Pú tí xīn guān shì 菩提心觀釋
Commentary on the Contemplation of the Bodhi-Mind (Bodhicittānuṣmaraṇa-vyākhyā) by 法天 (Fǎtiān / Dharmadeva, 譯)
About the work
A short one-juǎn prose commentary on the contemplation of bodhicitta, translated into Chinese by 法天 (Dharmadeva, fl. 980 — c. 1001) at the Sòng-period imperial Yìjīngyuàn 譯經院. The author of the underlying Indic original is not given in the Chinese title-line — only the translator. The work is a concise meditative-doctrinal exposition opening with homage to the Buddha as “Original Teacher, Great Awakened Worldly Honoured One” and stating its purpose as a “brief explanation” (略釋) of bodhi-citta contemplation.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1663) does not record an internal sub-division.
Abstract
The Taishō text opens “菩提心觀釋 / 西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試鴻臚卿傳教大師臣法天奉 詔譯”. The opening verse honours “the Original Teacher, Great Awakened Worldly Honoured One” and announces the work as a brief explanation of the “contemplation of bodhicitta”. The translation falls within Dharmadeva’s career at the Yìjīng-yuàn between 982 and his death around 1001. The Sanskrit original is not preserved; no Tibetan parallel is identified. The author is anonymous in the Chinese; the work has been variously attributed in modern scholarship to Aśvaghoṣa, to a late Madhyamaka master, or to a Yogācāra-aligned Esoteric author — but no firm identification can be made. The brevity and meditative character of the work suggest it is a short vyākhyā on a now-lost kārikā (verse) text, possibly part of the late Indian vidyādhara tradition that Dharmadeva was particularly active in transmitting.
Translations and research
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. Honolulu, 2003. — Treats the broader Sòng Yìjīng-yuàn programme.
- Mochizuki Bukkyō Daijiten 望月仏教大辞典 s.v. Bodaishin-kan-shaku.
Other points of interest
The text is one of approximately 120 translations produced by 法天 over his twenty-year career at the Sòng imperial Translation Bureau; it belongs to the cluster of late-Indian bodhicitta / Esoteric works that the Bureau systematically transmitted in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Links
- CBETA
- Dazangthings date evidence (980): [ 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/