Lóngshù púsà wèi Chántuójiā wáng shuō fǎ yào jì 龍樹菩薩為禪陀迦王說法要偈
Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Essential Verses Explaining the Dharma to King Suhṛllekha (Cheng-tho-ka) by 求那跋摩 (Qiú-nà-bá-mó / Guṇavarman, 譯)
About the work
A one-juǎn Liú-Sòng 劉宋 dynasty translation of Nāgārjuna’s Suhṛllekha — “Letter to a Friend” — addressed to the South-Indian king Suhṛllekha (here transliterated as 禪陀迦 Chán-tuó-jiā, possibly = Sātavāhana or related; the Indian original is also referred to as Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi). The translation is by 求那跋摩 Guṇavarman 求那跋摩 (377–431), the famous Sarvāstivādin master of Kashmir who came to China at the end of his life.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1672) lists no internal sub-divisions; the related-text pointers are to the parallel translations KR6o0128 (T32n1673, by Saṃghavarman) and KR6o0129 (T32n1674, by Yìjìng).
Abstract
The Suhṛllekha is one of the most widely circulated of Nāgārjuna’s didactic-doctrinal compositions, addressed to a friendly king as a comprehensive sketch of the bodhisattva path. The Sanskrit original does not survive, but the work is preserved in three Chinese translations (this one, KR6o0128 by Saṃghavarman, KR6o0129 by Yìjìng) and one Tibetan translation; the Suhṛllekha’s philosophical content covers the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the perfections, the suffering of saṃsāra, the practice of śamatha and vipaśyanā, and the ultimate goal of buddhahood.
This first Chinese translation, made at the Liú-Sòng capital by Guṇavarman in the year 431 (the year of his arrival and rapid death), is the briefest and least ornamented of the three. The Taishō uses the 高麗 base, collated against 宋, 元, 明, and 宮.
Translations and research
- Jamgön Mipham; Padmakara Translation Group. Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend, with Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche. Boston: Snow Lion, 2005. — English translation from the Tibetan, with traditional commentary.
- Lindtner, Christian. Nagarjuniana. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1982. — The standard Western critical study.
- Hahn, Michael. Nāgārjunas Ratnāvalī. Bonn, 1982. — Frame.
- Beyer, Stephan. The Buddhist Experience: Sources and Interpretations. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1974.
- Ye, Shaoyong 葉少勇. Nāgārjuna and the Madhyamaka Tradition. (Various.)
Other points of interest
The presence of three Chinese translations of the Suhṛllekha in the canon (KR6o0127, KR6o0128, KR6o0129) — over a span of 250 years — testifies to the work’s central place in the East Asian reception of Nāgārjuna’s didactic corpus. The three translations differ in idiom and translation choices, providing important evidence for the development of Chinese Buddhist translation practice.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Guṇavarman): A000893
- Dazangthings date evidence (430): [ Bagchi 1927 ] Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra. Le canon bouddhique en Chine: Les traducteurs et les traductions. Sino-Indica: Publications de l’Université de Calcutta, Tome 1er. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1927. 375 https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/113/