Fó shuō zhòu chǐ jīng 佛說呪齒經
Sūtra of the Spell for Teeth, Spoken by the Buddha by 曇無蘭 (Tánwúlán, 譯)
About the work
A very short healing-sūtra translated by Tánwúlán (曇無蘭; also 竺曇無蘭 Zhú Tánwúlán, Dharmaratna, fl. 381–395), a prolific Indian-monk translator of the Eastern-Jìn period responsible for some 110 short sūtra renderings during a brief period of activity at Yángzhōu. The text is one of three (or four) anonymous-or-quasi-anonymous zhòujīng (呪經) healing-sūtras of the same milieu preserved in Taishō vol. 21 — namely KR6j0557 T1326 (plague), the present T1327 (toothache), KR6j0559 T1328 (eye-disease), and the related T1329 (infant illness) — sharing the same stylistic profile of native-style Chinese verse-frame, transcribed dhāraṇī-string without Sanskrit reconstruction, and ritual-instruction body.
Abstract
The text consists, in its entirety, of a triśaraṇa invocation extended to Śāriputra and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana, an apotropaic invocation of Bodhi-citta-Awareness (Juéyì 覺意), a quasi-narrative cosmographic clause about a worm-king (chóngwáng 虫王) named Chāhǒu 差吼 (perhaps Skt. Cikhalla “the Howler” or Cāhu, but the transcription resists confident reconstruction) dwelling in the famous Gandhamādana mountain (Jiàntuómóhēyǎn shān 健陀摩呵衍山, Skt. Gandhamādanamahāyāna-parvata — though mahāyāna may here be a reading-error for Mahāparvata) in the north, and a clinical-magical command:
“Homage to the Buddha; homage to the Dharma; homage to the Bhikṣu-Saṃgha; homage to the bhikṣus Śāriputra and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana; homage to Bodhi-mind. Far to the north of [the world] is the Gandhamādana mountain. There is a worm-king there named Chāhǒu. He is dwelling now in the teeth of so-and-so [the patient]; I now send forth an envoy: do not dare eat the teeth of so-and-so, nor the worms in the tooth-roots, nor the worms beside the tooth-roots! If they do not at once descend into the vessel, may [their] heads be split into seven parts, like the Kuluvṛṣa twig. The Brahmā-deva enjoins this spell. Homage to the Buddha! Make my recitation come to fruition as wished.”
The text reflects the universal pre-modern theory of toothache as the work of dental worms — a doctrine documented from the Akkadian Worm and the Toothache tablet (c. 1800 BCE) through Dioscorides and Indian Suśruta-saṃhitā down to early-modern Chinese, Tibetan, and European medicine. The “Gandhamādana mountain in the north” is the stock Indian Buddhist locus for the origin-place of demonic insects (cf. the parallel Bhṛṅgāra-mahā-yakṣinī tradition); the “split into seven parts” formula is the standard South-Asian cursing-figure (saptadhā mūrdhānaṃ) employed in yakṣa-binding mantras throughout the Pāli and Sanskrit literature. Strickmann (2002) emphasises the conjunction of these Indic medical-demonological topoi with native-Chinese cord-knotting and amulet-inscription practice as the diagnostic feature of the early-medieval zhòujīng genre.
The dating bracket follows Tánwúlán’s documented translation period (381–395 at Yángzhōu).
Translations and research
- Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Edited by Bernard Faure. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. (Principal study; cites T1327 for the dental-worm doctrine.)
- Salguero, C. Pierce. Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.