Fànwǎng jīng 梵網經
The Brahmajāla Sūtra by 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
The Fànwǎng jīng 梵網經 — the foundational scripture of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva-precept tradition in East Asia — in two fascicles. Conventionally attributed to Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 (鳩摩羅什) at Cháng’ān 長安, c. 401–412 CE. The Sanskrit original (if any) is not preserved; modern philological scholarship (Hirakawa 1973, Funayama 1996, Groner 1990) has argued at length that the text is either an Indian work from the late-Indian Mahāyāna bodhisattva-vinaya tradition translated by Kumārajīva, or an early-medieval Chinese composition (an apocryphon, 偽經 wěijīng) attributed to Kumārajīva to confer canonical authority. The current scholarly consensus (Funayama 1996, 2002) treats it as a 5th-century Chinese composition, probably from the Kumārajīva translation circle, that combines genuine Indian Mahāyāna bodhisattva-saṃvara material with creative Chinese expansions. The text has 58 chapters in total (only the last two are preserved in Chinese — the bodhisattva-prātimokṣa chapter), which is itself a problematic feature.
Prefaces
Translator’s colophon: 姚秦三藏法師鳩摩羅什譯. The text opens with the introduction-narrative: the Buddha Vairocana (盧舍那 Lúshènà), seated in the Lotus-Treasury Realm (蓮華藏世界), expounds to the assembled bodhisattvas the ten heavy precepts (十重戒 shízhòngjiè) and forty-eight light precepts (四十八輕戒 sìshíbā qīngjiè) of the bodhisattva. The cosmological setting — Vairocana in the Lotus-Treasury cosmos — is the same as the Avataṃsaka-sūtra and is one of the principal evidences of the text’s late composition / Chinese editorial revision.
Abstract
The Fànwǎng jīng is the scripture of the East Asian Mahāyāna bodhisattva-precepts. Every Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese Mahāyāna Buddhist who has taken bodhisattva-precepts since the 6th century has done so on the basis of this text. The jiè-běn 戒本 (precept-text) of the lower fascicle — the fasc. 2 — is the bodhisattva-prātimokṣa of East Asian Mahāyāna, comprising:
- Ten heavy precepts (重戒): not killing, not stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, no selling intoxicants, no discussing the faults of the four-fold Buddhist community, no praising oneself / disparaging others, no stinginess in giving, no anger, no slander of the Three Jewels.
- Forty-eight light precepts (輕戒): a more elaborate set covering teaching, ritual, food, robes, medicine, social conduct, and political-economic obligations.
The text became canonical for East Asian Mahāyāna ordinations — both for monastics (taken supplementarily over the prātimokṣa) and for laypersons (taken as the central Mahāyāna ethical commitment). Its institutional impact has been enormous: the precepts shaped Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese vegetarianism, the prohibition of monks taking civil office, the Pure-Land devotional ethic, and the entire culture of late-medieval and modern East Asian Buddhist ethics.
The doctrinal framework of the text is distinctively Mahāyāna: the precepts are not merely behavioural prohibitions but expressions of the bodhisattva-vow (菩薩誓願), undertaken on the basis of the bodhicitta “mind of awakening” and aimed at the universal salvation of all sentient beings. This framing of monastic discipline within the bodhisattva-path is the principal innovation of the East Asian Mahāyāna over against the Indian prātimokṣa tradition. The doctrinal discussion is given canonical form in the major commentaries — those of 智顗 Zhìyǐ (KR6k0078), 法藏 Fǎzàng (KR6k0080), 義寂 Yì Jì (KR6k0082), 太賢 Tàixián (KR6k0083), and many others.
Translations and research
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Bommōkyō: shūshu kara honkyō no seiritsu made 梵網經: 修書から本經の成立まで. Kyoto: Bukkyō shuppan, 1996. — The principal modern study of the text’s date and composition, arguing for a 5th-century Chinese origin.
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. “The Acceptance of Buddhist Precepts by the Chinese in the Fifth Century.” Journal of Asian History 36.1 (2002): 1–24.
- Groner, Paul. “The Fan-wang ching and Monastic Discipline in Japanese Tendai.” In Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. R. E. Buswell Jr., Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990, pp. 251–290.
- Groner, Paul. Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School. Berkeley, 1984; rev. Honolulu, 2000.
- Buswell, Robert E. Jr. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990.
- Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Bukkyō ni okeru zai no shikō: shoki bukkyō kara daijō bukkyō ni itaru 仏教における罪の思考. Kyoto: Heirakuji, 1973.
- Demiéville, Paul. “Le bouddhisme chinois.” In Encyclopédie de la Pléiade I, Paris: Gallimard, 1970.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Status of Mo-ho chih-kuan in the Tien-tai Tradition.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 10.2 (1987): 75–112. — On the Chinese reception.
Other points of interest
The text’s fictional canonical placement as the “fascicles 10 and 11” of a notional 61-fascicle Fànwǎngjīng is now generally taken (Funayama 1996) as evidence of its apocryphal status: the title 梵網 Fànwǎng (Skt. Brahmajāla, “Brahma’s Net”) is borrowed from the well-known Pāli Brahmajāla-sutta (DN 1) — but the present text bears no relation in content to the Pāli sūtra of the same name, suggesting the title was chosen to confer respectability. Despite (or because of) its apocryphal status, the text became the most influential single Vinaya text in East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.