Fó shuō chēngzàn rúlái gōngdé shénzhòu jīng 佛說稱讚如來功德神呪經
Sūtra of the Divine Spell for Praising the Merits of the Tathāgatas by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Táng translation by 義淨 Yìjìng (635–713). The colophon “唐三藏法師義淨奉制譯” places it among his imperially-commissioned translations after his return from India in 695. The Taishō editors mark the parallel “[No. 1348]” — i.e. the work is Yìjìng’s re-translation of the Indic text first rendered as KR6j0578 Shí’èr fómíng by 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta in the Suí. The dating bracket here corresponds to Yìjìng’s most active translation period (700–712).
Abstract
The frame is the standard Vulture-Peak setting with 1,250 bhikṣus and 12,000 bodhisattvas. The Buddha addresses Maitreya: present-tense in all ten directions are Tathāgatas of supremely auspicious names; recollecting and uniting one’s heart with these names effaces karmic obstructions and breaks the heavy crime of broken precepts. The directional roll-call follows: Wúgòu-guāng 無垢光 (East), Zhòng-biàn zhuāngyán 眾辯莊嚴 (Southeast), Wúgòu yuè-zhuàngqí-wáng 無垢月幢旗王 (South), Guāng-yàn zhuāngyán 光焰莊嚴 (Southwest), Bǎo-shèng 寶勝 (West), Jùmólúo-guāng 俱摩羅光 (Northwest), Wúwèi wúgòu-chèn 無畏無垢稱 (North), Lí bù-wèi cǒng-jù yǒu dà-míngchèn 離怖畏悚懼有大名稱 (Northeast), Shīzǐ fènxùn-yì 師子奮迅意 (Zenith), Jīnhuá-guāng 金華光 (Nadir).
Yìjìng’s translation idiom is more economical than Jñānagupta’s; he renders the long Indian Tathāgata-epithets with greater syntactic discipline and uses the standard Táng transcription convention. The text is recorded in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù under his fèngzhì translations. Comparison with KR6j0578 is one of the more useful test-cases for studying Táng re-translation practice; Yìjìng was certainly aware of Jñānagupta’s earlier version. Nanjio N0779.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.