Dàshèng pòyǒu lùn 大乘破有論
Mahāyāna Treatise Refuting Existence (*Bhavasaṃkrāntiśāstra or related) by 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà / Nāgārjuna, 造) and 施護 (Shīhù / Dānapāla, 譯)
About the work
A short Mādhyamaka treatise in one fascicle attributed to Nāgārjuna, translated at Biànjīng 汴京 by 施護 Dānapāla 施護 (Shīhù, Sahasrabhuja, North-Indian Mahāyāna translator at the Northern-Song imperial yìjīngyuán 譯經院 from c. 980 onward). The translation falls within Dānapāla’s main translation phase 982–1000. The Indic original is conventionally identified as a Bhavasaṃkrāntiśāstra “Treatise on the Transmission of Becoming” or related Mādhyamaka prakaraṇa; the Tibetan tradition preserves a closely parallel work as Srid pa ‘pho ba’i mdo (Tōh. 226).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The text contains no related-text cross-references in CANWWW.
Abstract
The treatise opens: “I take refuge in all Buddhas. Those who possess wisdom should know all dharmas truly. What does this mean? It means: all natures arise from no-nature, and not from no-nature either. If natures had genuine arising, they would be permanent. The intrinsic nature is unreal — like a sky-flower. Know that all dharmas are equal to space; their arising is also equal to space; all pratyaya-conditioned dharmas are equal to space; lacking reality, how could they have being?” 歸命一切佛諸有智者應當如實了知諸法。此中云何。謂一切性從無性生。亦非無性生…… The opening establishes the work’s doctrinal programme as Mādhyamaka prakaraṇa refuting the substantialist conception of bhāva (有 “existence / nature”).
The work is doctrinally close to the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā and the Śūnyatāsaptati of the Nāgārjuna corpus, both of which were also translated by 施護 in the same Biànjīng yìjīngyuán phase (KR6m0020 T1575 and KR6m0021 T1576). T1574, T1575, and T1576 together represent the largest single-translator contribution to the Indic Mādhyamaka short-treatise corpus in Chinese, and are the only Chinese witnesses to several key works of the Nāgārjuna corpus that are otherwise preserved only in Tibetan.
Translations and research
- Lindtner, Christian. Nāgārjuniana. Indiske Studier 4. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1982. (Foundational study of the Nāgārjuna prakaraṇa corpus, including T1574.)
- Tola, Fernando, and Carmen Dragonetti. Nāgārjuna’s Refutation of Logic (nyāya): Vaidalyaprakaraṇa. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995. (Includes survey discussion of the Nāgārjuna prakaraṇa corpus and its Chinese transmission.)
- Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Ryūju no kenkyū 龍樹の研究. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1985.
- Yuyama Akira 湯山明. Indic Manuscripts and Chinese Inscriptions in the Nepalese Manuscript Project. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1992. (Bibliography for the Nāgārjuna short-treatise corpus.)
Other points of interest
The Northern-Song imperial yìjīngyuán 譯經院 produced a remarkable late-flowering of Indic Buddhist translation activity at Biànjīng, c. 980–1050, under successive imperial patronage. The principal translators — 法天 Dharmadeva, 施護 Dānapāla, and 惟淨 Wéijìng — between them produced a corpus of some 250 translations including most of the late-Indic Mādhyamaka and Tantric śāstras. T1574 is one of the more philosophically central of these.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (1000): [ 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/