Módēngjiā jīng 摩登伽經
Mātaṅga-sūtra / Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna — Sūtra of the Mātaṅga by 竺律炎 (Zhú Lǜyán, 譯) and 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle Indian narrative-and-astrological sūtra translated jointly by Zhú Lǜ-yán (竺律炎, an Indian bhadanta working in Wǔ-chāng) and Zhī Qiān (支謙) under the Wú kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period (c. 222–253 CE). The Sanskrit prototype is the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna (also titled Mātaṅgīsūtra) — extant in Sanskrit (recovered from Central Asian fragments and from the Divyāvadāna tradition), in Tibetan, and in three Chinese versions. The text is doubly important: as a narrative anchor (the famous tale of Ānanda seduced by the caṇḍāla maiden Prakṛti / 性女) and as the earliest substantial Indian astronomical text extant in Chinese, providing the 27-nakṣatra system and lunar-month structure to Chinese readers some five centuries before KR6j0530 (T1299) the Xiù-yào-jīng.
Abstract
The text opens with the classical Ānanda-Prakṛti narrative: Ānanda begs water from a low-caste caṇḍāla (栴陀羅 zhāntuóluó) girl at a well; she falls passionately in love and her mother, a magical practitioner, casts a vidyā-spell to bring Ānanda to the house. The Buddha breaks the spell, the girl ordains as a nun, and the Buddha then expounds her past karma, the origin of the four-caste system (which he ridicules as having no real basis in birth), and finally — most importantly for the present catalogue — a detailed astronomical and astrological exposition uttered by an ancient brāhmaṇa sage named Tiger-Ear (虎耳, Skt. Śārdūlakarṇa) at a sacrifice presided over by Mātaṅga’s father.
The astronomical material occupies most of fascicle 2 and is the earliest Chinese rendering of:
- the twenty-eight nakṣatras with their presiding deities, sizes, and asterism-shapes;
- the division of the year into seasons and months;
- the dark and bright halves of the month;
- predictions and practical electional rules — for marriage, travel, study, and royal undertakings — based on the day-nakṣatra.
Bill Mak (2015) has argued in detail that the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna’s astronomical chapter represents an Indian observational tradition older than the Vedāṅga-jyotiṣa’s redaction and may preserve a fragment of pre-Hellenistic Indian astronomy. The text thus provides a terminus ante quem of c. 250 CE for the Indian 28-nakṣatra system in its developed form.
The translators’ attribution is given in the Wú colophon: 吳天竺三藏竺律炎共支謙譯 (“translated jointly by the Indian Tripiṭaka-master Zhú Lǜ-yán and Zhī Qiān, of Wú”). 竺律炎 (also written 竺將炎, 竺持炎) was an Indian monk active at Wǔ-chāng under Wú Sūn-quán’s patronage; 支謙 was the great Yuèzhī-Han literary translator. The dating bracket follows their joint Wú-period activity.
The text is canonically the second of three Chinese parallels of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna / Mātaṅgīsūtra cycle — see Related Texts below.
Structural Division
Following CANWWW (Wittern) for T21N1300:
- 度性女品 Dù xìng-nǚ pǐn — Conversion of the Caṇḍāla Maiden
- 明往緣品 Míng wǎngyuán pǐn — Past-life Karma Explained
- 示真實品 Shì zhēnshí pǐn — Disclosure of the Truth
- 眾相問品 Zhòng xiàngwèn pǐn — The Assembly’s Questions
- 說星圖品 Shuō xīngtú pǐn — Star-chart Discourse
- 觀災祥品 Guān zāixiáng pǐn — Observation of Calamity and Auspice
- 明時分品 Míng shífēn pǐn — On the Divisions of Time
Related texts (CANWWW cross-references, normalised to KR ids):
- KR6i0182 Fóshuō Módèngnǚ jīng 佛說摩鄧女經 (T14n0551, transl. 安世高 Ān Shìgāo, Hou-Hàn) — the earliest Chinese parallel, narrative-only.
- KR6i0183 Fóshuō Módèngnǚ jiěxíng zhōng liùshì jīng 佛說摩登女解形中六事經 (T14n0552, anon.) — short variant.
- KR6j0532 Shè-tóu-jiàn tài-zǐ èr-shí-bā xiù jīng 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 (T21n1301, transl. 竺法護 Dharmarakṣa) — the longer Western Jin parallel of the same Sanskrit prototype.
Translations and research
- Mak, Bill M. 麥文彪. “The Date and Nature of Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna — Investigation Through the Earliest Source.” History of Science in South Asia 3 (2015): 1–31. Demonstrates that the astronomical chapter is one of the earliest Indian astronomical texts of its type to have survived.
- Mukhopadhyaya, Sujitkumar (ed.). The Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna. Santiniketan: Visvabharati, 1954 — critical edition of the Sanskrit recension, with extensive comparative apparatus to the three Chinese parallels.
- Yano, Michio 矢野道雄. Mikkyō senseijutsu 密教占星術. Rev. ed., Tokyo: Tōyō shoin, 2013 — chapter 1 surveys the Mātaṅga astronomical material and its place in Indian jyotiṣa.
- Zenba Makoto 善波周. “Matōga-gyō no tenmon-rekisū ni tsuite” 摩登伽經の天文曆數について. Tōyō gakuhō 36, no. 4 (1954): 18–48 — close technical study of the astronomical chapter.
- Kotyk, Jeffrey. “Indian and Chinese Astronomy in the Tang.” Religions 13.3 (2022): 261. Discusses the role of T1300 / T1301 in the early stratum of Chinese knowledge of Indian astronomy.
- Niu Weixing 鈕衛星. Xī wàng Fàn-tiān 西望梵天. Shanghai jiāotōng, 2004 — sustained discussion of the Mātaṅga / Śārdūlakarṇa astronomical material.