Shìjiāmóuní rúlái xiàngfǎ mièjìn zhī jì 釋迦牟尼如來像法滅盡之記
Record of the Extinction of the Semblance-Dharma of the Tathāgata Śākyamuni
translated (from Tibetan or Khotanese) by 法成 (Fǎchéng / Chos-grub, fl. 833–865, 譯)
About the work
A 1-juan late-Táng / Tibetan-period Buddhist eschatological-prophetic narrative, translated by Fǎ-chéng 法成 (Tibetan ‘Gos Chos-grub / Wú Fǎ-chéng 吳法成) — the great Tibetan-Chinese bilingual translator-monk active at Dūn-huáng 敦煌 during the late Tibetan and early Guī-yì-jūn 歸義軍 period (ca. 833–865). The work is identified in its incipit as a translation by “the Great-Virtue Tripiṭaka-master Fǎ-chéng of the great-state” 國大德三藏法師沙門法成譯 — i.e., produced under late-Tibetan or early-post-Tibetan official patronage at Dūn-huáng. Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2090.
The dating bracket is the floruit of Fǎchéng’s documented activity (833 – 865).
Abstract
The work is a prophetic-eschatological narrative describing the future extinction of the xiàng-fǎ 像法 (the “semblance-dharma” period, the second of the three great phases of the dharma’s life — zhèng-fǎ 正法, xiàng-fǎ 像法, mò-fǎ 末法). The narrative is set in a future Khotan 于闐 — six generations after the present — when the seventh king will be Vijayasaṃta (毘左耶訖多). At a monastery (the Sā-jiā bān-luó-hē-rǎ 薩迦般羅訶郍) outside the capital, an arhat will instruct his disciple in the vinaya; the disciple will read the Yuè-zàng pú-sà suǒ-wèn jīng 月藏菩薩所問經 (the Candragarbha sūtra’s prophetic chapters) and will see the prophesied destruction of Buddhism approaching.
The narrative then describes the prophesied conflict: three kings — the Hēi Yáng-tóu 黑羊頭 (the Black Sheep-Head) of the West, the Hóng Miàn 紅面 (the Red-Faced) of the East, and a third northern king — will form an alliance, march on Kosambī 俱閃彌, and there destroy 300,000 troops including the king. The Kosambī ruler, in atonement, will assemble all the saṅgha of Jambudvīpa at Kosambī; but internal disputation will arise within the assembled saṅgha and the monks will turn on one another, killing all. The narrative concludes: “Thus the semblance-dharma of the Buddha in Jambudvīpa will be entirely extinguished.” The death of the dharma is therefore prophesied to come about not through external persecution but through internal monastic schism.
The closing eschatological frame: 57 koṭi 6 trillion years after Śākyamuni’s parinirvāṇa, Maitreya will descend and re-establish the dharma in this world.
The text reflects the Tibetan-Buddhist eschatological imagination of the Candragarbha-sūtra tradition, mediated through the late-Tang Tibetan Dūnhuáng establishment. It is one of the principal Chinese-language sources for the Khotan Buddhist eschatological tradition — the localised Khotanese narrative that anchors the great Buddhist destruction prophecies in the political-military geography of the Tarim Basin.
Translations and research
- 上山大峻, 敦煌佛教の研究 (Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1990) — the principal Japanese-language treatment of Fǎ-chéng’s translation activity at Dūn-huáng.
- Ronald M. Davidson, “The Origins of Mahāyoga,” Indo-Iranian Journal (2002) — touches on the late-Tibetan eschatological-prophetic genre.
- Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991) — the principal English-language study of the Candragarbha / Khotan eschatological tradition, which provides the analytical context for this work.
Other points of interest
The work belongs to the broader corpus of Khotanese Buddhist eschatological-prophetic literature that warns of the destruction of the dharma in Khotan and provides a religious-historiographical frame for the Tibetan and Tang-Chinese receptions of the Khotan tradition. The mention of the Black Sheep-Head and Red-Faced kings of the prophecy gestures at the historical sequence of Tibetan Empire (the “Red-Faced”) and the Qarluqs / Karluk Turks (the “Black-Sheep”) as agents of dharma-destruction in the Tarim Basin — a religious encoding of Tibetan-period geopolitics.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2090