Dàfāngděng dàyún jīng qǐngyǔ pǐn dìliùshísì 大方等大雲經請雨品第六十四
Mahāvaipulya Mahāmegha Sūtra, Chapter 64 on Rain-Petitioning by 闍那耶舍 (Jñānayaśas, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Northern-Zhōu translation of the rain-petitioning chapter (chapter 64) of the Mahāvaipulya Mahāmegha-sūtra by Jñānayaśas (闍那耶舍) — a Magadhan trepiṭaka who served the Northern-Zhōu emperor Wǔdì at Cháng’ān in the 560s–570s. The text presents the qǐngyǔ chapter as it stood within the larger Mahāmegha corpus before its independent extraction as a stand-alone scripture.
Abstract
Jñānayaśas (闍那耶舍 / Jñānayaśas) was a Magadhan Buddhist monk who arrived in north China in the late Northern-Wèi period and was active as imperial translator under the Northern-Zhōu emperor Wǔdì (r. 560–578) until the Buddhist persecution of 574. The present chapter-64 extraction predates Narendrayaśas’s later Suí complete-recension T991 (KR6j0178) by roughly two decades and provides important comparative material for the recensional history of the Mahāmegha qǐngyǔ chapter. The text reflects the early-medieval pattern in which key dhāraṇī-chapters from the longer Mahāyāna sūtras were extracted and circulated independently as ritual scriptures — a practice that was further systematised in the Tang Esoteric programme. Together with KR6j0180 (chapter 64 alternate recension by Jñānayaśas), the two texts present parallel Northern-Zhōu translations of the same chapter.
Translations and research
- Bagchi, P. C. Le canon bouddhique en Chine. Paris: Geuthner, 1927–1938.
- Forte, Antonino. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1976.