Shèng Guānzìzài púsà yībǎibā míng jīng 聖觀自在菩薩一百八名經
Sūtra of the One Hundred and Eight Names of the Noble Avalokiteśvara by 天息災 (Tiānxīzāi, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle rendering of the Sanskrit Āryāvalokiteśvara-nāmāṣṭaśataka — the aṣṭottaraśatanāma “108-name” liturgical genre applied to Avalokiteśvara. The translator is Tiānxīzāi (天息災), a monk from the Indian kingdom of Jālandhara (惹爛馱羅) in the central Indus region, who was awarded the imperial honorific Míngjiào dàshī 明教大師 and entered the Sòng Yìjīng yuàn in 982. After 989 the same translator is renamed Fǎxián (法賢); the rendering must therefore predate 989, giving a tight 982–989 bracket.
Abstract
The sūtra opens with the Buddha at Avalokiteśvara’s palace on Mount Potalaka (補怛落迦山) — the standard stage-setting of the Avalokiteśvara cycle — and the assembly of countless devas, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, and kinnaras. The Buddha then expounds 108 epithets of the bodhisattva, each yielding specific worldly and supramundane fruits when recited. The genre is well-attested in Sanskrit and Tibetan: parallel aṣṭottaraśata-nāma texts exist for Tārā, Mañjuśrī, and Vajrapāṇi, and the present Avalokiteśvara recension corresponds — though not verbatim — to the surviving Sanskrit Aṣṭottaraśatakanāma-stotra preserved in Nepalese manuscript tradition. The Chinese vocabulary of the names (一切有情利樂者, 無畏施者, 蓮華手, etc.) is a relatively transparent rendering, retaining the Sanskrit semantic units rather than coining novel Buddhist Chinese. The work is one of three Avalokiteśvara hymnic / nominal sūtras introduced into the Sòng canon by Tiānxīzāi/Fǎxián and Dānapāla (施護) in the first decade of the Yìjīng yuàn’s output, alongside KR6j0252 and KR6j0254.
Translations and research
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.
- Bagchi, P. C. Le canon bouddhique en Chine, vol. 2. Paris: Geuthner, 1938 — older but still useful conspectus of Tiānxīzāi’s translations.
Links
- CBETA T20n1054
- Kanseki DB
- 天息災 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (990) — 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.