Bǎizì lùn 百字論
Treatise in a Hundred Syllables (*Akṣaraśataka) by 提婆菩薩 (Típó púsà / Āryadeva, 造) and 菩提流支 (Pútíliúzhī / Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
A short Mādhyamaka treatise in one fascicle attributed to Āryadeva 提婆, translated at Lùoyáng 洛陽 by 菩提流支 Bodhiruci of Northern India under the Northern-Wèi (Hòu-Wèi 後魏) imperial Buddhist establishment c. 508–535. The Indic title is conventionally reconstructed as Akṣaraśataka “Hundred-Syllable Treatise” on the basis of the Chinese title and the matching Tibetan witness (Yi ge brgya pa, Tōh. 3834). The treatise is a doctrinal-polemical work refuting substantialist views (especially Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika categories) within a compact verse-and-prose structure organised around one hundred core “syllables” (i.e. doctrinal pivots).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The text contains no related-text cross-references in CANWWW.
Abstract
T1572 is one of the shorter Āryadeva works in the Chinese canon, distinct from the Bǎi lùn 百論 (KR6m0012 T1569) and from the Catuḥśataka tradition preserved as KR6m0014/KR6m0015 T1570/T1571. The opening invocation explicitly identifies the author: “I now take refuge in the keen and wise master, whose name is Típó (Āryadeva), endowed with great wisdom, who can in a hundred syllables expound the truth, removing all wrong views and turning towards the tattva” 我今歸依聰叡師，厥名提婆有大智，能以百字演實法，除諸邪見向實相. The verse is unusual in opening with explicit doxological homage to the author rather than to the Buddha or the bodhisattvas.
The treatise’s Indic original is attested in Tibetan and was partially preserved in Sanskrit fragments (recovered from Tibetan and Central-Asian manuscript caches in the 20th century); modern critical scholarship (Hahn, Lang) has produced a partial Sanskrit-Chinese-Tibetan comparative edition. The work is doctrinally Mādhyamaka and polemically directed against the Sāṃkhya doctrine of the prakṛti and the Vaiśeṣika doctrine of substance, but is more compact than the Catuḥśataka and more pedagogically organised than the Bǎi lùn.
菩提流支 Bodhiruci translated T1572 as part of his Northern-Wèi-period output at Lùoyáng — a substantial corpus that included the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā, the Laṅkāvatāra, the Vajracchedikā, and several Yogācāra-Madhyamaka śāstras. The translation date is not preserved in the colophon but falls within Bodhiruci’s main translation phase 508–535.
Translations and research
- Hahn, Michael. Nāgārjuna’s Ratnāvalī: Vol. 1, The Basic Texts. Bonn: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1982. (Includes comparative discussion of the Akṣaraśataka tradition.)
- Lang, Karen C. Āryadeva on the Bodhisattva’s Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge. Indiske Studier 7. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1986. (Discussion of T1572 in the Catuḥśataka context.)
- Vaidya, Paraśurāma Lakṣmaṇa, ed. Études sur Āryadeva et son Catuḥśataka. Paris: Geuthner, 1923.
- Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Aaryadeva no kenkyū アーリヤデーヴァの研究. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1985.
Other points of interest
The attribution of the Akṣaraśataka to Āryadeva is sometimes contested in modern scholarship (some Indic citations associate the title with a different śāstra-tradition); the Tibetan colophon-tradition firmly attributes it to Āryadeva, and the Chinese title-and-author tradition aligns with the Tibetan, so the conventional attribution is the most economical. The text’s brevity (1 juǎn) and its structure as a “hundred-syllable” mnemonic doctrinal compendium make it pedagogically continuous with the Bǎi lùn tradition while doctrinally distinct from it.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (520, 530): [ 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/