Āyùwáng jīng 阿育王經
Sūtra of King Aśoka
translated by 僧伽婆羅 (Saṃghabhara, fl. 506–520, 譯) under the Liáng 梁 dynasty
About the work
A ten-juan Chinese translation of the Aśokāvadāna corpus, by the Funanese (Cambodian) monk 僧伽婆羅 (Saṃghabhara) under the patronage of Liáng Wǔdì 武帝, dated by colophon to 512. (The Taishō prints the colophon as 511; modern critical scholarship has settled on 512.) Substantially the same legendary material as 安法欽’s earlier Āyùwáng zhuàn (KR6r0031) but in a different Chinese rendering and with some differences in arrangement, 僧伽婆羅’s version was the more widely circulated of the two from the Liáng onward.
Abstract
The dating is fixed by the Chū sānzàng jì jí of 僧祐 (a contemporary), which records 僧伽婆羅’s translation of the Āyùwáng jīng among the works completed in 512. A composition window of 506–511 (catalog meta) reflects the broader period of his Liáng translation activity from his arrival at the Liáng court in 506.
The text covers the same general material as KR6r0031: the conversion of Aśoka, his constructions, the early Buddhist patriarchs, the Third Council, and the missionary activities of the early saṃgha. Internal differences from 安法欽’s version (in chapter divisions, ordering, and detail) suggest that 僧伽婆羅 worked from a different recension of the underlying Indic tradition. The two versions have been compared philologically since Jean Przyluski’s pioneering work; modern consensus treats KR6r0031 and KR6r0032 as parallel translations of related but not identical Indic recensions.
僧伽婆羅 is one of the major translators of the early Liáng. He came from Funan (modern Cambodia) and worked under the imperial patronage of Liáng Wǔdì at the Hóulǐshè 後禮社 (or related) translation establishment in Jiànkāng. His other principal translation is the Vimuttimagga (Jiětuō dào lùn 解脫道論, T1648), the early Pali-tradition meditation manual.
Translations and research
- Jean Przyluski, La légende de l’empereur Aśoka (Paris, 1923) — the foundational comparative study; uses both KR6r0031 and KR6r0032 extensively.
- John Strong, The Legend of King Aśoka (Princeton, 1983) — book-length study of the Aśokāvadāna tradition with Chinese parallels.
- Étienne Lamotte, Histoire du bouddhisme indien (Louvain, 1958) — comparative use of both versions.
Links
- CBETA: T50n2043