Bàngfó jīng 謗佛經
The Sūtra on Slandering the Buddha (Skt. Buddhakṣepaṇa-sūtra) translated by 菩提流支 (Pútíliúzhī, Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
T831 in one fascicle is the parallel translation of [[KR6i0517|Fó shuō juédìng zǒngchí jīng 佛說決定總持經 (T811)]] by the Northern Wèi Indian translator 菩提流支 (Bodhiruci, d. c. 527) at Luòyáng during his post-508 translation career. Both texts descend from the same Indian source (Skt. Buddhakṣepaṇa), but Bodhiruci’s title 謗佛經 (“Sūtra on Slandering the Buddha”) foregrounds the doctrinal-narrative content rather than the dhāraṇī on which Dharmarakṣa’s earlier title focused. The 200-year gap between the two translations exemplifies the typical pattern of sūtra-renewal in the Chinese canon.
Abstract
The narrative frame and doctrinal content are essentially identical to those of T811: at Mt Gṛdhrakūṭa near Rājagṛha, the Buddha is teaching 1,250 bhikṣus and 80,000 bodhisattvas. Among the audience are ten “men of clan” (“善男子” rather than T811’s “族姓子”) who have practised for the dhāraṇī over seven years without success, lost heart, abandoned their śramaṇa robes, and returned to lay life — at length, in disgust at their failure, they fell into doubt about the dharma itself.
Among the assembly is the bodhisattva Bùwèixíng 不畏行 (“Fearless-Practice”) — a renaming of T811’s 無怯行 (same Sanskrit Aśoka-vikrama) in Bodhiruci’s translation register — who asks the Buddha to expound the cause of the ten men’s failure. The Buddha responds with their jātaka: in past lives they had slandered the Buddha and the Dharma (謗佛 bàng fó) and refused to listen to the teaching, and this karmic-root has now ripened in the obstruction to dhāraṇī-acquisition. The body of the sūtra expounds the doctrine of Dharma-slander as the gravest karmic obstruction, requiring countless kalpas of repentance and merit-making to clear; and the Buddha teaches the methods by which the obstruction may be overcome through confession, the catur-brahma-vihāra, the prajñā-pāramitā, and the zǒngchí recitation. See KR6i0517 for the full doctrinal summary.
Bodhiruci’s title 謗佛 (“Slandering-Buddha”) is the more literal reading of the Sanskrit Buddha-kṣepaṇa (“[Sūtra of the Slandering / Tossing of] the Buddha”), as opposed to Dharmarakṣa’s looser interpretive 決定總持 (“Definitive Dhāraṇī”). The two translations together are the principal Chinese-language sources for the doctrine of dharma-pratikṣepa (slander of the Dharma) as a grava-karmāvaraṇa.
Translations and research
See KR6i0517 for the relevant secondary literature.
Links
- CBETA online
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (520, 530): [ 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/