Tánwúdé lǜbù zájiémó 曇無德律部雜羯磨
Miscellaneous Karmavācanā of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya Section (also Záyàn jiémó 雜羯磨) by 康僧鎧 (Kāng Sēngkǎi / Saṃghavarman, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle compendium of karmavācanā (羯磨 jiémó) drawn from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya tradition (曇無德 Tánwúdé transliterates Dharmaguptaka), translated by Kāng Sēngkǎi 康僧鎧 (康僧鎧, Saṃghavarman, fl. mid-3rd c.) at Luòyáng under the Cáo Wèi 曹魏 dynasty around 252 CE. The text is the earliest Dharmaguptaka karmavācanā compendium in Chinese — preceding the parent Sìfēn lǜ of Buddhayaśas (KR6k0009, 410–412 CE) by over 150 years — and constituted the practical Vinaya handbook used by the earliest Chinese ordination assemblies.
Prefaces
Translator’s colophon attributing translation to 曹魏康僧鎧譯. No formal preface survives. The text is documented in Sēngyòu’s Chū sānzàng jìjí (T55n2145) j. 2 and 3.
Abstract
The Tánwúdé lǜ-bù zá-jiémó has unique historical importance: it is the earliest extant text of any Vinaya tradition in Chinese, predating the four complete Vinayas. According to Daoxuan’s Sìfēn lǜ shānbǔ suíjī jiémó (KR6k0046), the first formally-conducted Chinese upasaṃpadā ordination — that of Zhū Shìxíng 朱士行 in 250 CE at Luòyáng — used Saṃghavarman’s karmavācanā. The text therefore stands at the institutional origin of monasticism in China. Its Dharmaguptaka school identification, established by the title-element 曇無德, anticipates the eventual canonical primacy of the Dharmaguptaka tradition in East Asia.
The translator Saṃghavarman (康僧鎧 Kāng Sēngkǎi) is also credited with the seminal Pure-Land translation Wúliàngshòu jīng 無量壽經 (T12n0360, Sukhāvatī-vyūha), although recent scholarship (Nattier 2008) questions that attribution — proposing that the actual translator of the Wúliàngshòu jīng was Buddhabhadra-Bǎoyún 寶雲 in the 5th century rather than Kāng Sēngkǎi in the 3rd. The Tánwúdé jiémó attribution, by contrast, is generally accepted as authentic.
Translations and research
- Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Ritsuzō no kenkyū 律藏の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1960.
- Yifa, Bhikṣuṇī. The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002. — Discussion of the early Dharmaguptaka transmission in China.
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2008. — On Kāng Sēngkǎi’s translation oeuvre.
Links
- CBETA T22n1432
- 康僧鎧 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (252, 530): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. (source)
- Kanseki DB