Zhuǎn fǎlún jīng yōubōtíshè 轉法輪經憂波提舍
Upadeśa on the Sūtra of Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma (Skt. Dharmacakra-pravartana-sūtra-upadeśa) by 天親菩薩 (Vasubandhu, 造) — translated by 毘目智仙 (Vimokṣaprajñā-ṛṣi, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle Yogācāra upadeśa-treatise attributed to 天親菩薩 Vasubandhu and translated into Chinese by the Northern-Wèi / Eastern-Wèi Indian translator 毘目智仙 Pímùzhìxiān (Skt. Vimokṣaprajñā-ṛṣi) at the Jīnhuá-sì 金華寺 in the Eastern-Wèi capital Yè 鄴. The text comments on the Dharmacakra-pravartana-sūtra — the First Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma, which records the Buddha’s first sermon at the Deer Park (Mṛga-dāya 鹿野苑, Sārnāth) to the pañcavargīya (wǔ bǐqiū 五比丘) headed by Kauṇḍinya (憍陳如 Jiāochénrú) — supplying a Yogācāra reading of the four-noble-truths and eightfold-path content that is the foundational material of the sermon.
Abstract
The translation-colophon (Yōubōtíshè fānyì zhī jì 憂波提舍翻譯之記) preserved at the head of the text gives an unusually full record of the production circumstances. The translation was sponsored by 高仲密 Gāo Zhòngmì (Bóhǎi-jùn 勃海郡 native, Wèi piàoqí dàjiāngjūn kāifǔ yítóng sānsī yùshǐ zhōngwèi 魏驃騎大將軍開府儀同三司御史中尉), a senior officer of the Eastern Wèi court; he commissioned Pímùzhìxiān, his disciple 瞿曇流支 Qútán Liúzhī (Skt. Gautama-ruci), and the śramaṇa 曇林 Tánlín (the Eastern-Wèi monk-translator who later assisted Bodhiruci) to render the work. The colophon dates the translation to Xīnghé 興和 3 / 8 / 11 (i.e., the 11th day of the 8th month of Eastern-Wèi Xīnghé 3 = 18 September 541 CE), and gives the precise length of the translation as 3,942 characters.
The upadeśa’s exegetical method — typical of Vasubandhu’s mature Yogācāra phase — is to identify each lemma of the Dharmacakra sūtra-text, classify the doctrinal content, and supply the Yogācāra-school definitional clarifications. The four noble truths are placed in the framework of the parikalpita / paratantra / pariniṣpanna threefold-nature analysis; the eightfold path is mapped onto the bodhisattva path-stages.
Translations and research
- Mahāvyutpatti and the broader Indic Dharmacakra-upadeśa literature (Sanskrit fragments preserved at Turfan and in Tengyur parallels at Tōhoku 4024).
- Anālayo. The Dharmacakra-pravartana-sūtra: Comparative Study. — On the broader textual tradition of which Vasubandhu’s commentary is part.
Other points of interest
The Eastern-Wèi colophon record — with its precise patron, day, and character-count attestation — is one of the most fully documented mid-sixth-century translation events in the Chinese Buddhist record, and provides a rare window onto the social-and-institutional context of the early-medieval translation bureaus. The collaboration between Indian master (Pímùzhìxiān), Indian disciple-cum-translator (Gautama-ruci), and Chinese amanuensis-cum-editor (Tánlín) is paradigmatic of the medieval Chinese translation-team format.