Lóngshù púsà zhuàn 龍樹菩薩傳 (recension a)
Biography of the Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna
translated by 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva, 344–413, 譯) under the Later Qín 後秦 (姚秦)
About the work
The first of two recensions of the Chinese biography of Nāgārjuna (龍樹 Lóngshù; conventionally placed in the second to early third century CE), the principal patriarch of the Madhyamaka school, translated into Chinese by 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva). The Taishō prints two recensions side by side: the present recension a (T50 no. 2047a) and the closely related but textually distinct recension b (KR6r0037 / T50 no. 2047b). Both date from Kumārajīva’s Cháng’ān years (401–413).
Abstract
The recension printed as T2047a (the present text) follows the version most commonly transmitted in the East Asian canonical tradition; recension b preserves variant readings that Taishō editors thought sufficiently different to print as a separate witness. The two are extensively parallel: both narrate Nāgārjuna’s birth in southern India, his early career in brahminical learning, his entry into the Buddhist saṃgha, his journey to the Nāga kingdom where he received the Mahāyāna sūtras (especially the Prajñāpāramitā), his polemical defeat of opposing masters, his composition of the foundational Madhyamaka treatises, and his eventual death (in some versions, by self-cultivated nirvāṇa at the request of a jealous prince).
The Chinese hagiography presents Nāgārjuna as a magical prodigy as well as a philosopher: he masters the brahminical sciences, becomes immortal through alchemy, then renounces these pursuits when he receives the Mahāyāna teachings. He is shown as the recipient of the Prajñāpāramitā from the nāgas — the canonical East Asian justification for the Mahāyāna’s late historical emergence (the texts had been hidden among the nāgas until Nāgārjuna retrieved them). The biography is the classic source for the image of Nāgārjuna in East Asian Buddhism.
Translations and research
- Max Walleser, The Life of Nāgārjuna from Tibetan and Chinese Sources (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1923) — the foundational Western translation, comparing the Chinese with the Tibetan accounts.
- David Seyfort Ruegg, The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981) — discusses the historical Nāgārjuna and the Chinese biographical tradition.
- Joseph Walser, Nāgārjuna in Context: Mahāyāna Buddhism and Early Indian Culture (New York: Columbia UP, 2005) — extensive use of the Chinese hagiographies.
- Étienne Lamotte (trans.), Le traité de la grande vertu de sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra) (Louvain, 1944–80) — uses the KR6r0036 / KR6r0037 in introducing Nāgārjuna.