Wàidào wèn shèng dàshèng fǎ wúwǒ yì jīng 外道問聖大乘法無我義經
Sūtra in Which a Heterodox Inquirer Questions the Saintly One on the Doctrine of No-Self in the Mahāyāna (Skt. Nairātmyaparipṛcchā-nāma-mahāyāna-nirdeśa) by 法天 (Fǎtiān / Dharmadeva, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle Mahāyāna prajñā sūtra translated by 法天 Fǎtiān 法天 (Skt. Dharmadeva) at the Sòng Institute for the Translation of Sūtras (T17 no. 846, alt. title Wàidào wèn dàshèng jīng 外道問大乘經). The Sanskrit title is recorded by CANWWW as Nairātmyaparipṛcchā-nāma-mahāyāna-nirdeśa — “Mahāyāna Exposition called The Inquiry on No-Self”. The text is structured as a dialogue between an unnamed wàidào 外道 (heterodox / non-Buddhist) interlocutor and the Buddha on the doctrine of anātman (無我). The argument is brief and dialectical, treating the standard arguments for the absence of a substantial self in Mahāyāna terms with reference to the doctrine of dependent origination and to the prajñāpāramitā refrain that all dharmas lack inherent existence.
Abstract
The signature line gives Fǎtiān’s Sòng-Institute court title — 西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試鴻臚少卿傳教大師臣法天奉詔譯 — with the chuánjiào dàshī 傳教大師 epithet that he received in 980 (Tàipíng Xīngguó 5) from Sòng Tàizōng. The translation is therefore datable to the period after 980 and before Fǎtiān’s death in 1001 (Xiánpíng 4). The Indic original is no longer extant in Sanskrit; the Tibetan canon preserves a translation of a closely related text under the title Bdag med pa’i dris pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i bstan bcos (Tōhoku 4019, in the Tengyur), which corresponds in topic and is likely a parallel transmission of substantially the same Indic original. The Tibetan attribution is to the late-Indian Buddhist scholar Maitreya / Maitri-pa, but neither the Chinese nor the Tibetan version specifies an Indic author; the Sòng-period Indic original was probably an anonymous Mahāyāna upadeśa-genre dialogue.
Bibliographic data: K1128 (Korean Tripiṭaka); H063 (Zhōnghuá); Nanjio 818. Recorded in the Dàzhōngxiángfú fǎbǎo lù among Fǎtiān’s authentic translations.
Translations and research
- Tibetan parallel: Bdag med pa’i dris pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i bstan bcos (Tōhoku 4019). — The closest parallel; the relationship between the Chinese and Tibetan versions has not been comprehensively studied.
Other points of interest
The text is one of relatively few Sòng-era Chinese translations of a Mahāyāna no-self dialogue genre that has clearer Tibetan parallels — making it a useful comparative point for the study of late-Indian Buddhist literature in its parallel transmission to China and Tibet. As a discrete sūtra it has not attracted significant scholarly attention.