Xiàngfǎ juéyí jīng 像法決疑經
Sūtra Resolving Doubts in the Semblance Dharma Age Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A one-fascicle apocryphal sūtra of major historical importance, framed as an extension of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra: at the parinirvāṇa between the twin śāla trees, the Buddha — having just converted Subhadra — addresses Pǔguǎng púsà 普廣菩薩 and the assembly with a long discourse on the corruptions, ritual abuses, and social injustices that will mark the age of the xiàngfǎ 像法 (“semblance dharma”). The text is one of the foundational documents of Chinese mòfǎ-style decline-of-the-Dharma rhetoric and a key source for monastic critiques of Buddhist institutional wealth. The Tàishō witness is collated against multiple manuscript families (甲, 原, 丙).
Abstract
The Xiàngfǎ juéyí jīng is among the best-studied of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha. It is registered as a doubtful work (疑經) in Fǎjīng’s 《眾經目錄》 of 594 — the earliest surviving Suí cataloguer’s indictment of the text — and re-classed as wěi in subsequent catalogues. Its terminus ante quem is therefore Suí (594); a probable composition window in the late Northern Dynasties or early Suí is widely accepted in modern scholarship. The text is the principal source for the influential triple periodisation of zhèngfǎ / xiàngfǎ / mòfǎ (true / semblance / final dharma) as theorised in Chinese exegesis, and was extensively cited by Sānjiè jiào 三階教 founder Xìnxíng 信行 (540–594), whose San jie fo fa lifts whole passages from it. The scripture inveighs against monks accumulating wealth, neglecting ritual decorum, and exploiting the laity, and against social injustices done to the poor — language that made it foundational for the Sānjiè reform. Antonino Forte and Jamie Hubbard have shown how the text’s eschatological logic shaped Sānjiè institutions; Kyoko Tokuno’s 1994 dissertation is the most thorough monographic treatment in a Western language.
Translations and research
- Kyoko Tokuno, The Book of Resolving Doubts Concerning the Semblance Dharma (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1994). The principal English-language critical study and translation.
- Jamie Hubbard, Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Heresy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001) — extensive use of the Xiàngfǎ juéyí jīng in reconstructing Sānjiè doctrine.
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976), pp. 304–340.
- Antonino Forte, Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1976; rev. ed. Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2005) — context.
- Nishimoto Teruma 西本照真, Sangaikyō no kenkyū 三階教の研究 (Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1998) — Sānjiè movement and its scriptural base.
Other points of interest
The opening line — “聞如是。一時佛在跋提河邊沙羅雙樹間。度須跋陀羅竟” — pegs the discourse to the canonical Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra setting and was a deliberate move to attach the apocryphon to Mahāparinirvāṇa authority. The cataloguers’ rejection nonetheless was severe: Fǎjīng listed it in the 偽妄 category and it is consistently so classed thereafter.