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瑜伽師地論

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Text ID
KR6n0001
Date
646–648
Dynasty
唐

Yúqié shī dì lùn 瑜伽師地論

Treatise on the Stages of the Yoga Practitioner (Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra) by 彌勒菩薩 (Mílè púsà / Maitreya, 說) and 玄奘 (Xuánzàng, 譯)

About the work

The single most important Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda compendium in the East Asian canon, and by sheer bulk one of the largest śāstra texts in any Buddhist tradition: an encyclopaedic treatise in 100 juǎn covering the entire path of the yogācāra — the practitioner of meditative cultivation — from the structure of cognition through to the bodhisattva-bhūmis and the no-remainder nirvāṇa. The text is traditionally ascribed to the bodhisattva Maitreya (彌勒菩薩, 彌勒菩薩), who is said to have revealed it to Asaṅga (無著, 無著菩薩) in the Tuṣita heaven; modern scholarship treats it as a composite work that took shape over several generations within the early Yogācāra school (third to fifth century CE) before being redacted in something like its received form. The Chinese version in 100 juǎn was translated at the Hóngfúsì 弘福寺 and Dà Cí’ēnsì 大慈恩寺 by 玄奘 between Zhēnguān 貞觀 20 and 22 (646–648 CE) immediately after his return from India; it is the only complete witness to the entire treatise in any East Asian language and the basis of the entire Cí’ēn / Fǎxiàng 法相 exegetical tradition (commentaries KR6n0007, KR6n0008, KR6n0009, KR6n0010 etc.). Earlier partial Chinese translations of individual sections (the Bodhisattvabhūmi by Dharmakṣema KR6n0003 and Guṇavarman KR6n0004, KR6n0005; the Decisive Selections by Paramārtha KR6n0006) were superseded by Xuánzàng’s complete version.

Structural Division

CANWWW (T30N1579) records the canonical five-part structure:

  1. Běndì fēn 本地分 — Foundational section on the seventeen bhūmi, comprising:
    1. Wǔshíshēn xiāngyīng dì 五識身相應地 — The stage corresponding to the five sensory consciousnesses
    2. Yì dì 意地 — The stage of mentation (manas)
    3. Yǒuxún yǒusì děng sān dì 有尋有伺等三地 — The three stages of with/without examination and investigation (savitarka-savicāra etc.)
    4. Sānmóhěnduō dì 三摩呬多地 — The stage of equipoise (samāhita)
    5. Fēi sānmóhěnduō dì 非三摩呬多地 — The stage of non-equipoise
    6. Yǒuxīn wúxīn èr dì 有心無心二地 — The two stages of with-mind / without-mind
    7. Wénsuǒchéng dì 聞所成地 — The stage attained through hearing (śrutamayī bhūmi)
    8. Sīsuǒchéng dì 思所成地 — The stage attained through reflection (cintāmayī bhūmi)
    9. Xiūsuǒchéng dì 修所成地 — The stage attained through cultivation (bhāvanāmayī bhūmi)
    10. Shēngwén dì 聲聞地 — The stage of the śrāvaka (containing three yogasthāna: 初瑜伽處, 瑜伽處第二, 瑜伽處第三)
    11. Dúlǎn dì 獨覽地 — The stage of the pratyekabuddha
    12. Púsà dì 菩薩地 — The stage of the bodhisattva — paralleled in KR6n0003 Bodhisattvabhūmi 菩薩地持經 (T30n1581) and KR6n0004 Bodhisattva-śīla-sūtra 菩薩善戒經 (T30n1582)
    13. Yǒuyúyī dì 有餘依地 — The stage with-remainder (sopadhi-śeṣa)
    14. Wúyúyī dì 無餘依地 — The stage without-remainder (anupadhi-śeṣa)
  2. Shèjuézé fēn 攝決擇分 — Decisive selections concerning the foundational bhūmi — paralleled in KR6n0006 Juédìngzàng lùn 決定藏論 (T30n1584)
  3. Shèshì fēn 攝釋分 — Selected exegesis
  4. Shèyìmén fēn 攝異門分 — Selected synonyms
  5. Shèshì fēn 攝事分 — Selected matters, comprising five zéshè on sūtra-narrative, locations, dependent origination/food/truth/element, factors of awakening, and discipline.

Related texts in the canon: KR6n0002 Yúqié shī dì lùn shì 瑜伽師地論釋 (T30n1580); KR6n0007 Yúqié lùn jì 瑜伽論記 (T42n1828); KR6n0008 Yúqié shī dì lùn lüèzuǎn 瑜伽師地論略纂 (T43n1829); KR6n0009 Yúqié shī dì lùn fēnmén jì 瑜伽師地論分門記 (T85n2801); KR6n0010 Yúqié lùn shǒu jì 瑜伽論手記 (T85n2802).

Abstract

The Yogācārabhūmi (Skt. Yogācāryabhūmiśāstra) is generally agreed by modern scholarship to be a composite, layered text that crystallised within the early Yogācāra school (perhaps Sarvāstivāda-affiliated yogācāras in the Bactria-Gandhāra region) between the third and fifth centuries CE. The Chinese tradition, following the Yúqié shī dì lùn shì 瑜伽師地論釋 (KR6n0002), Xuánzàng’s Dà Táng Xīyù jì 大唐西域記, and Kuījī’s commentaries, ascribes the entire compendium to Maitreya as oral revelation transmitted via Asaṅga; the Tibetan tradition, by contrast, treats the Yogācārabhūmi as a work of Asaṅga himself, with Maitreya credited only with the five Maitreya texts (pañca-maitreya-grantha) — Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṃkāra, Madhyānta-vibhāga, Dharma-dharmatā-vibhāga, Abhisamayālaṃkāra, and the Yogācārabhūmi’s own Bodhisattvabhūmi sub-section. Surviving Sanskrit fragments confirm the early existence of substantial parts of the text — most notably the Śrāvakabhūmi and Bodhisattvabhūmi, both edited from manuscripts. The full text is preserved only in Chinese (KR6n0001) and Tibetan (Tōh. 4035–4042).

The Chinese translation date is firmly established by Xuánzàng’s biographers Huìlì 慧立 and Yàncóng 彥悰 (Dà Cí’ēnsì Sānzàng Fǎshī zhuàn T2053, j. 6): the project began on the 15th day of the 5th month of Zhēnguān 20 (5 June 646) at Hóngfúsì 弘福寺 and was completed on the 15th day of the 5th month of Zhēnguān 22 (12 June 648), with 玄奘 himself doing the kǒuyì 口譯 (“oral translation”) and a brushwork team led by Línghuì 靈會, Jìngmài 靜邁, Xíngyǒu 行友, Biànjī 辯機, and others. The text immediately became the doctrinal foundation of the Cí’ēnzōng 慈恩宗 / Fǎxiàngzōng 法相宗 transmitted from Xuánzàng to his disciple 窺基 (632–682) and onward to Huìzhāo 慧沼 and Zhìzhōu 智周, generating the dense Tang exegetical tradition documented by KR6n0007 through KR6n0010 and beyond.

The internal structure (the seventeen bhūmi of Běndì fēn, organised by progressively higher mental refinement; the Saṃgrahaṇī sections that follow) provides the principal Indian Mahāyāna account of the path organised around vijñapti-mātra (consciousness-only) ontology and the ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse consciousness). The Bodhisattvabhūmi (Púsà dì 菩薩地, juǎn 35–50) — independently translated as KR6n0003 and KR6n0004 — is the locus classicus for the bodhisattva-precepts that became the basis of the East Asian fànwǎngjiè 梵網戒 / yúqièjiè 瑜伽戒 tradition.

Translations and research

  • Kragh, Ulrich Timme, ed. The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners: The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise and Its Adaptation in India, East Asia, and Tibet. Harvard Oriental Series 75. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (The most comprehensive recent collective volume on the Yogācārabhūmi; 1,300+ pages, indispensable.)
  • Schmithausen, Lambert. Ālayavijñāna: On the Origin and the Early Development of a Central Concept of Yogācāra Philosophy. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1987. (Foundational study of the ālayavijñāna in the Yogācārabhūmi layers.)
  • Deleanu, Florin. The Chapter on the Mundane Path (Laukikamārga) in the Śrāvakabhūmi: A Trilingual Edition (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese), Annotated Translation, and Introductory Study. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2006. (Two volumes; standard critical edition and translation of a major sub-section.)
  • Engle, Artemus B., trans. The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpassed Enlightenment: A Complete Translation of the Bodhisattvabhūmi. Boulder: Snow Lion, 2016. (Complete English translation of the Bodhisattvabhūmi from Sanskrit.)
  • Bhattacharya, Vidhushekhara, ed. The Yogācārabhūmi of Ācārya Asaṅga. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1957. (Sanskrit edition of the surviving portions.)
  • Wogihara, Unrai, ed. Bodhisattvabhūmi. Tokyo, 1930–1936. (Sanskrit edition of the Bodhisattvabhūmi.)
  • Mukai Akira 向井亮. Yugashichiron no shisō 瑜伽師地論の思想. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 1981. (Standard Japanese monograph on the doctrinal structure.)
  • Yokoyama Kōitsu 横山紘一 and Hirosawa Takayuki 廣澤隆之, comps. Index to the Yogācārabhūmi. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1996. (Sanskrit-Tibetan-Chinese index, three volumes.)
  • Lévi, Sylvain. Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṃkāra: Exposé de la doctrine du Grand Véhicule. Paris, 1907–1911. (Foundational study of Maitreya/Asaṅga corpus including Yogācārabhūmi-related materials.)

Other points of interest

The Bodhisattvabhūmi sub-section (juǎn 35–50, Púsà dì 菩薩地) circulated independently in three earlier Chinese versions — Dharmakṣema’s Púsà dìchí jīng 菩薩地持經 (KR6n0003, T30n1581, ca. 414–426), and Guṇavarman’s two recensions of the Púsà shànjiè jīng 菩薩善戒經 (KR6n0004 T30n1582 in 9 juǎn; KR6n0005 T30n1583 in 1 juǎn, ca. 431). Comparison of these earlier translations with juǎn 35–50 of KR6n0001 is a key source for textual-history reconstruction of the Yogācārabhūmi. Likewise, the Saṃgrahaṇī (Shèjuézé fēn 攝決擇分) was partially translated earlier by 真諦 as KR6n0006 Juédìngzàng lùn 決定藏論 (T30n1584).

The 100-fascicle edition opens with a famous bhūmi chart at the head of juǎn 1, the so-called Shíqīdì sòng 十七地頌 (“verse on the seventeen stages”) — the seventeen bhūmi set out as a single classifying schema, “the five-sense-correlated, the mental, the with-and-without examination triad, the equipoised and the non-equipoised, the with-mind and without-mind, the [stages of] hearing-thinking-cultivating, [the stages of] the three vehicles, and the with- and without-remainder.”

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