Dà jīnsè kǒngquè wáng zhòu jīng 大金色孔雀王呪經
Sūtra of the Great Golden-Hued Peacock-King Spell [anonymous translator]
About the work
A one-fascicle Eastern-Jìn-period anonymous translation of an early Mahāmāyūrī recension, conventionally cataloged under the shīyì 失譯 (“translator-lost”) rubric and assigned to the early Eastern Jìn (317–420) on internal-evidence grounds (transliteration conventions, narrative-frame format). The text is the earliest documented Chinese form of the Mahāmāyūrīvidyā tradition, predating Kumārajīva’s T988 (KR6j0175).
Abstract
The text — together with the closely-related T987 (KR6j0174) — represents the earliest layer of the Mahāmāyūrī in Chinese transmission, with archaic transliteration conventions (e.g., simple disyllabic transliterations without the later fǎnqiè-augmentation apparatus) and an abbreviated narrative frame focused on the immediate Svāti-snake-bite-rescue context. The “great golden-hued” (dà jīnsè 大金色) epithet of the Peacock-King reflects the early-Buddhist Jātaka layer of the Peacock-Bodhisattva tradition, in which the future Buddha is born as a golden-feathered peacock king who teaches the dawn-and-dusk protective verses. The Eastern Jìn dating is conventional and should be understood as a defensible bracket rather than a precise attribution; the text may be earlier (Western Jìn) or somewhat later (Liú-Sòng).
Translations and research
- DesJardins, J. F. Marc. Le Sūtra de Mahāmāyūrī. Paris: Cerf, 2017.
- Hoernle, A. F. R. Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature Found in Eastern Turkestan. Oxford: Clarendon, 1916.