Fó shuō dà jīnsè kǒngquè wáng zhòu jīng 佛說大金色孔雀王呪經
Buddha-Pronounced Sūtra of the Great Golden-Hued Peacock-King Spell [anonymous translator]
About the work
A one-fascicle Eastern-Jìn-period anonymous translation, paired with T986 (KR6j0173) as one of the two earliest Mahāmāyūrī recensions in the Chinese canon. The two texts present closely related but distinct narrative-redactional forms of the same scripture, with T987 framed explicitly as a “Buddha-pronounced” (fóshuō 佛說) sūtra and incorporating slightly different ritual instruction sequences.
Abstract
T987 supplements T986 by providing a closely-related but textually distinct early-Eastern-Jìn recension of the Mahāmāyūrī. The pair are bibliographically referenced as a unit by 僧祐 Sēngyòu in the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (KR6s0084) and by 費長房 Fèi Chángfáng in the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (KR6r0011), but their precise textual relationship — whether parallel translations of the same Sanskrit recension, or sequential redactions of one Chinese rendering — has not been definitively resolved. Together they form the earliest stratum of the Mahāmāyūrī in Chinese transmission, providing important comparative material for the recensional history of the vidyārājñī-corpus.
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.