Fùfǎzàng yīnyuán zhuàn 付法藏因緣傳
Account of the Causes and Conditions of the Transmission of the Dharma-Treasury
translated by 吉迦夜 (Jíjiāyè / Kekaya, 譯) together with 曇曜 (Tánrèyào, 譯)
About the work
A six-juan narrative-historical text purporting to be a translation of an Indian source recounting the unbroken transmission of the dharma-treasury (法藏 fǎ-zàng) from the Buddha through a sequence of patriarchs, beginning with Mahākāśyapa and ending with Siṃha-bhikṣu (師子比丘), who is martyred. According to the colophon and the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (T2034), the work was rendered into Chinese in 472 CE at Yúngāng / Píng-chéng under the Northern-Wèi imperial-translation programme of Wén-chéng-dì 文成帝, by the Western-region monk 吉迦夜 working with the Hàn Buddhist administrator 曇曜 — the same team also responsible for the Zá-bǎo-zàng jīng 雜寶藏經 KR6b0060. It is the principal Chinese-language source for the early “twenty-four patriarch” lineage scheme that was later picked up and elaborated by the Tiāntāi and (eventually, indirectly) the Chán traditions.
Abstract
The text presents itself as a continuous chain of transmission of the dharma-treasury from one teacher to the next. The patriarchs in its sequence are: Mahākāśyapa 摩訶迦葉, Ānanda 阿難, Śāṇavāsa 商那和修, Upagupta 優波毱多, Dhītika 提多迦, Mikkaka 彌遮迦, Buddhanandi 佛陀難提, Buddhamitra 佛陀蜜多, Pārśva 脇比丘, Puṇyayaśas 富那奢, Aśvaghoṣa 馬鳴, Kapimala 比羅, Nāgārjuna 龍樹, Āryadeva 提婆 (Kāṇadeva), Rāhulata 羅睺羅, Saṅghānandi 僧伽難提, Saṅghayaśas 僧伽耶舍, Kumārata 鳩摩羅多, Jayata 闍夜多, Vasubandhu 婆修槃陀 (here not the Yogācāra master), Manorhita 摩奴羅, Haklena 鶴勒那, and Siṃha-bhikṣu 師子. Each section combines a brief biographical / hagiographical narrative — much of it shared with the Avadāna literature — with a transmission verse handed down by the master to his successor.
The narrative ends pointedly with the violent death of Siṃha-bhikṣu, executed by king Mihirakula 彌羅崛 (or his predecessor) of Kashmir. The closing of the lineage with a martyrdom and no further transmission (“the lamp of the dharma is extinguished” 法燈滅盡) is a deliberate textual device: it declares that the unbroken Indian patriarchal succession has come to an end and that what remains is the dharma itself, no longer embodied in a single living lineage-holder. This narrative arc was later read very differently by Chán polemicists, who attempted to splice the lineage forward through Bodhidharma to circumvent the Fù-fǎ-zàng’s own conclusion.
The catalog meta records both 吉迦夜 and 曇曜 as translators (canwww gives 吉迦夜 the bare name with no resp, 曇曜 marked 譯). Modern scholarship — already since Maspero — has questioned whether the work is a genuine translation of a single Indian source or a compilation made in Píngchéng from multiple Indian materials with substantial Chinese editorial framing; Stuart Young (Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China, 2015) treats it as the foundational, partly composite, document of the Chinese “Indian patriarch” imagination.
Translations and research
- Stuart H. Young, Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015) — the principal Western-language monograph on the patriarch-narratives, with extensive analysis of the Fù-fǎ-zàng yīn-yuán zhuàn.
- Henri Maspero, “Sur la date et l’authenticité du Fou fa tsang yin yuan tchuan,” Mélanges d’indianisme offerts à Sylvain Lévi (Paris: Leroux, 1911), 129–149 — the founding philological investigation, arguing for substantial Chinese editorial intervention.
- John R. McRae, Seeing through Zen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), chap. 1, on the use of the Fù-fǎ-zàng by later Chán lineage-makers.
- Elizabeth Morrison, The Power of Patriarchs: Qisong and Lineage in Chinese Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 19–48, on the Sòng reception.
Other points of interest
The Vasubandhu 婆修槃陀 of this lineage is not the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda master Vasubandhu (4th–5th c.) of the Abhidharmakośa; the names are similar but the figures distinct. Confusion of the two is a long-standing problem in the secondary literature.
Links
- CBETA: T50n2058
- Wikipedia: Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan