Āyùwáng xī huài mù yīnyuán jīng 阿育王息壞目因緣經
Sūtra on the Cause and Conditions of King Aśoka’s Son’s Eyes Being Destroyed
translated by 曇摩難提 (Dharmanandi, fl. ca. 384–391, 譯) under the Former Qín 前秦 / 符秦
About the work
A short single-juan sūtra translated by 曇摩難提 (Dharmanandi) under the Former Qín 前秦 (often written 符秦 from the Fú 符 imperial surname). It narrates the famous Aśoka legend of the blinding of Prince Kuṇāla — Aśoka’s son — at the instigation of the queen Tiṣyarakṣitā, and the karmic causes (yīnyuán 因緣) of that fate. The episode is one of the most celebrated narratives in the Aśokāvadāna corpus; the present text is its earliest single-narrative Chinese rendering.
Abstract
曇摩難提 (Dharmanandi) was a Tukharan / Sogdian monk who arrived in Cháng’ān 長安 in 384 (under 姚萇 / Yáo Cháng’s predecessor) and was the principal early translator of the Ekottarikāgama and Madhyamāgama. The dating of the present translation falls within his Cháng’ān years, conventionally 384–391.
The narrative opens with King Aśoka’s love for his son Kuṇāla (here called Fǎ-yì 法益 in some Chinese renderings; the title xī-huài-mù 息壞目 refers to “his son whose eyes were destroyed”) and the queen Tiṣyarakṣitā’s jealous scheming to have him blinded. The sūtra proceeds to the karmic explanation: in a previous life, Kuṇāla had committed an act of cruelty whose karmic ripening was the loss of his eyes. The narrative is doctrinally framed as a teaching on yīnyuán (cause and conditions) and on the moral economy of karma operating across lifetimes.
The episode appears in fuller form in KR6r0031 and KR6r0032; the present text is a focused single-narrative version, probably reflecting an Indic avadāna that circulated as an independent text.
Translations and research
- John Strong, The Legend of King Aśoka (Princeton, 1983) — discusses the Kuṇāla narrative in its Sanskrit, Pali, and Chinese forms.
- Jean Przyluski, La légende de l’empereur Aśoka (Paris, 1923) — French translation of the parallel material.