Sānjùzú jīng yōubōtíshè 三具足經憂波提舍
Upadeśa on the Sūtra of the Three Endowments (Skt. Trisamucchayasūtra-upadeśa) by 天親菩薩 (Vasubandhu, attributed) — translated by 毘目智仙 (Vimokṣaprajñā-ṛṣi, 等譯)
About the work
A very short single-fascicle Yogācāra upadeśa-treatise attributed to 天親菩薩 Vasubandhu (the colophon credits the work to Tiānqīn púsà cíxīn kāishì 天親菩薩慈心開示, “compassionately disclosed by the Bodhisattva Vasubandhu”) and translated into Chinese by 毘目智仙 Pímùzhìxiān with his collaborators at the Jīnhuá-sì 金華寺 in the Eastern-Wèi capital Yè 鄴. The work comments on the lost Mahāyāna 三具足經 Sānjùzú jīng (“Sūtra of the Three Endowments”), a brief doctrinal scripture on three perfecting-virtues — shī 施 (giving, dāna), jiè 戒 (moral discipline, śīla), and wén 聞 (hearing-of-the-Dharma, śruta) — said by the Buddha to comprehensively encompass the bodhisattva practice (bèishè zhòngxíng 備攝眾行, “completely embracing all practices”).
Abstract
The translation-colophon, parallel to that of the KR6i0592 Zhuǎn fǎlún jīng yōubōtíshè, gives the full production record: translation by Pímùzhìxiān, the Brahmin 瞿曇流支 Qútán Liúzhī (Gautama-ruci), and the śramaṇa 曇林 Tánlín; sponsored by the Eastern-Wèi piàoqí dàjiāngjūn 高仲密 Gāo Zhòngmì; produced at the Jīnhuá-sì in Yèchéng. The colophon dates the translation to Xīnghé 3 / 9 / 13 (= 19 October 541 CE), one month later than the KR6i0592 Zhuǎn fǎlún commentary; the two texts were thus produced as a deliberate paired publication. The translation is recorded at 1,110 characters.
The underlying Sānjùzú jīng sūtra is otherwise lost — no Chinese translation of the source text survives, nor does any Sanskrit or Tibetan parallel — making the present upadeśa the principal surviving witness to the doctrine of the trī-samucchaya (three endowments) in its specific Yogācāra interpretation. The treatise’s attribution to Vasubandhu places it among his shorter sūtra-commentaries; its specific argument — that dāna, śīla, and śruta are bèi shè 備攝 (comprehensively-embracing) of the entire bodhisattva path — is consistent with the broader Yogācāra path-doctrine of his maturity.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The pairing of the KR6i0592 Zhuǎn fǎlún and the present Sānjùzú upadeśas — translated within four weeks of each other in 541 CE under the same patron, by the same translation team, at the same monastery — is characteristic of the medieval Chinese translation-bureau practice of issuing related Vasubandhu commentaries as a coherent collection. The two works together document the Eastern-Wèi reception of Vasubandhu’s mature Yogācāra exegetical apparatus.