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受菩薩戒儀

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Text ID
KR6k0248
Date
700–1000
Dynasty
陳

Shòu púsà jiè yí 受菩薩戒儀

A Code for Receiving the Bodhisattva Precepts by 慧思 (Huìsī, attributed)

About the work

A single-fascicle bodhisattva-precept conferral manual transmitted under the attribution of Nányuè Huìsī 南嶽慧思 (慧思, 515–577), the Chén (Southern Dynasties)-period Tiāntái patriarch and teacher of Tiāntái Zhìyǐ 天台智顗 (538–597). Author signature in the source: Nányuè shāmén shì Huìsī zhuàn 南岳沙門釋　惠思　撰. The catalog adopts the traditional Chén-period attribution.

Opening doctrinal frame

The opening establishes the standard bodhisattva-precept preliminaries. Asking the candidate to develop xìnxīn 信心 (faith), the master quotes the Huáyán — xìn wéi dào yuán gōngdé mǔ 信為道源功德母 (“faith is the root of the way, the mother of merit”) — and explains the doctrinal structure: “of the three trainings (precept-meditation-wisdom), precept comes first… The five precepts and bāzhāi gain rebirth as a human or deva; the ten precepts and full upasampadā exit the loveriver of the passions and gain arhat-fruit; the bodhisattva precepts gain Buddhafruit.” The Fànwǎng jīng is then quoted: “all who have a xīn are to receive the Buddhaprecepts; sentient beings receive the Buddhaprecepts and enter the position of all Buddhas.” The doctrinal thesis: every sentient being already innately possesses the bodhisattva precepts (quánxīn shì jiè, quánjiè shì xīn 全心是戒。全戒是心), and the rite serves only to make the latent precept-substance manifest.

Structural Division

The fascicle proceeds through standard subsections: invocation of the jièshī 戒師; the xìnxīn exhortation; the qǐngshèng 請聖 (invoking the saints); the chànhuǐ (confession); the fāxīn (arousing the bodhisattva-mind); the wènzhē 問遮 (interrogation about disqualifying offences); the zhèngshòu 正受 (formal precept-conferral); and the closing fāyuàn 發願.

Abstract

The attribution to Huìsī 慧思 of the Chén period is doubtful on textual-historical grounds: the Fànwǎng jīng, on which the manual heavily depends, is now widely accepted as a 5thcentury Chinese composition that postdates Huìsī’s principal teaching activity in the earlytomid 6th century only by a small margin (the Fànwǎng is conventionally dated ca. 440–480), and the use of fully-developed Fànwǎng citations together with the elaborate doctrinal-procedural framework suggests a Táng or even Sòng compilation projected backward onto the Nányuè patriarch. The work is not noted in the principal Sui-Táng catalogues (Lìdài sānbǎo jì, Dàzhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù); its first secure attestation is in the late-Táng / early-Sòng. Composition of the received recension is therefore plausibly to be located between ca. 700 and ca. 1000 (the receved yí is positioned in this window in the Tiāntái-school catalogues); the Chén attribution should be read as a hagiographicgenealogical one. notBefore–notAfter are accordingly set 700–1000.

The work is preserved in the Xùzàng as the first of three classical bodhisattva-precept conferral manuals (X1085–X1087 = KR6k0248, KR6k0249 = Zhànrán’s, KR6k0250 = the Chéngzhào / Dàoxuānattributed one). Together they constitute the principal pre-Sòng heritage on which all later Chinese bodhisattva-precept manuals depend.

Translations and research

  • Paul Groner, “The Fànwǎng jīng and Monastic Discipline in Japanese Tendai” (in P. Buswell ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, 1990) — for the Fànwǎng tradition’s bodhisattva-precept reception.
  • Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang (Cambridge, 1987) — for the early-Tang bodhisattva-precept context.

Other points of interest

  • The Huìsī attribution remains debated; modern Tiāntái studies (e.g. Daniel Stevenson, Brook Ziporyn) generally treat the work as a later composition that consolidated the early-medieval bodhisattva-precept tradition under the Nányuè patriarch’s name.

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