Púsà yīngluò běnyè jīng 菩薩瓔珞本業經
The Sūtra of the Bodhisattva’s Necklace of Original Action by 竺佛念 (Zhú Fóniàn, 譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle scripture on the bodhisattva-path, attributed to Zhú Fóniàn 竺佛念 (竺佛念) in the late 4th century — but generally regarded by modern scholarship as a Chinese-composed apocryphon of the late 4th to early 5th century, attributed to Zhú Fóniàn for canonical authority. 瓔珞 yīngluò (Skt. muktāhāra) “necklace” — a metaphor for the strung-together precepts and practices that adorn the bodhisattva.
Prefaces
Translator’s colophon: 姚秦涼州沙門竺佛念譯.
Abstract
The Yīngluò běnyè jīng is one of the principal Chinese Mahāyāna apocrypha dealing with the bodhisattva-path. The text systematises the bodhisattva-bhūmis (the 52-stage progressive path: 10 xìn faiths + 10 zhù abodes + 10 xíng practices + 10 huíxiàng dedications + 10 dì stages + děngjué equal-enlightenment + miàojué wonderful-enlightenment) — a schema that became canonical for East Asian Mahāyāna and is the basis of, e.g., the Tiāntái and Huāyán expositions of the bodhisattva-path. The text also includes important material on the bodhisattva-precepts, complementing the Fànwǎng jīng tradition. Modern scholarship (Funayama 1996, Bumbacher 2007) has carefully analysed the text’s Chinese composition, dating it to the same general 5th-century circle that produced the Fànwǎng jīng itself.
Translations and research
- 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.
- Bumbacher, Stephan Peter. The Fragments of the Dao-Mu. Bern, 2007.
- Buswell, Robert E. Jr. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu, 1990.