Hùshēnmìng jīng 護身命經
Sūtra for Protecting Body and Life (variant recension) Anonymous Chinese composition; survives in a Dūnhuáng manuscript from the Nakamura 中村 collection.
About the work
A divergent one-fascicle recension of the apocryphal Hùshēnmìng jīng, related to but textually distinct from KR6u0001 (T85n2865). The opening of the manuscript is broken; the surviving body presents twelve “noble wisdoms” (十二聖慧), an attendant set of vows, and an injunction that bǐqiūnī, upāsaka, upāsikā, kings’ sons, and palace women who maintain these twelve practices will be reborn in good circumstances. The shared kernel with T2865 is the framing situation — the Buddha’s deathbed instruction at the twin śāla trees — and the homiletic insistence on copying, reciting, and circulating the scripture as the operative meritorious act.
Abstract
The Tàishō editors took this text from a manuscript privately held in the Nakamura collection, distinct from the Pelliot manuscript that underlies KR6u0001. Hobogirin (no. 2866) records the source as “Coll. Nakamura” and notes the cross-reference to no. 2865. CANWWW (div09.xml) lists T85N2865 and T85N2866 as parallel related texts. The shared title and shared deathbed-injunction frame, but partly non-overlapping content, point to two stages or two regional variants of a single Dūnhuáng-circulating apocryphon rather than two unrelated compositions. Pre-Táng catalogues do not register the work; later catalogues subsume scriptures of this title under the rubric of doubtful or forged sūtras (偽疑). Makita (1976) treats T2865 and T2866 together as a single apocryphal cluster. As with most Dūnhuáng yiwei scriptures of this type, the social function — talismanic, protective, life-extending — is more securely reconstructed than the date or place of composition, although a Northern-Dynasties to Suí–Táng window is the consensus bracket.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).
- Robert E. Buswell, Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990).