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善見律毘婆沙

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Text ID
KR6k0043
Date
489–489
Dynasty
蕭齊

Shànjiàn lǜ pípóshā 善見律毘婆沙

The Samantapāsādikā (Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Theravāda Vinaya) by 僧伽跋陀羅 (Saṃghabhadra, 譯)

About the work

An eighteen-fascicle Chinese translation of the Samantapāsādikā 善見律毘婆沙 — Buddhaghosa’s 5th-century commentary on the Pāli Vinaya-piṭaka, in the Pāli original a vast work of some 1500 pages of Roman-script edition (Takakusu & Nagai 1924–1947). The Chinese translation is partial — covering portions of the Pārājika-, Saṅghādisesa-, and skandhaka-commentaries — but is the only Theravāda exegetical text in Chinese. Translated at Guǎngzhōu’s Zhúlín-sì 竹林寺 in 489 CE under the Southern Qí 蕭齊 by the Sri Lankan or south-Indian vinayācārya Saṃghabhadra 僧伽跋陀羅 (僧伽跋陀羅).

Prefaces

The text is preceded by Saṃghabhadra’s translator’s preface, in which he identifies the source as a Pāli (or related Indic vernacular) aṭṭhakathā commentary brought from Sri Lanka. This is the earliest documented direct Theravāda transmission to China.

Abstract

The Shànjiàn lǜ pípóshā has unique importance in three respects: (i) it is the only Theravāda commentarial text in the Chinese canon, providing a direct connection between Chinese Buddhism and the Pāli exegetical tradition that is otherwise almost entirely absent; (ii) it preserves the famous list of dates for the early Buddhist councils that has been used for “long” and “dotted” chronology calculations of the Buddha’s date — the marginal māsas (dots) recording the years since the parinirvāṇa are the basis of the so-called dotted-record date for the Buddha’s death (e.g. Rouse, von Hinüber 1996); (iii) it provides Chinese-language access to the substantial aṭṭhakathā tradition of commentary on the Vinaya-piṭaka. The dotted-record evidence is the principal alternative to the long Indian tradition of dating the parinirvāṇa in the 6th-5th centuries BCE, and remains under active discussion (von Hinüber 1991, Bechert 1991–1992).

The translation work was undertaken at the request of the Chinese bhikṣu Sēng-yī 僧禕 of Guǎngzhōu, who was concerned to obtain a reliable Vinaya commentary at a time when the various Chinese Vinaya traditions were proliferating without adequate exegetical apparatus. The text proved to have only modest impact in mainstream Chinese Buddhism — the Theravāda was not perceived as canonically authoritative — but it was carefully studied by Vinaya specialists down to the Tang.

Translations and research

  • Bapat, P. V. & A. Hirakawa. Shan-Chien-P’i-P’o-Sha: A Chinese Version by Saṅghabhadra of Samantapāsādikā. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1970. — Full English translation with detailed comparison to the Pāli.
  • Demiéville, Paul. “À propos du concile de Vaiśālī.” T’oung-Pao 40 (1951): 239–296.
  • von Hinüber, Oskar. The Oldest Pāli Manuscript: Four Folios of the Vinaya-Piṭaka from the National Archives, Kathmandu. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1991.
  • Bechert, Heinz (ed.). The Dating of the Historical Buddha. 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991–1992. — On the dotted-record evidence.

Other points of interest

The dotted-record (眾聖點記 zhòng-shèng diǎn-jì) tradition, recorded in the Chinese postscript and elsewhere, holds that since the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa a single dot has been added each year by senior monks to the manuscript of the Vinaya. The number of dots reported by Saṃghabhadra in 489 CE is widely (but not universally) taken to support a parinirvāṇa date of 486 BCE. This is the principal source for the so-called “short chronology” of the Buddha’s life used in Sri Lankan Theravāda traditions.

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