Fó shuō xiàngyè jīng 佛說象腋經
The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of the Elephant’s Hide / Girth (Skt. Hastikakṣyā-sūtra) translated by 曇摩蜜多 (Tánmómìduō, Dharmamitra, 譯)
About the work
T814 in one fascicle is the parallel translation of [[KR6i0519|Fó shuō wúxīwàng jīng 佛說無希望經 (T813)]] by the Liú-Sòng Kashmiri translator 曇摩蜜多 (Dharmamitra, 356–442), produced at the Zhīyuán or Lóngguāng monasteries in Jiànkāng during his eighteen-year Yuánjiā 元嘉 translation career (424–442). The Chinese title 象腋 (“Elephant-Hide / Elephant-Girth”) renders the Sanskrit Hastikakṣyā more phonetically and literally than Dharmarakṣa’s interpretive 無希望 (“No-Expectation”).
Abstract
The doctrinal content is essentially identical to that of T813: the doctrine of the bodhisattva’s practice of the six pāramitās without expectation (anabhilāṣa-caryā), with the eponymous “elephant” simile. The narrative frame is the same — Mt Gṛdhrakūṭa, the Buddha emerging from samādhi, Śāriputra and the audience of 500 bhikṣus and 60,000 bodhisattvas. The list of bodhisattva-attendees is partially parallel: Dharmamitra renders Wújiǎnjìnyì 無減進意 (= Dharmarakṣa’s 無損進), Guòmíngshēng wēidézàng 過名聲威德藏, Bǎoyuèhuā 寶月花, etc. The translation register reflects the more standardised Liú-Sòng idiom, with the Hastikakṣyā-simile rendered more directly and the bodhisattva-name catalogue lightly reorganised.
The two-translation situation is characteristic of important Mahāyāna sūtras: the early Western Jìn rendering by Dharmarakṣa was joined some 130 years later by the more literal Liú-Sòng version, and the two were transmitted together in the Chinese canon. See KR6i0519 for the full doctrinal summary.
Translations and research
See KR6i0519 for the relevant secondary literature.
Links
- CBETA online
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (430): [ 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. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/