Zàn Guānshìyīn púsà sòng 讚觀世音菩薩頌
Hymn in Praise of the Bodhisattva Guānshìyīn by 慧智 (Huìzhì, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle metrical zàn 讚 (Skt. stotra) in praise of Avalokiteśvara, presented entirely in seven-character verse. The colophon names the translator as the bilingual monk Huìzhì 慧智 (the 慧智 resident at Fúshòujìsì 佛授記寺 in the Tiānhòu period, fl. 692–699), and the Taishō rubric “唐〔天后代〕…天后代佛授記寺翻經沙門慧智奉制譯” places the rendering during the Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 reign — i.e. the brief sponsorship of Indic translation at Fúshòujìsì associated with Bodhiruci (菩提流志) and Śikṣānanda (實叉難陀).
Abstract
The hymn enumerates Avalokiteśvara’s epithets and salvific powers in fifty-odd quatrains: he hears the cries of beings, wields upāya without obstruction, manifests in countless forms across the trichiliocosm, and rescues those who recall his name from the eight perils. Vocabulary is deliberately verse-bound — shéntōng 神通, cíbēi 慈悲, bǔtuóluòjiā 補陀洛迦 (Potalaka) — and the underlying Sanskrit is best identified as a free avalokiteśvara-stotra of the kind that proliferated in 7th-century North-Indian devotional literature, parallel to but not directly identical with the more famous Sapta-buddha-stotra or the Lokeśvara-śatakam. Huìzhì is the same Indian-trained interpreter who served as oral translator at Chánlínsì 禪林寺 for the Xiūchán yàojué 修禪要訣 (KR6q0116) recorded c. 677; the present hymn extends his attested activity into the Tiānhòu period (≥ 690). The work is consistently transmitted in Taishō and the Korean canon (TK30) and was extracted and reprinted in later Sòng anthologies of Avalokiteśvara hymns.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001 — passing reference among 7th-c. Avalokiteśvara hymnology.
Links
- CBETA T20n1052
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (750) — T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014.