Fó shuō Fó shílì jīng 佛說佛十力經
The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of the Buddha’s Ten Powers (Skt. Daśabala-sūtra) translated by 施護 (Shīhù = Dānapāla, 等譯 — “and others”)
About the work
T781 in one fascicle is a Northern Sòng translation of the Daśabala-sūtra directed by 施護 (Dānapāla, fl. 980–1017) at the Tàipíngxīngguósì 太平興國寺 Translation Bureau in Kāifēng. It is the second extant Chinese translation of the text, parallel to the earlier Tang version Fó shuō shílì jīng 佛說十力經 (KR6i0479, T780) of 勿提提犀魚 Wùtítíxīyú.
Abstract
The text expounds the ten powers (daśa-bala) of a Tathāgata — see the description for KR6i0479 for the standard enumeration. Dānapāla’s Sòng-period rendering reflects an Indian source-text witnesses by a slightly different recension from the late-8th-century Kuchean witness used by 悟空 Wùkōng and Liánhuá Jīngjìn; the textual variations between the two Chinese translations provide useful witness to the textual history of the Daśabala-sūtra in late-Indian Buddhist literature. The doctrinal content is identical: the ten exclusive epistemic powers of buddhahood, paired in scholastic exegesis with the four vaiśāradya (see KR6i0472).
The Sòng Translation Bureau systematically retranslated several texts that already existed in earlier Chinese versions, partly to bring late-Indian recensions into the canon and partly to provide standardised post-Xuánzàng terminology. The Fó shílì jīng / Daśabala-sūtra is one of several such cases (compare KR6i0469 and KR6i0471 — Divākara’s and Śikṣānanda’s versions of the Caturdharma-sūtra — for similar parallel-translation situations).
Translations and research
- Skilling, Peter. “The Daśabala-sūtra and Its Recensions.” (Various publications, on the Sanskrit and Tibetan parallels.)
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. (For the Sòng Bureau’s translation programme.)
Links
- CBETA online T0781
- Dazangthings source 1 — Dazangthings date evidence (1000): [ 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.
- Kanseki DB
- 施護 DILA