Fó shuō wúliángshòu fó mínghào lìyì dàshì yīnyuán jīng 佛說無量壽佛名號利益大事因緣經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Causes-and-Conditions of the Great Affair, the Benefits of [Reciting] the Name of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life attributed to 康僧鎧 (Saṃghavarman, 譯)
About the work
A short single-juǎn Pure Land sūtra preserved in the Xù-zàng-jīng (X01N0011) under the attribution to 康僧鎧 Saṃghavarman, the Cáo-Wèi-period translator of the canonical Wúliángshòu jīng. The text in fact has all the structural features of a Chinese-composed apocryphon (yí-jīng 疑經 / wěi-jīng 偽經) rather than a translation: the jí dà bǐ-qiū zhòng qiān èr-bǎi wǔ-shí rén jù 集大比丘眾千二百五十人俱 opening framing on Vulture Peak, the assembly of named śrāvakas and bodhisattvas, the exposition by the Buddha of Dharmākara’s Bodhisattva-vows, and the closing transmission section all replicate the standard Chinese jiàn-fó-jīng 見佛經 (sūtra-on-seeing-the-Buddha) genre conventions of the post-Sòng period rather than reflecting Indian source-material.
Abstract
The text presents itself as a teaching given by Śākyamuni at Wángshè chéng Qíshéjué shān 王舍城耆闍崛山 (Vulture Peak) on the cause-and-effect significance of recitation of the name of the Buddha Amitāyus (Wúliángshòu fó 無量壽佛). The Buddha relates the past-life story of Dharmākara who, “many measureless and uncountable kalpas ago,” took a vow of “unimaginably great vows” (chāoguò zhūfó suǒxíng zhī fǎ 超過諸佛所行之法) and is now “in the western, pure, peaceful realm bearing the title of unimaginable-light Amitāyustathāgata.” The doctrinal content is thoroughly conventional Pure Land teaching, with the distinctive emphasis on mínghào 名號 (the Buddha’s name) as the operative locus of soteriological efficacy.
The attribution to Saṃghavarman is anachronistic. The Cáo-Wèi-period Wúliángshòu jīng (T360, the canonical Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūma) is the locus classicus for the doctrine of Dharmākara’s vows, and the present text reads as a derived popularising condensation of the older sūtra rather than as an independent source. The text is unattested in the Tang and Sòng catalogue tradition (Kāiyuán shì-jiào lù 開元釋教錄, Zhēn-yuán shì-jiào lù 貞元釋教錄, Sòng zàng 宋藏) and first appears in the late-imperial Xù-zàng-jīng compilation. The dating bracket (c. 600–900) is the broad late-Tang plausible period for the production of such an apocryphon, but a later (Sòng-Yuán) date is also possible.
Translations and research
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990 — the standard English-language treatment of the apocrypha genre.
- Tokuno Kyoko. “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues.” In Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Buswell.
- Mochizuki Shinkō, Bukkyō kyōten seiritsushiron 佛教經典成立史論. Kyoto, 1946 — for the sūtra-formation tradition this text belongs to.
Other points of interest
The attribution to Saṃghavarman is a standard apocryphal-text strategy: the canonical Wèi-period translator is invoked to lend authority to a later Chinese-composed text on a related topic. The phenomenon is widespread in the Xù-zàng-jīng Pure Land corpus.