Fó shuō pínqióng lǎogōng jīng 佛說貧窮老公經 (recension b)
The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of the Destitute Old Man (recension b) translated by 慧簡 (Huìjiǎn, 譯)
About the work
T797b in one fascicle is the second extant recension of the Pínqióng lǎogōng jīng attributed to the Liú-Sòng monk 慧簡 (q.v.), the parallel of T797a. The two recensions descend from the same translation event but were transmitted through different manuscript lines, with minor differences in phrasing (e.g. b-recension’s 千載有幸 in place of a-recension’s 我聞世尊仁慈普逮 at the opening cry) but no doctrinal divergence. The Taishō editors retained both recensions side-by-side; the Korean Tripiṭaka transmits chiefly the a-recension.
Abstract
The doctrinal content is identical to that of T797a: the karmic biography of a two-hundred-year-old beggar marked with the mahāpuruṣa-lakṣaṇa, whose former life as a cruel crown prince — and his torment of the śramaṇa Jìngzhì 靜志 — produced the present co-existence of physical auspiciousness and material destitution. See KR6i0502 for the narrative summary.
The two-recension situation is characteristic of Liú-Sòng-period short sūtra-translations, which circulated in monastic libraries in multiple manuscript copies before being canonised in the early printed editions. Comparison of the two recensions provides modest evidence on the textual history of the Huìjiǎn translation corpus.
Translations and research
See KR6i0502 for the relevant secondary literature.