Fó shuō lì shì ā pí tán lùn 佛說立世阿毘曇論
The Buddha-Spoken Treatise on the Establishment of the World (Lokasthāna-abhidharma-śāstra) by 真諦 (Zhēndì / Paramārtha, 譯)
About the work
A ten-juǎn treatise on Buddhist cosmology — translated by 真諦 (Paramārtha, 499–569) under the Chén 陳 dynasty — describing the structure of the world-system (loka) according to the abhidharma tradition. The Chinese form 立世阿毘曇 represents the Sanskrit Lokasthāna-abhidharma “Establishment of the World Abhidharma”; the title-prefix 佛說 (“the Buddha said”) suggests the early Indian source-tradition treated the work as scriptural rather than as later abhidharmic systematisation, but its content is purely abhidharma. The work systematically describes the four continents (四大洲), Mt. Sumeru, the various heavens and hells, the kalpa-cycle of cosmic destruction and renewal, and the celestial geography of the world-system, providing one of the most detailed surviving accounts of pre-Yogācāra Indian Buddhist cosmology in Chinese.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1644) records 25 chapters by title, beginning with:
- Dì dòng pǐn 地動品 — Section on Earthquakes
- (and continuing through chapters on the world-mountain Sumeru, the four continents, the various heavens, the hells, the moon and sun, the seasons, the kalpas, etc.)
CANWWW lists the full chapter structure with Korean canon page references.
Abstract
The Taishō text opens “陳西印度三藏真諦譯” — translated by Paramārtha (West-Indian Tripiṭaka master) under the Chén. Composition of the underlying Indian original is not externally datable; it is generally placed among the Sthaviravāda / Sarvāstivāda abhidharma literature of the early to mid centuries CE. The Sanskrit does not survive; a Tibetan parallel does not appear to exist; the Chinese is therefore the only canonical witness. Paramārtha’s translation activity in southern China continued from his arrival in 548 to his death in 569; the Lokasthāna-abhidharma is normally placed in his late period, c. 558–569, alongside the major Yogācāra translations. The text is a key witness to the cosmographic sub-genre of Buddhist abhidharma, and is regularly cited together with the parallel Qǐ shì jīng 起世經 (T24, T25, T26) and the Cháng-ā-hán jīng 長阿含經 (T1) cosmographic chapter (《世記經》) as the standard Chinese sources for Buddhist world-geography. Modern editors place the work alongside the Apidamo dāpíposhā lùn in the broad abhidharma corpus rather than in the yīnmíng division, but the Taishō follows the older Sòng-canon arrangement.
Translations and research
- Denis, Eugène. La Lokapaññatti et les idées cosmologiques du bouddhisme ancien. Lille, 1977. — Studies the Pāli parallel (the Lokapaññatti) and discusses the relation to the Lì-shì text.
- Sadakata Akira 定方晟. Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins. Tokyo, 1997. — Treats the Lokasthāna-abhidharma as a key source.
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Shintai sanzō no kenkyū 真諦三藏の研究. Kyoto: Rinsen, 2012.
Other points of interest
The placement of this cosmological abhidharma treatise in the yīnmíng division (KR6o) rather than in the abhidharma division (KR6l) reflects the Tang-period catalog convention of grouping all śāstras without an obvious doctrinal home in the catch-all jí (集 / “miscellaneous”) section that came to be called the 論集部 in the Taishō. The work has nothing intrinsically to do with yīnmíng.
Links
- CBETA
- 真諦 Zhēndì (Paramārtha) DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (565): 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