Shì shī fǎ wǔshí sòng 事師法五十頌
Fifty Verses on the Method of Serving One’s Teacher (Gurupañcāśika) by 馬鳴菩薩 (Mǎ-míng / Aśvaghoṣa, attributed; 集) and 日稱 (Rì-chēng, et al., 等譯)
About the work
A one-juǎn Northern-Sòng translation of the Gurupañcāśika — “Fifty [Verses] on the Guru” — attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, on the proper conduct of a Buddhist student toward their teacher. Translated by 日稱 Rì-chēng at the Sòng Institute. The work is foundational for the East Asian and Tibetan teacher-disciple relationship traditions.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1687) lists no internal sub-divisions and no related-text pointers; the Sanskrit title is given as Gurupañcāśika.
Abstract
The Gurupañcāśika is a compact didactic poem of approximately fifty verses (the title’s pañcāśika = “consisting of fifty”) setting out the proper conduct of the Buddhist disciple in the presence of and in service to the teacher: how to approach, how to receive teachings, what offerings to make, what attitudes to cultivate, what behavior to avoid. Although traditionally attributed to Aśvaghoṣa (馬鳴), the work in its Indic transmission is more often associated with later Vajrayāna pedagogy — a context in which the disciple’s complete subordination to the guru is doctrinally central. The Sanskrit original is preserved (edited and translated by Lévi, Bagchi, and others), and the Tibetan translation is the standard text of the Vajrayāna teacher-disciple ethic.
This Sòng translation is bracketed by Rìchēng’s career at the Institute, c. 1058–1078. The Taishō uses 高麗 as base.
Translations and research
- Lévi, Sylvain. “Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṅkāra et Gurupañcāśikā.” Études d’orientalisme à la mémoire de Raymonde Linossier, vol. 2 (Paris, 1932): 355–369.
- Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra. Gurupañcāśikā. Calcutta, 1932. — Sanskrit edition.
- Sparham, Gareth, trans. The Fulfillment of All Hopes: Guru Devotion in Tibetan Buddhism. Boston: Wisdom, 1999. — English translation of the Tibetan, with traditional commentary.
- Hahn, Michael. (Various.)
Other points of interest
The traditional attribution to Aśvaghoṣa places the Gurupañcāśika alongside the Buddhacarita and Saundarananda in his corpus, but the Vajrayāna doctrinal framework of the work is anachronistic for a first- or second-century author. Modern scholarship treats the attribution as conventional rather than historical, and dates the work to a later (probably mid- to late-first-millennium) Indian context.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Aśvaghoṣa): A000017
- Dazangthings date evidence (1060): [ 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/