Guǎngbǎi lùn běn 廣百論本
Root Verses of the Extensive Hundred-Verse Treatise (the latter half of Āryadeva’s Catuḥśataka) by 聖天菩薩 (Shèngtiān púsà / Āryadeva, 造) and 玄奘 (Xuánzàng, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Tang-period translation by 玄奘 玄奘 (602–664) of the kārikā-text of the latter half of Āryadeva’s Catuḥśataka “Four-Hundred Verses” — specifically the eight “śāstra” chapters (the so-called yogācāra-saptaka + the polemical chapters) that constitute the second half of the 400-verse work. The first half (the bodhisattva-saptaka, on the cultivation of merit and knowledge by the bodhisattva) was not separately translated into Chinese. T1570 supplies the verses alone; the verses with 護法菩薩 (Dharmapāla)‘s prose commentary are translated separately as KR6m0015 Dàshèng guǎngbǎi lùn shìlùn 大乘廣百論釋論 (T1571). Translated at Cháng’ān in the early 650s as part of the Xuánzàng translation programme; the colophon dates the work to Yǒnghuī 永徽 1 (650).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block; the eight chapters are numbered in the body of the text. Related texts per CANWWW: KR6m0012 Bǎi lùn 百論 (T30n1569), KR6m0015 Dàshèng guǎngbǎi lùn shìlùn 大乘廣百論釋論 (T30n1571).
The eight chapters of T1570:
- Pò cháng pǐn 破常品 — Refutation of permanence
- Pò wǒ pǐn 破我品 — Refutation of self
- Pò shí pǐn 破時品 — Refutation of time
- Pò jiàn pǐn 破見品 — Refutation of (wrong) views
- Pò gēnjìng pǐn 破根境品 — Refutation of sense-faculty and object
- Pò biānzhí pǐn 破邊執品 — Refutation of extreme grasps
- Pò yǒuwéi xiàng pǐn 破有為相品 — Refutation of conditioned marks
- Jiàojiè dìzǐ pǐn 教誡弟子品 — Instruction of disciples
Abstract
The Catuḥśataka of Āryadeva is the principal Mādhyamaka treatise after the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the foundational text for the second wave of Chinese Mādhyamaka transmission under Xuánzàng. T1570 preserves the verses (160 quatrains, eight chapters of twenty stanzas each) of the second half of the work in Xuánzàng’s characteristic literary-Chinese rendering — terse, line-by-line, using the four-character verse form. The Sanskrit original of T1570 is partially preserved (in the form of citations in Candrakīrti’s Catuḥśatakaṭīkā, in fragments recovered by Haraprasad Shastri in 1914, and in the more recent finds of Shastri Sankrityayan and others); the Tibetan translation by Pa-tshab is preserved as Tōh. 3846. T1570 is therefore one of three major textual witnesses to the Catuḥśataka’s second half.
T1570 was used in Tang-period exegetical practice as the kārikā-only edition for memorisation and recitation, with KR6m0015 T1571 supplying the verses with Dharmapāla’s prose commentary on chapters 9–16. The two texts are normally bound together in East-Asian Buddhist canon-compilations and treated as a single work.
Translations and research
- 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; addresses T1570/T1571.)
- Tillemans, Tom J. F. Materials for the Study of Āryadeva, Dharmapāla and Candrakīrti. 2 vols. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 24. Vienna, 1990. (Foundational comparative study of T1570 and T1571 with the Tibetan and Sanskrit witnesses.)
- Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Aaryadeva no kenkyū アーリヤデーヴァの研究. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1985.
- Vaidya, Paraśurāma Lakṣmaṇa, ed. Études sur Āryadeva et son Catuḥśataka. Paris: Geuthner, 1923.
Other points of interest
The eight chapters of T1570 begin with the “refutation of permanence” — a striking departure from the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā’s opening “examination of conditions” — reflecting Āryadeva’s polemical orientation: where Nāgārjuna begins from epistemology, Āryadeva begins from the refutation of the brahmanical doctrine of substantial selfhood and continuous time. The eighth chapter, “Instruction of Disciples”, closes the work with the only positively-stated doctrinal teaching: bodhisattvas are to cultivate emptiness as the antidote to all wrong views.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (655): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/