Fó shuō Fǎjí jīng 佛說法集經
The Buddha Speaks: The Dharma-Saṃgīti Sūtra (Skt. Dharmasaṃgīti-sūtra) translated by 菩提流支 (Pútíliúzhī = Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
T761 in six fascicles is one of the major Mahāyāna sūtra-translations of 菩提流支 (Pútíliúzhī = Bodhiruci, d. ca. 527), the great Northern-Wèi translator from northern India who arrived in Luòyáng in 508 and became the head of the imperial Translation Bureau under Emperor 宣武帝 Xuānwǔ-dì and his successors. The work presents itself as a saṃgīti — a “rehearsal” or “compilation” of the Dharma — and is the principal Chinese surrogate for a class of Indian Mahāyāna scriptures that organize doctrinal teaching as numbered enumerations of dharmas.
Abstract
The Dharmasaṃgīti-sūtra belongs to the genre of comprehensive doctrinal compendia in which doctrinal categories are systematically enumerated under heads of one item, two items, three items, and so on, building up a complete abhidharma-style coverage of the Mahāyāna doctrinal field. The Chinese title 法集 (Fǎjí, “compilation of the Dharma”) translates Sanskrit dharmasaṃgīti and recalls the compilation-narrative of the First Buddhist Council, where the Dharma and Vinaya were rehearsed by Ānanda and Upāli respectively. As a Mahāyāna text, however, the Dharmasaṃgīti attributes the compilation to the bodhisattva community and treats Mahāyāna doctrines (the perfections, the bodhisattva stages, the doctrines of śūnyatā and tathatā) as the proper field of saṃgīti rather than the Sthavira enumerations.
Bodhiruci’s translation is the only Chinese rendering of this text. It is generally treated by Chinese exegetes (慧遠 Huìyuǎn, 吉藏 Jízàng and others) as a transitional text between the strictly abhidharma-organised Mahāyāna and the developed yogācāra tradition that Bodhiruci himself was instrumental in introducing to China through his subsequent translations of the Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna 十地經論 (KR6e0060) and the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra 入楞伽經 (KR6i0328). The compositional layer is therefore best assigned to the early-to-mid 5th century in India.
There is also a Sanskrit Dharmasaṃgīti-sūtra attested in Central Asian fragments and citations in 寂天 Śāntideva’s Śikṣā-samuccaya 大乘集菩薩學論 (KR6o0040) and the Sūtra-samuccaya; a Tibetan translation (D no. 238) is preserved in the Kanjur. The relationship between the surviving Sanskrit fragments, the Tibetan, and Bodhiruci’s Chinese has been studied by recent Indo-Tibetan philology, with the conclusion that the texts represent the same recension, though with the usual translation-tradition variants.
Translations and research
- Braarvig, Jens. Akṣayamatinirdeśa-sūtra. 2 vols. Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1993. (Discusses the Dharmasaṃgīti in the śikṣā-samuccaya citations.)
- Pagel, Ulrich. The Bodhisattvapiṭaka: Its Doctrines, Practices and Their Position in Mahāyāna Literature. Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1995. (For the saṃgīti/compendium genre.)
- Chen, Jinhua. “The Bodhi-ruci Group,” in Crossfire: Shingon-Tendai Strife as Seen in Two Twelfth-Century Polemics (Tokyo: ICPBS, 2010). (For Bodhiruci’s translation milieu in Northern Wèi Luòyáng.)
Links
- CBETA online
- Dazangthings date evidence (520, 530): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. Dazangthings source 1
- Kanseki DB
- 菩提流支 DILA
- 吉藏 DILA