Jīn gāng zhēn lùn 金剛針論
Diamond-Needle Treatise (Vajrasūcī) by 法稱菩薩 (Fǎchēng / Aśvaghoṣa, 造) and 法天 (Fǎtiān / Dharmadeva, 譯)
About the work
A short polemical treatise of one juǎn refuting the brahmanical caste-system on the basis of the Vedas themselves — the famous Indian Vajrasūcī “Diamond Needle” — translated by 法天 (Fǎtiān / Dharmadeva, fl. 973–1001) at the Sòng translation bureau. The opening invocation explicitly names the brāhmaṇas’ four vedas (四圍陀) and the smṛti tradition; the body of the work then deploys the Vedas’ own scriptural authorities to argue that no person can be a brāhmaṇa simply by birth, and that brāhmaṇa-hood is a matter of conduct rather than caste.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1642) lists no internal sub-divisions.
Abstract
The Taishō text opens “法稱菩薩造，西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試鴻臚少卿傳教大師臣法天奉詔譯”. The author “法稱” is here usually identified with Aśvaghoṣa 馬鳴 (c. 80–150) — the great Buddhist poet — to whom the Sanskrit Vajrasūcī is conventionally ascribed (though modern scholarship has questioned the attribution; some place the work later, in the school of Aśvaghoṣa). The Sanskrit original survives and was edited by Lalmani Joshi (1949) and translated into English by various hands; the Vajrasūcī is one of the most widely circulated Indian Buddhist polemical works against the brahmanical caste system, and was important in the European Indological reception of Buddhism (the work was edited and translated by Sir William Jones already in 1799). The Sòng-period rendering of the author’s name as “Fǎchēng” 法稱 is unusual; the more common Chinese form is 馬鳴 (= Aśvaghoṣa, “Horse-neigh”), which is also the form used for the same author in KR6o0047. The discrepancy reflects the Sòng translation bureau’s varying conventions. Translation date is bracketed by Fǎtiān’s translation career, c. 980–1000.
Translations and research
- Mukhopadhyaya, Sujitkumar. The Vajrasūcī of Aśvaghoṣa. Visvabharati, 1960. — Critical Sanskrit edition with English translation.
- Lalmani Joshi. “The Vajrasūcī of Aśvaghoṣa.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 79 (1949): 76–89.
- Vidyabhusana, S. C. History of the Mediaeval School of Indian Logic. Calcutta, 1909.
- Jones, William. “The Wajra Súchí, or Adamantine Needle.” In Asiatick Researches 3 (1799). — The first European translation.
Other points of interest
The Vajrasūcī is one of the most argumentatively interesting of the Indian Buddhist polemical works, since it operates entirely within the brahmanical scriptural framework rather than challenging it from outside; it deserves its place in the yīnmíng division. Its presence in the Sòng-period canonical translations testifies to its continuing relevance in late Indian Buddhism.
Links
- CBETA
- 法天 Fǎtiān (Dharmadeva) DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (980): T = CBETA, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經, ed. 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. Dazangthings source
- Kanseki DB