Wúliángshòu jīng huìyì 無量壽經會譯
Conflated Recension of the Sūtra of Immeasurable Life by 魏源 (Wèi Yuán, 會譯)
About the work
A single-fascicle synthetic recension of the larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha-sūtra (Wúliángshòu jīng 無量壽經, the Larger Pure Land Sūtra), produced in 咸豐 4 (1854) by the late-Qīng statecraft scholar 魏源 Wèi Yuán (1794–1857) under his lay-Buddhist dharma-name Wèi Chéngguàn 魏承貫. The work is not a fresh translation from Sanskrit but a conflation (huìyì 會譯, lit. “harmonised translation”) of the five extant Chinese versions of the sūtra: the (so-called) Hàn translation of Lokakṣema, the Wú translation of Zhī Qiān 支謙, the Cáo-Wèi translation attributed to Saṃghavarman 康僧鎧 KR6p0031, the Táng Bǎojī jīng 寶積經 chapter by Bodhiruci, and the Sòng translation by Faxian 法賢. Wèi prints the text continuously, marking interlinearly which translation supplied each phrase or sentence. The Huìyì circulates as part of his Jìngtǔ sì jīng 淨土四經 (Four Pure Land Scriptures), first cut for circulation in 咸豐 8 (1858) — the year after Wèi’s death — by his Húnán fellow-townsman Zhōu Yípú 周詒樸 of Xiāng-tán 湘潭, with two prefatory pieces (Zhōu’s editorial colophon and Wèi’s own Jìngtǔ sì jīng zǒngxù) that frame the project.
Abstract
The Wúliángshòu jīng exists in five complete Chinese renderings of widely differing length and detail, and Chinese Pure Land tradition long debated which to prefer. The eminent Míng master Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 袾宏 had largely set aside the larger sūtra in favour of the smaller Amitābhasūtra 阿彌陀經, while still recognising the CáoWèi version as the standard. Wèi Yuán in his preface (the Wúliángshòu jīng huìyì xù 無量壽經會譯敘, dated 咸豐 4 / 1854) argues directly against this preference: he holds that no single existing Chinese version preserves the sūtra in a fully usable form — the CáoWèi text is verbose and repetitive (with its forty-eight vows expanded from a putative original twenty-four), the Táng version reduces these to forty-six and the Sòng to thirty-six, while the Hàn and Wú versions retain the older count of twenty-four. He therefore proposes to assemble a single conflated recension drawing on all five, “with not one character without provenance” (無一字不有來歷), as a corrected text suitable for monastic use. The interlinear notes preserved in the present edition show his method: each significant variant or supplement is annotated with the source translation (e.g. “從漢譯增” / “用唐譯” / “節其冗詞”).
The work is in this sense a precursor of the better-known Foshuo dàshèng wúliángshòu zhuāngyán qīngjìng píngděng jué jīng 佛說大乘無量壽莊嚴清淨平等覺經 produced by Xià Liánjū 夏蓮居 in the 1930s–1940s, and Wèi’s Huìyì is regularly cited as the first sustained attempt by a Chinese scholar to construct such a synthetic Pure Land text. Modern scholarship (Goossaert 2008, Ritzinger 2017) treats it as one of the principal documents of late-Qīng lay Buddhist intellectualism, alongside the writings of 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng. The Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 prints Wèi’s text together with Zhōu Yípú’s 1858 editorial colophon and Wèi Yuán’s own Jìngtǔ sì jīng zǒngxù, which sets out the doctrinal programme of the four-sūtra collection. The dating convention adopted here (1854–1858) covers from Wèi’s preface to the first cut printing.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850–2015, ed. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely, and John Lagerwey. Leiden: Brill, 2016. — Treats Wèi Yuán’s Pure Land project in the late-Qīng lay-Buddhist context.
- Leonard, Jane Kate. Wei Yuan and China’s Rediscovery of the Maritime World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1984. — Standard biographical study; ch. on Wèi’s late religious turn.
- Ritzinger, Justin. Anarchy in the Pure Land. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. — Touches on Wèi Yuán’s huìyì method as a precedent for early-twentieth-century Pure Land textual reformism.
- Liú Géng-shēng 劉耿生, Wèi Yuán nián-pǔ 魏源年譜. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985.
Other points of interest
The 1858 cutting carries Zhōu Yípú’s colophon, which records that Wèi Yuán entrusted the manuscript to Zhōu while convalescing during a serious illness in 咸豐 6 (1856) at Qínyóu 秦郵 (Gāoyóu 高郵, Jiāngsū) — biographically the same period that produced his late-life withdrawal from politics. The colophon describes the text as “carved repeatedly and revised repeatedly across two winters and summers” (屢刻屢改。兩易寒暑) before reaching its final form. Wèi Yuán died in 咸豐 7 (1857), the year before publication, so the Huìyì is among his last completed works.