Shíbā kōng lùn 十八空論
Treatise on the Eighteen [Modes of] Emptiness by 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà = Nāgārjuna, 造, attributed) and 真諦 (Zhēndì = Paramārtha, 譯)
About the work
A single-fascicle treatise on the eighteen modes of emptiness (aṣṭādaśa-śūnyatā) — a standard analytical scheme drawn from the Mahāprajñāpāramitā literature and absorbed into Yogācāra through the Yogācārabhūmi and the Madhyāntavibhāga. The Chinese catalog attributes the work to 龍樹菩薩 (Nāgārjuna), but the modern critical literature regards this attribution as pseudepigraphic: the text is in fact an excerpt from the Madhyāntavibhāga corpus or its sub-commentaries, abstracted and translated separately by 真諦.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not preserve a structural division for T31N1616. The single fascicle treats the eighteen śūnyatā in conventional order: emptiness of the inner, the outer, the inner-and-outer, the great, the empty, the ultimate, the conditioned, the unconditioned, the limitless, the without-beginning-or-end, the inseparable, the original-nature, the absolute-difference, the inherent-characteristic, the unobtainable, the non-existent, the existent, and the non-existent-and-existent. (List enumeration follows the standard Madhyāntavibhāga-tradition catalog.)
Abstract
The Nāgārjuna attribution preserved in the catalog is not credible: the Sanskrit source is unknown, the text is not in the Tibetan canon, and the doctrinal framework is straightforwardly Yogācāra (it analyses the eighteen śūnyatā in terms of trisvabhāva and vijñapti-mātratā, not in Madhyamaka terms). The work is best understood as an excerpt from a now-lost Indian Yogācāra commentary on the Madhyāntavibhāga — possibly Sthiramati’s Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā — translated separately by Paramārtha for didactic purposes during his Chén-period activity (558–569).
The dating bracket adopted (558–569) reflects the standard window for Paramārtha’s Chén-period southern translation activity. The pseudepigraphic attribution to Nāgārjuna is presumably intended to lend authority to the topic of śūnyatā, which in Chinese Buddhist culture had become firmly identified with the Mādhyamika master.
The eighteen-fold śūnyatā scheme is one of the principal didactic frameworks for Yogācāra emptiness-doctrine and is treated extensively in KR6n0001 Yújiā shī dì lùn and the Mahāprajñāpāramitā commentarial tradition.
Translations and research
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Shintai sanzō kenkyū ronshū. Kyoto, 2012.
- Lamotte, Étienne. Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse. 5 vols. Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1944–1980. (Treatment of the eighteen śūnyatā in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra.)
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠. Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.
Links
- CBETA
- 龍樹菩薩 Lóngshù púsà DILA
- 真諦 Zhēndì DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (565): [ 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/