Fó shuō Ēmítuó fó gēnběn mìmì shénzhòu jīng 佛說阿彌陀佛根本祕密神咒經
Sūtra of the Spirit-Mantra, Root Secret of the Buddha Amitābha attributed to 菩提流支 (Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land dhāraṇī sūtra, attributed in the Xù-zàng-jīng colophon to “the Cáo-Wèi zháo (i.e. dynasty) Tripiṭaka master Bodhiruci, translating by imperial decree” (曹魏朝三藏菩提流支奉詔譯). The attribution is anachronistic: 菩提流支 Bodhiruci was a Northern Wèi 北魏 (not Cáo-Wèi 曹魏) translator of the early sixth century, and the text of the present work — a Pure Land dhāraṇī in the late-Tang esoteric mode — does not correspond to any work attested in the Tang catalogue tradition under either Bodhiruci’s name. The work is widely understood as a Chinese-composed apocryphon based on the canonical Smaller Sukhāvatī-vyūma of 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva (T366).
Abstract
The text opens with a closely modelled imitation of the Smaller Sukhāvatī-vyūma’s opening — the Buddha at Shè-wèi guó 舍衛國 Qí-shù gěi-gū-dú yuán 祇樹給孤獨園 (Jetavana), with the standard 1,250-bhikṣu assembly led by Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, Mahākāśyapa, and so on. The Buddha addresses Śāriputra: “From this place, going west across one hundred thousand million Buddha-fields, there is a world called Jí-lè 極樂 (Sukhāvatī)…” — replicating Kumārajīva’s text verbatim through the descriptive section before diverging into a dhāraṇī expansion not present in the canonical sūtra. This dhāraṇī — the gēn-běn mì-mì shén-zhòu 根本秘密神咒 (“root-secret spirit-mantra”) — provides the distinctive content of the text and serves as the basis for a series of esoteric ritual instructions on the use of the dhāraṇī for Pure Land rebirth.
The structure is characteristic of the late-Tang and Sòng-period Chinese esoteric Pure Land tradition. The work is unattested in the Tang catalogue tradition prior to the Xù-zàng-jīng compilation. The dating bracket (c. 700–1100) covers the broad period of plausible production. The pseudo-attribution to Bodhiruci — a famous early translator — is the standard authorisation strategy for an apocryphal text seeking canonical legitimacy. The text is not the same as the Bá-yī-qiè yè-zhàng gēn-běn dé-shēng jìng-tǔ shén-zhòu 拔一切業障根本得生淨土神咒 (the Pure Land dhāraṇī embedded in the standard liturgy and discussed in the closing section of 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s Shū-chāo KR6p0019); the two are independent though related.
Translations and research
- Buswell, Robert E. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. University of Hawai’i Press, 1990.
- Sørensen, Henrik H. (ed.). Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2011 — for the late-Tang esoteric Pure Land context.