金七十論

Jīn qīshí lùn 金七十論

The Treatise on the Golden Seventy (the Chinese translation of the Sāṃkhya-kārikā) translated by 真諦 (譯)

About the work

A three-juan Chinese translation of the Sāṃkhya-kārikā (the foundational treatise of the orthodox Indian Sāṃkhya philosophical school), translated by Paramārtha 真諦 (Zhēn-dì, 499–569), the great Indian translator-monk who was the principal translator of Mahāyāna and Sanskrit philosophical texts in mid-sixth-century South China. The Sanskrit original is a verse-form treatise in 70 verses (with the title “golden seventy” — jīn qī-shí 金七十 — being a Chinese honorific calque of the Indian suvarṇa-saptati tradition that emerged around the Sāṃkhya-kārikā and its commentaries). The text presents the canonical Sāṃkhya doctrine: the twenty-five categories (pañca-viṃśati-tattva) including prakṛti (material-cause), puruṣa (consciousness-witness), the three guṇas, the unfolding of phenomenal existence from primordial prakṛti through buddhi / ahaṃkāra / the tan-mātras / the great elements / the senses, and the soteriological framework of kaivalya (isolation-liberation).

The work is preserved in the Taishō at T54 no. 2137. Its inclusion in the Buddhist canon is significant: although Sāṃkhya is a non-Buddhist Indian philosophical school, Paramārtha’s translation was incorporated into the Chinese Buddhist canon as a doctrinal-comparative reference text — providing Chinese Buddhist scholars with direct access to the principal Indian non-Buddhist philosophical system that Buddhist apologists had to refute.

Prefaces

The text has no preserved Chinese-side preface; the byline reads 陳天竺三藏真諦譯 (“Chén-dynasty Indian Tripiṭaka Master Paramārtha translated”). It opens immediately with the first verse:

三苦所逼故　欲知滅此因 見無用不然　不定不極故

(Pressed by the three sufferings — / Wishing to know the cause for ending them — / [Worldly] seeing being useless and not so — / Not-fixed, not-ultimate, indeed.)

This opening corresponds to the first verse of the Sanskrit Sāṃkhya-kārikā by Īśvarakṛṣṇa: duḥkha-trayābhighātāj jijñāsā tad-apaghātake hetau / dṛṣṭe sāpārthā cen naikāntātyantato ‘bhāvāt — “From the impact of the three sufferings, one desires to know the cause that ends them. Seeing that [the visible/empirical] is unhelpful: it is not absolute, not ultimate, not non-existent”. Paramārtha’s translation follows the canonical Sāṃkhya kārikā closely, with each verse rendered into a 4×5-character or 4×7-character Chinese verse, often with Sāṃkhya-technical terminology preserved in transliterated Sanskrit alongside Chinese paraphrase.

Abstract

Authorship and date: translated by Paramārtha 真諦 (DILA A000962; 499 – 12 February 569 CE) during his late South-China translation career under the Chén 陳 dynasty (557–589). Paramārtha had arrived in Liáng China in 546 from Ujjayinī in Western India; after the fall of Liáng he relocated to the south and continued translating under Chén imperial patronage. The Jīn qīshí lùn belongs to his late translation output, completed before his death in 569. notBefore = 557 (the founding of the Chén dynasty); notAfter = 569 (Paramārtha’s death). Catalog dynasty 陳.

The work is one of the principal non-Buddhist Indian philosophical works preserved in Chinese translation, alongside Xuán-zàng’s later translation of the Vaiśeṣika Daśapadārtha-śāstra (KR6s0073 Shèng-zōng shí jù-yì lùn). Together they represent the principal Chinese-canonical access points to the non-Buddhist Indian philosophical schools that Buddhist apologetic writers had to engage with — making them indispensable for the Chinese-Buddhist refutation literature, particularly the Yīn-míng 因明 (Buddhist logic) and Yogācāra 唯識 traditions which systematically refuted Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika positions.

The Sanskrit Sāṃkhya-kārikā itself dates to ca. 350–450 CE (cf. Larson and Bhattacharya, Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, 1987); Paramārtha’s Chinese translation is therefore one of the earliest surviving translations of the work in any non-Indic language, and a primary witness to the canonical Sāṃkhya-kārikā tradition before the surviving Sanskrit manuscript-witnesses (which are mostly later).

Translations and research

• Junjirō Takakusu 高楠順次郎, “La Sāṃkhyakārikā étudiée à la lumière de sa version chinoise” (Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1904) — the foundational Western-language study of Paramārtha’s translation.
• Gerald J. Larson and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (eds.), Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy (= Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 4, Princeton, 1987) — comprehensive treatment of the Sāṃkhya-kārikā and its commentaries.
• Erich Frauwallner, Geschichte der indischen Philosophie (1953–1956; English trans. History of Indian Philosophy, 1973) — context for Sāṃkhya-Buddhist relations.
• Funayama Tōru 船山徹, scholarship on Paramārtha and his canonical translations.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the single most important non-Buddhist Indian philosophical texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon and a primary source for the study of pre-Yogācāra Indian philosophical comparativism in Chinese Buddhist scholarship. Its classification in the Kanripo’s shìlèi (KR6s) section reflects the Chinese-canonical treatment of non-Buddhist Indian philosophical works as comparative-reference materials within the Buddhist canon.

Links

• DILA authority: A000962 (真諦 / Paramārtha)
• CBETA: T54n2137
• Translator: Paramārtha 真諦 (499–569), great Indian translator-monk in 6th-c. South China
• Companion non-Buddhist Indian philosophical work in Chinese: KR6s0073 Shèng-zōng shí jù-yì lùn (Vaiśeṣika Daśapadārtha-śāstra, Xuán-zàng tr.)
• Sanskrit original: Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhya-kārikā (ca. 350–450 CE)
• Dazangthings date evidence (565): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/