Shíèr lǐ 十二禮
The Twelve Verses of Worship attributed to 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà / Nāgārjuna, 造); rendered by 禪那崛多 (Chánnà Juéduō / Jñānagupta, 別譯)
About the work
A short single-juǎn sequence of twelve devotional verses in praise of Amitābha Buddha, ascribed to the Indian Mahāyāna patriarch 龍樹 Nāgārjuna (conventionally c. 150–250 CE) and rendered into Chinese as a bié-yì 別譯 (“alternate translation”) by the Suí-dynasty Indian translator 禪那崛多 Jñānagupta (c. 523–600). The text is brief — twelve seven-syllable Sanskrit verses with their corresponding Chinese rendering — but it is one of the earliest Pure Land devotional verse-cycles in the Chinese canon and is doctrinally and liturgically important for the broader Pure Land zàn tradition.
Abstract
The twelve verses follow a simple devotional structure: each opens with a formal zhì-xīn guī-mìng lǐ 至心歸命禮 (“with single-minded mind I take refuge in and worship”) directed to Amitābha as the 西方阿彌陀佛 Xī-fāng ē-mí-tuó fó (Western Amitābha Buddha), is followed by four lines of seven-syllable verse describing one aspect of the Buddha (his lakṣaṇa, his light, his lifespan, his name, his Pure Land cosmology, his bodhisattva retinue, his salvific operation), and closes with a formula of dedication: yuàn gòng zhū zhòng-shēng wǎng-shēng ān-lè guó 願共諸眾生往生安樂國 (“may I together with all sentient beings be reborn in the Land of Bliss”). The sequence is therefore a complete short Pure Land devotional service in twelve articulations.
The attribution to Nāgārjuna is part of a broader medieval Chinese tradition that reads Nāgārjuna as a Pure Land authority — most prominent in the Daśabhūmikavibhāṣā (《十住毘婆沙論》, T1521) chapter 9 Yì-xíng pǐn 易行品 (“Easy-Practice Chapter”), the foundational doctrinal articulation of the yì-xíng / “easy practice” of niàn-fó as opposed to the nán-xíng / “difficult practice” of self-power cultivation. The Shí-èr lǐ belongs to this same tradition; whether the work is genuinely a translation of an Indic original by Nāgārjuna or a Chinese composition (or recension) given Indic dress is uncertain in modern scholarship. The bié-yì designation suggests Jñānagupta worked from a Sanskrit original that had also been rendered (or partly rendered) by an earlier translator, but no parallel translation survives. The Sanskrit original — if such existed — is also not extant.
The text is preserved in the Xù-zàng-jīng 卍續藏 (X057, vol. 2). The dating bracket adopted (580–600) covers Jñānagupta’s mature Cháng’ān / Suí translation period.
Translations and research
- Inagaki Hisao 稻垣久雄. “Nāgārjuna’s Discourse on the Ten Stages, Chapter 5: Easy Practice.” Ryūkoku Translation Series 12 (1988) — for the Yì-xíng pǐn and the broader Pure Land Nāgārjuna tradition.
- Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. Chūgoku jōdo kyōrishi. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1942/1964.
- Yamaguchi Kōen 山口光圓. Daichidoron-ron 大智度論論. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1949 — for the broader question of Pure Land elements in the Nāgārjuna corpus.
- Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Indo Bukkyō shi インド佛教史. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1979 — for the historical Nāgārjuna and the questions of attribution.
Other points of interest
The Shíèr lǐ is one of the earliest formally structured Pure Land devotional verse cycles in Chinese, predating the great Táng-period elaborations of 善導 Shàndǎo. It is a useful comparative reference for understanding the prior devotional tradition that Shàndǎo’s three zàn texts (KR6p0074, KR6p0075, KR6p0076) inherited and elaborated. The structural simplicity of the Shíèr lǐ — twelve short verses, each with the same opening and closing formula — illustrates the basic zàn template before its later elaboration into the complex multi-segment liturgies of the mature Tang tradition.