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佛說孛經抄

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Text ID
KR6i0494
Date
222–252
Dynasty
吳

Fó shuō Bèijīng chāo 佛說孛經抄

The Buddha Speaks: An Excerpt of the Sūtra of Bèi translated by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)

About the work

T790 in one fascicle is a brief sūtra-translation traditionally attributed to 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, fl. 222–252), the early Wú translator. The title — 孛經抄 (Bèijīng chāo) — indicates that the text is an excerpt (抄 chāo) of a longer work titled Bèijīng (Sūtra of Bèi). The character 孛 (bèi, “comet” / “luminous”), here used as a transliteration of an Indic personal-name element, refers to a wise minister-figure of the Buddha’s circle, sometimes identified with Brahmadatta or another ministerial-sage figure of the avadāna literature.

Abstract

The text is an excerpt of the longer Bèi-jīng (no longer extant in independent form, though probably the fuller original behind various avadāna materials), preserving narrative episodes about the wise minister Bèi who advises kings on Buddhist principles of statecraft and religious practice. The narrative format is the avadāna — an exemplary tale designed to illustrate doctrinal points through narrative — and the content is gnomic-political: the wise minister, drawing on his Buddhist understanding, gives counsel to the king on right governance, the protection of the saṅgha, the support of the four-fold community, the proper celebration of festivals, and so on. The wisdom-saying form is paralleled in many other Indian avadāna and jātaka collections.

Zhī Qiān’s translation activity at the Wú court included a substantial number of narrative-and-doctrinal texts of this kind. The Bèijīng chāo belongs to the early-stratum Chinese Buddhist literature in which Indian avadāna materials were being adapted for Chinese-court audiences, and provided one of the early Chinese examples of the “wise-minister advising the king” genre that would prove durable in Chinese Buddhist popular literature.

Translations and research

  • Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: Soka University IRIAB, 2008. (Reassessment of the Zhī Qiān corpus including this text.)

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