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佛說內藏百寶經

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Text ID
KR6i0513
Date
178–189
Dynasty
後漢

Fó shuō nèizàng bǎibǎo jīng 佛說內藏百寶經

The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of the Hundred Jewels of the Inner Treasury (Skt. Lokānuvartanasūtra per modern scholarship) translated by 支婁迦讖 (Zhī Lóujiāchèn, Lokakṣema, 譯)

About the work

T807 in one fascicle is one of the foundational early Mahāyāna sūtras in Chinese, attributed to the Eastern Hàn Yuèzhī translator 支婁迦讖 (Lokakṣema), active at Luòyáng c. 178–189. The text is best known to modern scholarship under its reconstructed Sanskrit title Lokānuvartana-sūtra (“Sūtra of [the Buddha’s] Conformity to the World”), the title under which it is preserved in Tibetan (‘jig rten gyi rjes su ‘thun par ‘jug pa’i mdo) and partially in Sanskrit fragments. The Chinese title 內藏百寶 (“Hundred Jewels of the Inner Treasury”) rephrases the doctrinal content.

Abstract

The text opens at Mt Gṛdhrakūṭa near Rājagṛha, where the Buddha is seated with twelve thousand bhikṣus and seventy-two thousand bodhisattvas. The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (文殊師利 Wénshūshīlì) rises from his seat and asks the Buddha to expound the doctrine of the upāya-kauśalya (漚和拘舍羅 ōuhé-jūshèluó, “skilful means”) by which the Buddha enters into the world: how does the Buddha “enter into worldly conventions” (隨世間習俗而入 suí shìjiān xísú ér rù) while remaining beyond them?

The body of the sūtra consists of an extended catalogue of approximately one hundred items (the “hundred jewels” of the title), each presenting a contrast between the Buddha’s transcendent reality and his apparent worldly behaviour, structured by the formula 隨世間習俗而入，示現如是 (“conforming to worldly custom, he displays it thus”). Sample items: although the Buddha is not born from parental coupling, he displays parents; although his radiance is unmeasurable, he displays a halo of seven feet; although his body is like vajra and pollution-free, he displays bathing; although his body never tires, he displays fatigue; although his body neither comes nor goes nor abides, he displays coming-going-abiding; although his body never sickens, he displays summoning a physician and taking medicine (and this displaying of sickness is itself a upāya by which the donors of the medicine accumulate boundless merit); although a finger of his can shake countless Buddha-fields, he displays exhaustion; although he is never hungry, he displays hunger; although his bowl never goes empty when he begs, he displays an empty bowl returning from the city; although the assembled thunderclaps of the ten directions cannot stir a hair of his body, he displays samādhi-meditation as if requiring quiet; although there is fundamentally no past-life karma to be reaped (because beings are originally unborn), he displays the doctrine of past acts and present results.

The doctrinal point is the radical reading of the Buddha’s worldly biography as pure upāya: every event of the Buddha’s life — birth, marriage, asceticism, awakening, illness, death — is a “display” (示現 shìxiàn) for the salvation of beings, not a real event. This is among the earliest Chinese expositions of the docetic Mahāyāna Buddhology that became foundational for the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa, and later trikāya doctrine. The text closes by tying the doctrine to the anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti and the bodhisattva’s perfection of prajñā and upāya.

The Sanskrit Lokānuvartana circulated in the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda tradition, and the Chinese T807 represents one of the earliest non-Sarvāstivāda Mahāyāna texts to enter China. Modern scholarship (Harrison 1982; Karashima 2010) has established Lokakṣema’s authorship on the basis of translation-idiom analysis.

Translations and research

  • Harrison, Paul M. “Sanskrit Fragments of a Lokottaravādin Tradition.” In Indological and Buddhist Studies: Volume in Honour of Professor J. W. de Jong, ed. L. A. Hercus et al. Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1982, pp. 211–234. (Foundational study; identifies T807 as Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda.)
  • Karashima Seishi 辛嶋静志. A Glossary of Lokakṣema’s Translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2010.
  • 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. (Authoritative on Lokakṣema’s authentic corpus, including T807.)

Other points of interest

The Lokānuvartana is a key text for the history of Mahāyāna Buddhology: its docetic reading of the Buddha’s life — every worldly act of his being a upāya display — is foundational for the later trikāya doctrine and for the radical Buddhology of the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka (Lotus Sūtra). The text establishes that the Buddha’s “appearance” in the world is itself a teaching device.

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