Dìzàng púsà yíguǐ 地藏菩薩儀軌
Ritual Manual of the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha by 輸婆迦羅 (Shūpójiāluó, Śubhakarasiṃha, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Tang Esoteric ritual manual translated by Śubhakarasiṃha (輸婆迦羅, 637–735) — the same translator known elsewhere in the canon as 善無畏. The orthography 輸婆迦羅 is the more direct phonetic transliteration of Śubhakarasiṃha (whereas 善無畏 is the Chinese semantic paraphrase, “Good–Without–Fear”). Colophon: 中天竺輸婆迦羅奉詔譯. The CANWWW entry for T1158 misreads the Chinese name as 囉婆迦羅 — the editors should be referred to the corrected reading 輸婆迦羅.
The dating bracket follows Śubhakarasiṃha’s translation activity at Cháng’ān (716 arrival to death in 735).
Abstract
The sūtra opens with Śākyamuni Buddha at Kharādīya-mountain (佉羅提耶山, Kharādīya-parvata) — the canonical Kṣitigarbha-cult mountain — accompanied by innumerable Kṣitigarbha-bodhisattvas (a multi-Kṣitigarbha mandala-frame), ten koṭi-fold of bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs, and the eight classes of devas, nāgas, and aṣṭau-sena protectors, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of beings. Kṣitigarbha (地藏) bares his right shoulder, kneels with his right knee on the ground, and announces that he wishes to expound a spirit-spell for the welfare of beings. The text then proceeds to the operative ritual programme: the mantra, the mudrā-cycle, the visualisation of Kṣitigarbha in his ascetic-monastic form holding the cintāmaṇi and the khakkhara staff, and the siddhi-applications including the destruction of evil-destination karma. The text is one of the canonical Tang sources of the Kṣitigarbha cult in its Esoteric-ritual form, complementing the more prominent narrative-and-vow Kṣitigarbha sūtras (T412 Dìzàng púsà běnyuàn jīng and T413 Dìzàng shílún jīng). The pairing of Kṣitigarbha with Kharādīya-mountain reflects the Indic-Buddhist locus classicus that, by the late-Tang, had been reterritorialised onto Mount Jiǔhuá 九華山 in southern Anhui as the Chinese Kṣitigarbha-cult centre.
Translations and research
- Zhiru. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007. (Authoritative monograph on the Kṣitigarbha cult in Chinese Buddhism.)
- Sundberg, Jeffrey, with Rolf Giebel. “The Life of the Tang Court Monk Vajrabodhi as Chronicled by Lü Xiang (呂向).” Pacific World, 3rd series, 13 (2011): 129–222. (Includes Śubhakarasiṃha contextualisation.)
- Chou Yi-liang. “Tantrism in China.” HJAS 8.3/4 (1945): 241–332.
Links
- CBETA T20n1158
- Kanseki DB
- 輸婆迦羅 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (720) — 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.