Fó shuō Báchú zuìzhàng zhòuwáng jīng 佛說拔除罪障呪王經
Sūtra of the Spell-King for Removing Karmic Obstructions
by 義淨 (譯)
About the work
A short single-juan dhāraṇī-sūtra translated by 義淨 Yìjìng (635–713) after his return from India in 695. The colophon — 唐三藏法師義淨奉制譯 — and the polished Tang translation idiom locate this within Yìjìng’s late translation career at Chang’an’s Dàfúxiān-sì or Tiānhòu-shàngjiā-sì bureaux, c. 700–711. CANWWW gives the alternate title 除罪障呪.
Abstract
The Buddha is in the Pure Abode heaven (淨居天 Śuddhāvāsa), expounding the subtle dharma to a great assembly. Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva-mahāsattva rises, bares his right shoulder, kneels with palms joined, and addresses the Buddha. He notes that this profound dharma-gate is exceedingly hard to find; in the future age of the five corruptions, beings of evil karma — full of greed, anger, and delusion, deceitful, faithless, indulging in non-dharma, neglecting the precepts, given to flattery — will need a powerful vidyā whose ritual application can transcend the polluted age and confer awakening. He requests the Buddha to proclaim such a spell-king. The Buddha pronounces the Báchú zuìzhàng dhāraṇī. Recorded in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù under Yìjìng’s translations; Nanjio N0499.
Translations and research
For Yìjìng’s translation work broadly:
- Lahiri, Latika. Chinese Monks in India: Biography of Eminent Monks Who Went to the Western World in Search of the Law during the Great T’ang Dynasty. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986. — translation of Yìjìng’s biographical Dà Táng xīyù qiúfǎ gāosēng zhuàn.
- Wang Bangwei 王邦維 (ed.), Dà Táng xīyù qiúfǎ gāosēng zhuàn jiàozhù, Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988.