Lóngshù púsà quànjiè wáng sòng 龍樹菩薩勸誡王頌
Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Verses Admonishing the King by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
The third of the three Chinese translations of Nāgārjuna’s Suhṛllekha, in 1 juǎn. Translated by the celebrated Tang pilgrim and translator 義淨 Yìjìng (635–713) at the Dà Jiànfú-sì 大薦福寺 in Cháng’ān after his return from the seventeen-year pilgrimage to India and Sumatra (671–695). Yìjìng’s version is the most polished of the three Chinese renderings and was the standard one used in East Asia from the Tang onward.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1674) lists no internal sub-divisions; the related-text pointers are to the parallel translations KR6o0127 (T32n1672, Guṇavarman) and KR6o0128 (T32n1673, Saṃghavarman).
Abstract
Yìjìng’s title-choice — quàn-jiè wáng 勸誡王 (“admonishing the king”) — is the closest of the three Chinese titles to the Sanskrit original Suhṛllekha understood as a “letter of admonition to a friend [-king]“. His translation is from a sound Sanskrit manuscript and is the most idiomatic of the three; it is also the longest, suggesting that he was willing to expand somewhat to clarify the sense for the Chinese reader.
The translation date is bracketed by Yìjìng’s documented post-pilgrimage translation career, 700–712. He returned to Cháng’ān in 695, was honoured by Wǔ Zétiān, and from 700 onward led a major imperial translation project that produced over 56 works in 230 fascicles before his death in 713. The Suhṛllekha belongs to this prolific period.
The Taishō uses 高麗 as base, collated against 明, 宋, 元, 宮.
Translations and research
- Beal, Samuel, trans. “The Suhrillekha or ‘Friendly Epistle’ of Nāgārjuna.” The Indian Antiquary 16 (1887). — Old English translation from the Tang Yìjìng version.
- Lindtner, Christian. Nagarjuniana. Copenhagen, 1982.
- Jamgön Mipham; Padmakara Translation Group. Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend. Boston: Snow Lion, 2005.
- Lo Cheng 蘿成. Lóngshù pú-sà quàn-jiè wáng sòng yán-jiū 龍樹菩薩勸誡王頌研究. (Various.)
Other points of interest
Yìjìng’s Quàn-jiè wáng sòng was the version of the Suhṛllekha most widely cited and quoted by Tang and post-Tang East Asian Buddhist authors; in its style it stands as one of the most polished products of the Cháng’ān translation establishment of the Wǔ Zhōu / early Tang Zhōngzōng era.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Yìjìng): A000345
- Dazangthings date evidence (705): [ 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/