The work is briefly noticed in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (KR6s0084, T2145) but the early catalogues do not preserve any prefatory material, and the Sanskrit / Indic source is unknown. It belongs to the small but interesting category of early Chinese “sayings collections” that fed into the developing Chinese understanding of Buddhist doctrine before the systematic translation programmes of 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù, Western Jìn) and 鳩摩羅什 (Jiūmóluóshí, Latter Qín) brought a more uniform terminology.

Translations and research

No standalone English translation located. For Zhī Qiān’s translation activity see:

  • Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢 and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2008. (The standard reference for the early-translation corpus.)

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