Dàyún jīng qǐngyǔ pǐn dìliùshísì 大雲經請雨品第六十四
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 Mahāmegha-sūtra rain-petitioning chapter, paired with KR6j0179 T992 as the second of Jñānayaśas’s two parallel recensions of the same chapter. The two texts together preserve two distinct redactional layers of the qǐngyǔ tradition as it circulated in the early Sino-Indic Buddhist exchange of the sixth century.
Abstract
Together with T992, T993 represents the Northern-Zhōu phase of the Mahāmegha qǐngyǔ chapter’s transmission. The two recensions differ slightly in transliteration convention and in the order of the Nāga-king names, suggesting that they represent two distinct Indic source-recensions rather than one base-text retranslated. Jñānayaśas’s translation programme at the Northern-Zhōu court was abruptly terminated by emperor Wǔdì’s Buddhist persecution of 574 (建德三年), but he survived and resumed translation activity at Cháng’ān under the Suí 隋文帝 Wéndì (after 581), translating a smaller corpus before his death. The pair T992–T993 together with Narendrayaśas’s later complete Suí T991 form the principal pre-Tang recensional family of the Mahāmegha qǐngyǔ tradition.
Translations and research
- Bagchi, P. C. Le canon bouddhique en Chine. Paris: Geuthner, 1927–1938.