Yībǎiwǔshí zàn fó sòng 一百五十讚佛頌
One Hundred and Fifty Verses in Praise of the Buddha by 摩咥里制吒 (Mó-xiè-lǐ-zhì-zhā / Mātṛceṭa, 造) and 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
A one-juǎn Tang translation of the Śatapañcāśatka of Mātṛceṭa, the most celebrated Buddhist stotra of classical India. Translated by 義淨 Yìjìng (635–713), the great Tang pilgrim and translator. The Sanskrit original survives in fragmentary form (recovered from Tunhuang and Central Asian manuscript witnesses), and the work is preserved complete only in the Chinese (this translation) and Tibetan canons.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1680) lists no internal sub-divisions and no related-text pointers. The Sanskrit title is given as Śatapañcaśatikastotra; an alternative Sanskrit title in CANWWW Dà-jí-jīng dì-zàng púsà qǐng-wèn fǎ-shēn zàn bǎi-qiān sòng 大集經地藏菩薩請問法身讚百千頌 reflects a different attribution-tradition not borne out in the actual Chinese text.
Abstract
The Śatapañcāśatka (lit. “[hymn of] 150 [stanzas]”) is the principal devotional Buddhist stotra of classical India: 150 verses in vasantatilakā meter praising the Buddha as he attained enlightenment, taught the Dharma, and entered Nirvāṇa. Yìjìng in his pilgrimage memoir reports that the work was the standard vita recited at the morning and evening services of every Indian monastery, and that “the Indian community has the saying: anyone who is unable to compose verses in praise of the Triratna like Mātṛceṭa is not a learned monk”.
Yìjìng’s translation, made at the Dà Jiànfúsì 大薦福寺 in Cháng’ān between 700 and 712, is from a sound Sanskrit manuscript he had brought back from his pilgrimage. The translation is into Chinese five-character verse. Modern scholarship (Bailey 1951) has used the Chinese alongside the Sanskrit fragments and Tibetan translation in reconstructing the complete original. The Taishō uses 金臧廣勝寺本 as base.
Translations and research
- Bailey, D. R. Shackleton. The Śatapañcāśatka of Mātṛceṭa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951. — The standard critical edition with English translation; uses Sanskrit fragments, Yìjìng’s Chinese, and the Tibetan translation.
- Hahn, Michael. Invitation to Enlightenment. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1999. — English translation of related stotras attributed to Mātṛceṭa.
- Schiefner, Anton, and W. R. S. Ralston. Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources. London, 1882. — Background on Mātṛceṭa.
- Tola, Fernando, and Carmen Dragonetti. (Various studies on Indian Buddhist devotional literature.)
Other points of interest
The Śatapañcāśatka is one of the few Buddhist works for which we have direct testimony of its lived liturgical use in classical Indian monasteries — Yìjìng’s Nán-hǎi jì-guī nèi-fǎ zhuàn makes the work’s Indian devotional centrality clear. The text provides crucial evidence for the prosody and philosophical content of pre-Tantric Indian Buddhist devotional poetry.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Mātṛceṭa): A001749
- 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/