Guǎngdà bǎolóugé shànzhù mìmì tuóluóní jīng 廣大寶樓閣善住祕密陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Secret Dhāraṇī of the Vast Great-Jewelled Pavilion of Auspicious Dwelling by 菩提流志 (Bodhiruci II, 譯)
About the work
A three-fascicle early-Tang translation of the Mahā-vipula-mahā-maṇi-vimāna-supratiṣṭhita-guhya-dhāraṇī-sūtra by Bodhiruci II (菩提流志 / Pútíliúzhì) — the South-Indian trepiṭaka who served 武則天 Wǔ Zétiān and her successors. The text provides the early-Tang recension parallel to Amoghavajra’s later T1005A (KR6j0197). Where Amoghavajra’s translation came in 746–774, Bodhiruci II’s earlier rendering at Cháng’ān (706–713) preserved an earlier Indic recensional state of the Vipula-prāsāda tradition.
Abstract
Bodhiruci II (菩提流志, ca. 562–727; not to be confused with the early-sixth-century Northern-Wèi Bodhiruci I who translated the Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna and other texts; his original name was Dharmaruci 達摩流支, but 武則天 Wǔ Zétiān renamed him Bodhiruci 菩提流志) was one of the longest-lived trepiṭaka translators in Chinese Buddhist history. The present Vipula-prāsāda translation falls within his late-period work at Cháng’ān (706–713), shortly after his major translation programme of the Ratnakūṭa (Da bao ji jing 大寶積經) corpus completed 713. The text is the principal early-Tang witness to the Vipula-prāsāda tradition and was the textual base from which Amoghavajra developed his retranslation T1005A. Together the two translations document the recensional history of the Vipula-prāsāda across the seventh-eighth centuries.
Translations and research
- Hidas, Gergely. Powers of Protection. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
- Forte, Antonino. Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical Clock. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1988. — for Bodhiruci II’s biographical context under Wǔ Zétiān.