Yújiā jíyào yànkǒu shīshí qǐjiào Ānántuó yuányóu 瑜伽集要焰口施食起教阿難陀緣由
Origin-Story of Ānanda Through Whom the Yoga Compendium Burning-Mouth Food-Bestowal Teaching Was First Set in Motion by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle “origin-narrative” or nidāna text attributed to Amoghavajra (不空). The document is a near-verbatim reproduction of the first half of KR6j0549 (T1318) — the Burning-Mouth narrative + the abhiṣeka-monopoly clause + the maṇḍala-construction prescription — broken off at the moment the ācārya takes up the censer to begin the rite proper. It functions as the prologue to the ritual proper given in KR6j0549 (T1318) and KR6j0551 (T1320), and was extracted as a self-standing text precisely so that it could be read as the narrative frame for a Yúqié yàn-kǒu performance.
Abstract
The text supplies the qǐ-jiào yuán-yóu 起教緣由 — the “originating teaching cause” — of the Yúqié yàn-kǒu rite: the night-vision of the Burning-Mouth ghost; Ānanda’s terror; the Buddha’s revelation that he himself, in a former life as a brāhmaṇa, received from Avalokiteśvara the Wúliàng wēidé zì-zài guāng-míng rúlái tuó-luó-ní fǎ 無量威德自在光明如來陀羅尼法; and the Buddha’s enumeration of the merits of the rite for both the bestower and the recipients. The narrative includes the long bodhicitta-arousing passage in which the ācārya announces that the rite is undertaken “to satisfy the great vow of saving sentient beings; to crush all karma; to seek the unsurpassed Way; and to ferry the inhabitants of the lower destinies across the sea of suffering.” The list of recipients of the universal offering is given in full — pretas, Yama’s bureaucracy, brāhmaṇa-sages, all kinds of bhūta-spirits, fugitive ghosts of the wilds, ancestors of past kalpas, bhikṣu and bhikṣuṇī not yet liberated, parents of past lives.
The Buddha then specifies the conditions for transmission of the rite — only by an ācārya who has received the Mahāvairocana five-wisdom abhiṣeka in the great maṇḍala — and prescribes the construction of the ritual ground, the planting of the four-corner fire-flame jewels carrying the four nāyaka-deities (Buddha-uṣṇīṣa NE, Mahā-karuṇā SE, Cintāmaṇi-cakra SW, Vijayoṣṇīṣa NW), the consecration with scented water, the Samaya altar outside the main maṇḍala, and the ācārya’s ascent of the eastern seat with the censer to begin the qǐ-qǐng invocation — at which point the text breaks off with the closing sentence 瑜伽集要焰口施食起教阿難陀緣由竟 (“End of the Origin-Story of Ānanda for the Yoga Compendium Burning-Mouth Food-Bestowal Teaching”).
The text is virtually identical, line-for-line, to the opening section of KR6j0549 (T1318); the divergences are minor verbal variants (e.g. T1319 yánmóguǐjiè 焰魔鬼界 vs. T1318 yánmóguǐjiè 焰摩鬼界; T1319 yuǎn 達 [for dá] vs. T1318 yuǎn 遠) and one accidental omission/inclusion (T1319 lacks the parenthetical instruction 壇法聖眾位次別在教文從師稟受 found at the corresponding point in T1318). The textual relationship is best understood not as two independent translations of an Indic original but as two recensions of the same Tang/post-Tang ritual document — T1319 being the prologue extracted for liturgical use, T1318 being the prologue plus the full rite. T1320 KR6j0551 is a third, fully developed, redaction of the rite alone, omitting the prologue.
The Bùkōng attribution is conventional and shares the doubts attaching to T1318 (cf. Lye 2003); the dating bracket (746–774) reflects the lower bound established by Bùkōng’s translation of the parent narrative T1313, with the proviso that the document as currently extant may be a later Tang elaboration.
Translations and research
- Orzech, Charles D. “Saving the Burning-Mouth Hungry Ghost.” In Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr., 278–283. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
- Orzech, Charles D. “Fang Yankou and Pudu: Translation, Metaphor, and Religious Identity.” In Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual, ed. Livia Kohn and Harold Roth, 213–234. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002.
- Lye Hsiao-Lan. Feeding Ghosts: A Study of the Yuqie Yankou Rite. PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2003. (Discusses the textual relationship of T1318 / T1319 / T1320.)