百論

Bǎi lùn 百論

Treatise in a Hundred [Verses] (Śataśāstra) by 提婆菩薩 (Típó púsà / Āryadeva, 造), 婆藪開士 (Pósōu kāishì / *Vasu, 釋), and 鳩摩羅什 (Jiūmóluóshí / Kumārajīva, 譯)

About the work

A two-fascicle Mādhyamaka treatise attributed to Āryadeva 提婆 (c. 175–250 CE), the principal disciple of Nāgārjuna, with prose commentary by Vasu (婆藪開士, the kāishì “open-scholar” being a Chinese gloss for bodhisattva-class lay-doctrinal master). The Indic root-text is conventionally identified as the Śataśāstra “Hundred-Treatise” (or, in some scholarly proposals, a related catuḥśataka-class text); the Chinese version was translated by Kumārajīva at Cháng’ān in Hóngshǐ 弘始 6 (404 CE), and the preface ascribed to 僧肇 僧肇 (preserved at the head of T1569) supplies the principal early-Chinese testimony to the work’s composition. T1569 is the second of the canonical “Three Treatises” (三論), together with KR6m0001 Zhōng lùn and KR6m0008 Shí’èrmén lùn, that became the textual foundation of the Sānlùn 三論 school of Chinese Buddhism.

Structural Division

CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. Related texts per CANWWW: KR6m0014 Guǎngbǎi lùn běn 廣百論本 (T30n1570), KR6m0015 Dàshèng guǎngbǎi lùn shìlùn 大乘廣百論釋論 (T30n1571).

Abstract

T1569 transmits a polemical Mādhyamaka treatise refuting brahmanical, Sāṃkhya, Vaiśeṣika, and Buddhist Lesser-Vehicle positions in a series of ten doctrinal sections (pǐn 品), each developed as a debate with a named tīrthika opponent. Sēngzhào’s preface narrates that “eight hundred and more years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, there appeared a great householder-bodhisattva named Típó (Āryadeva), of subtle mind, lofty bearing, whose Way illuminated his time” — supplying the standard early-Chinese hagiographic frame for the Śataśāstra. The preface also gives the date and location of Kumārajīva’s translation and identifies Vasu (婆藪) as the prose commentator.

The Indic original of T1569 is no longer extant in Sanskrit, and there is no Tibetan translation; T1569 is therefore the sole canonical witness to this particular layer of the early-Mādhyamaka commentarial tradition on Āryadeva. Modern scholarship is divided on whether the text-as-translated by Kumārajīva represents the full Śataśāstra or only one half (a “Hundred Verses” + “Outer Hundred” structure has been proposed on the basis of citation evidence in Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti, with T1569 representing only the inner half). The longer recension — including the verses of the so-called Catuḥśataka — is preserved in 玄奘 Xuánzàng’s later KR6m0014 Guǎngbǎi lùn běn 廣百論本 (T1570) and KR6m0015 Dàshèng guǎngbǎi lùn shìlùn 大乘廣百論釋論 (T1571) with 護法菩薩 (Dharmapāla)‘s commentary, which together cover the full Catuḥśataka and represent the second great wave of Mādhyamaka transmission into China.

The Sān-lùn-school reading of T1569 — going back to Sēngzhào and 僧叡 Sēngruì and culminating in 吉藏 Jízàng’s KR6m0013 Bǎilùn shū 百論疏 (T1827) — treats the text as a doctrinal polemic forming the second pillar of a three-part Mādhyamaka curriculum: Zhōng lùn (philosophy of negation), Bǎi lùn (polemic against opponents), Shí’èrmén lùn (introductory schema).

Translations and research

• Tucci, Giuseppe. Pre-Diṅnāga Buddhist Texts on Logic from Chinese Sources. Gaekwad Oriental Series 49. Baroda, 1929. (Includes the first Western translation of T1569.)
• Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. (Foundational English study of T1569 in its Sān-lùn context.)
• Lang, Karen C. Āryadeva on the Bodhisattva’s Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge. Indiske Studier 7. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1986. (Standard English study of the Catuḥśataka; substantial discussion of T1569’s relation to the Catuḥśataka.)
• Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Hyaku-ron yakuchū 百論訳註. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1986.
• Kanakura Enshō 金倉円照. Indo no jisshōronshi-jō no chii インドの十勝論史上の地位 (1944). (Discussion of the Śata-śāstra tradition.)

Other points of interest

The Sēngzhào preface to T1569 is one of the principal pre-Tang Chinese-Buddhist documents on the figure of Āryadeva, and the only one that quotes the dramatic legend of Āryadeva’s mortal wounding by a tīrthika opponent (略覩玄旨。妙絕當時。聞者敬而心折). The preface also alludes to the doctrinal method of “establishing the truth of emptiness through eight hundred negations” — a count that may be linked to the structure of the Catuḥśataka (400 verses × 2 = 800) and supports the philological argument that the Indic Śataśāstra tradition was conceived as a doubled work of which only half reached Cháng’ān in Kumārajīva’s manuscript.

Links

• CBETA
• Kanseki DB
• Dazangthings date evidence (404, 405): [ Kimura 1986 ] Kimura Senshō 木村宣彰. “Kumarajū no yakukyō 鳩摩羅什の訳経.” Ōtani daigaku kenkyū nenpō 大谷大学研究年報 38 (1986): 59-135. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/555/