大目乾連冥間救母變文并圖

Dà Mùjiānlián míngjiān jiùmǔ biànwén bìng tú 大目乾連冥間救母變文并圖

The Transformation Text on the Great Maudgalyāyana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld, with Illustrations anonymous (Dunhuang manuscript)

About the work

The single most famous and culturally significant of the Dunhuang biànwén 變文 (“transformation texts”), preserved at T85 no. 2858. The work narrates the canonical story of Maudgalyāyana 目乾連 / Mùlián 目連 — one of the principal arhat-disciples of the Buddha — who, on attaining supernatural sight, perceives that his deceased mother has fallen into the Avīci 阿鼻 hell. Through the Buddha’s intervention and the establishment of the Yúlánpén 盂蘭盆 (ullambana) festival on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month (the Ghost Festival), Mùlián is able to rescue his mother from hellish suffering. The text is the foundational source of the Chinese Ghost Festival and of the entire Mùlián drama tradition that became one of the most popular forms of Chinese opera.

Prefaces

The text has no auto-preface or byline. It opens immediately with the cosmological framing of the Ghost Festival:

Heaven, on the 15th day of the 7th month: the heavenly hall opens its door; the hells open their gate. The three paths discard-and-extinguish □ □ □ □ □ □; the assembled monks consult-down. On this day the gathering-of-fortune spirits, the Eight-Class dragon-heaven, all come to teach □ □ □ □ — present-world fortune-resource for the deceased — turn-birth-into the surpassing celebration. Thereupon, the ullambana hundred-flavors 盂蘭百味 □ □ □ the Three Honored — looking up at the assembly’s thinking, first to save the upside-down hanging 倒懸 of distress and urgency.

Of old, when the Buddha was in the world: □ □ □ Mùlián, in lay [days] not yet leaving home, was named Luó-bo 羅卜. Deeply faithful in the Three Jewels, reverently weighty in the Mahāyāna. □ □ □ wishing to go to another country and rise-trade, accordingly divided his wealth-treasures, ordering his mother in the back to set up zhāi (purificatory feasts) and offer to the Buddhas, gather monks, and ask of those who came. After Luó-bo had left, his mother gave rise to the heart of stinginess. The household-entrusted assets and wealth she privately concealed and hid. The son returned home in not even ten days, the matters being concluded. The mother said to the son: “According to your zhāi, I made fortune.” Because of this deceit-defrauding the ordinary-and-sage [monks], at her life’s end she fell into the Avīci hell 阿鼻地獄, receiving □ □ suffering.

Luó-bo, having completed the three-year mourning rituals, then immediately threw himself into the Buddha’s [order] and left home. Through old habit-causes, hearing the dharma he attained □ □ the arhat fruit. Then with the Way-eye he sought-and-did-not-see the kind parent. The six paths of birth-and-death — he could not see his mother at all. Mù-lián from □ □ □ in sorrow consulted-and-addressed the World-Honored: “Where is my kind mother experiencing happiness?” At that time the World-Honored reported to Mù-lián: “Your mother has already fallen into Avīci, currently receiving the various sufferings. Although you are positioned-on-the-sage-fruit, what can knowing-it accomplish? If not the day when the Ten-Direction Assembled Saṅgha unties-and-removes [the soul], by the [combined] power of the assembly only can it be saved. Therefore, the Buddha’s compassion opens this upāya-establishment — the Ullambana-Bowl, that is its matter.”

[The text continues in alternating prose-and-verse format, narrating Mùlián’s quest in elaborate verse-passages.]

Abstract

Authorship and date are unrecoverable. The work is one of the principal biànwén preserved in the Dunhuang Library Cave — a major performance-genre of late-Táng / Five-Dynasties Buddhist popular literature in which monastic preachers staged elaborate sutra-narratives for mixed lay-and-monastic audiences. The “bìng tú” 并圖 (“with illustrations”) in the title indicates that the text was originally accompanied by illustrative pictures (now lost from this manuscript witness, but preserved in parallel Dunhuang witnesses such as the famous Pelliot Chinese 4524 illustrated Mùlián biànwén scroll, and Stein Or. 8210/S.2614). The pictures and the verse-prose narrative would have been performed together as a multimedia presentation. notBefore = 800, notAfter = 1000 (the standard Dunhuang bracket).

The work draws ultimately on canonical sources — primarily the Yú-lán-pén jīng 盂蘭盆經 (T685, Ullambana-sūtra, attributed to Zhú-fǎ-hù 竺法護 / Dharmarakṣa, 3rd century) and the larger Sūtra of Filial Piety tradition — but elaborates the canonical kernel into a substantial narrative drama with extensive verse-passages, hellish-cosmology descriptions, and dramatic dialogue between Mù-lián, the Buddha, his mother, and various hellish guardians.

The work’s cultural importance is foundational:

• It is the single most important source for the Chinese Ghost Festival (Zhōngyuánjié 中元節 / Yúlánpénhuì 盂蘭盆會, observed on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month) — one of the principal annual Chinese religious observances down to the present.
• It is the founding text of the Mùlián drama tradition (Mùlián xì 目連戲) — one of the earliest and most enduring forms of Chinese opera, performed in regional traditions across China from the Sòng period to the present.
• It is the single most extended literary treatment of Buddhist hellish-cosmology in pre-modern Chinese literature, providing the imaginative material for the standard medieval-Chinese conception of the Buddhist underworld.
• The text’s filial-piety framing — Mùlián as the model of Buddhist filial conduct, even unto descending into hell to save his mother — was crucial for the Buddhist accommodation to Confucian filial values that allowed Buddhism’s deep integration with Chinese family-and-state culture.

Translations and research

A vast scholarly literature; selected major works:

• Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton, 1988) — the standard English-language treatment of the Yú-lán-pén-huì and the Mù-lián biàn-wén tradition.
• Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Hawai’i, 1994) — companion treatment of the broader Buddhist underworld-cosmology context.
• Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge UP, 1983) — English translations of the principal Dunhuang biàn-wén including this text.
• Victor H. Mair, T’ang Transformation Texts (Harvard, 1989) — comprehensive treatment of the biàn-wén genre.
• Wáng Chóng-mín 王重民 et al. (eds.), Dūn-huáng biàn-wén jí 敦煌變文集 (1957) — the standard critical Chinese edition of the biàn-wén corpus.
• David Johnson (ed.), Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual: “Mu-lien Rescues His Mother” in Chinese Popular Culture (IEAS Berkeley, 1989) — collected essays on the Mù-lián drama tradition.
• Beata Grant and Wilt L. Idema, Escape from Blood Pond Hell: The Tales of Mulian and Woman Huang (University of Washington, 2011) — translations of related Mù-lián narrative materials.

Other points of interest

The Mùlián biànwén is one of the principal pre-modern Chinese texts in which Buddhist filial piety is dramatically resolved with Confucian filial piety — Mùlián is simultaneously the perfect Buddhist arhat (detached, supernaturally-perceptive) and the perfect Confucian filial son (descending personally into hell to rescue his mother). This dramatic resolution was foundational for the medieval Chinese cultural integration of the two traditions. The work also stands at a crucial point in the history of Chinese vernacular literature: as a biànwén, it is one of the earliest substantial texts in something approaching a vernacular Chinese narrative register, and is therefore a primary witness to the emergence of the Chinese vernacular literary tradition that would eventually produce the SòngYuán huàběn 話本, the pínghuà 平話, and ultimately the great vernacular novels.

The famous illustrated Mùlián biànwén scrolls (Pelliot 4524, Stein S.2614, etc.) are some of the most important surviving examples of Tang-period narrative-illustration culture — Chinese pictorial traditions in which sequential illustrations accompanied a parallel narrative text, anticipating later Chinese illustrated literary genres.

Links

• DILA authority: (no preserved authority entry)
• CBETA: T85n2858
• Doctrinal source: Yú-lán-pén jīng 盂蘭盆經 (T685, Ullambana-sūtra, attributed to Dharmarakṣa)
• Cultural successor: Zhōngyuánjié 中元節 / Yúlánpénhuì 盂蘭盆會 (Chinese Ghost Festival, observed annually on 7/15)
• Drama tradition: Mùlián xì 目連戲 (one of the earliest Chinese operatic traditions)
• Companion biànwén: cf. Wéimó jīng yāzuò wén in KR6s0037