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慈仁問八十種好經

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Text ID
KR6u0003
Date
400–700
Dynasty
南北朝

Círén wèn bāshí zhǒng hǎo jīng 慈仁問八十種好經

Sūtra of Maitrī’s Questions on the Eighty Minor Marks Anonymous Chinese composition.

About the work

A short apocryphal scripture in one fascicle, structured as a numbered catechism: the bodhisattva Círén 慈仁 asks the Buddha by what causes (因緣) he has obtained the eighty minor marks (anuvyañjana, 八十種好) of his physical body, and the Buddha replies item by item, each cause being a moral practice over many lifetimes. The format — moral practice → physical mark — converts a stock Indic doctrinal item (the eighty anuvyañjana, alongside the thirty-two lakṣaṇa) into a pedagogical karmic ledger.

Abstract

The Tàishō text (T85n2867, p. 1327) survives only in Dūnhuáng manuscripts. The catalogue of Fǎjīng (《眾經目錄》, 594) and later cataloguers do not list a sūtra of this exact title; the eighty-minor-marks framework is a familiar Indic mātṛkā (catalogued at length in works such as the Dazhidulun and the Da Boreboluomi jing) but its conversion into a question-and-answer karmic catechism with the otherwise unattested interlocutor “Círén” is a hallmark of Chinese apocryphal style. Makita (1976) and the Foguang Dictionary of Buddhism class the work with the genre of “moral catechism” apocrypha (such as the Shàn’è yīnguǒ jīng KR6u0017) that flourished in the Northern Dynasties through the Táng. The bodhisattva Círén (“Compassion-and-Benevolence”) is a sinicising rendering of Maitrī — that is, the bodhisattva ordinarily transcribed Mílè 彌勒 — but the choice of a calque rather than a transcription is itself characteristic of locally composed scriptures.

Translations and research

  • Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).
  • Kyoko Tokuno, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues,” in Robert E. Buswell, Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990), pp. 31–74.

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