Fóshuō chángshòu mièzuì hùzhūtóngzǐ tuóluóní jīng 佛說長壽滅罪護諸童子陀羅尼經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha — Dhāraṇī of Long Life, Sin-Eradication, and Protection of Children attributed to 佛陀波利 (Buddhapāla, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle dhāraṇī-sūtra (X01 no. 017, alt. titles Cháng-shòu jīng 長壽經, Hù-zhū-tóngzǐ jīng 護諸童子經) attributed in its signature line to the Kashmirian trepiṭaka 佛陀波利 Buddhapāla 佛陀波利 (Skt. Buddhapāla) — the Táng-period transmitter of the Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing 佛頂尊勝陀羅尼經 (T19 nos. 967, 968). The setting is the standard Mahāyāna Vulture Peak scenography: the Buddha at Rājagṛha on the Gṛdhrakūṭa with 1,250 bhikṣus and 12,000 bodhisattvas. The body of the sūtra delivers a dhāraṇī said to confer long life, eradicate previously committed sins, and protect children from the malign agencies (帝釋, 大自在, etc.) that traditionally prey on the very young, framed by an account of the Buddha’s emanation of multicoloured light through the assembly.
Abstract
Modern scholarship — especially Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮 (in Gigi-kyō kenkyū 疑經研究, 1976) and Robert Buswell — treats this text as a Chinese apocryphon (yíjīng 疑經 / wěijīng 偽經) of the late seventh or eighth century, attached to the famous Buddhapāla name as a piece of authority-borrowing from the much-celebrated Foding zunsheng dhāraṇī-revelation narrative. The text’s heavy reliance on Mahāyāna prajñāpāramitā phraseology, its lack of any Indic textual parallel, and its striking emphasis on the protection of young children all point to a Chinese popular-Buddhist origin. The composition window is therefore bracketed at circa 676 (Buddhapāla’s reported arrival in China per the Foding zunsheng prefatory legend) to circa 803 (the Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù 貞元新定釋教錄, which is the first catalogue to take notice of texts of this kind). The work’s apocryphal status was already noted in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (730), which classes texts of this type among the yíhuò 疑或 (“doubtful or suspect”) group.
The text became enormously popular in late-medieval and modern Chinese Buddhism as a household devotional scripture, particularly for parents seeking the protection of newborn and young children. It survives in a number of Dūnhuáng manuscripts (P.2055, P.2168, S.6203, etc.) and circulates today in numerous late-imperial woodblock-print editions throughout Eastern Asia.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮. Gigi-kyō kenkyū 疑經研究. Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1976. — Foundational study of the apocryphal Chángshòu jīng.
- Buswell, Robert E. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990. — Contains contextual studies of the apocryphal dhāraṇī genre.
- Teiser, Stephen. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. — On the broader popular-Buddhist literature in which the Chángshòu jīng circulated.
Other points of interest
The Buddhapāla attribution is the principal source of the work’s late-medieval popularity: by attaching to the same translator as the celebrated Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing, the Chángshòu jīng obtained a borrowed canonical status that none of its actual textual features would have justified. The conjunction of the two texts under the same translator-name is a useful case study in the dynamics of authority-transfer in the apocryphal Chinese Buddhist tradition.