Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng dùliàng tiāndì pǐn dì èrshíjiǔ 妙法蓮華經度量天地品第二十九
The Lotus Sūtra, Chapter 29: On Measuring Heaven and Earth Anonymous Chinese composition, ascribed to the Lotus Sūtra.
About the work
A pseudo-chapter of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, claiming to be the twenty-ninth chapter of the Lotus. (Kumārajīva’s standard Lotus has only twenty-seven chapters; the twenty-ninth-chapter framing of this and of the parallel apocryphon Mǎmíng púsà pǐn dì sānshí KR6u0035 is a deliberate Chinese composition presenting itself as supplementary Lotus material.) Avalokiteśvara questions the Buddha about the depth, breadth, and structure of heaven and earth; the Buddha replies with cosmographic data — depths in yìwànlǐ 億萬里 — drawing on indigenous Chinese cosmology and Indic Mt-Sumeru cosmography in fused form.
Abstract
T85n2872 is preserved only in Dūnhuáng manuscripts. Like its companion piece KR6u0035 (Mǎmíng púsà pǐn), it belongs to a small but distinctive class of Chinese-composed pseudo-chapters of the Lotus. Pre-Táng catalogues do not register any such chapters; cataloguers from Zhīshēng (730) onward classify them as 偽妄. The chapter is one of the clearest instances of the Chinese apocryphal practice of grafting cosmographic and didactic content onto the authority of the Lotus. The cosmographic interest — measuring earth, water-sphere, golden-wheel, etc. — places the text in dialogue with the Lokaprajñapti tradition (compare Qǐshìjīng, Dìchí jīng) and with Daoist cosmography of the Northern Dynasties; Stephen Teiser, Erik Zürcher, and others have remarked on this fusion as characteristic of Dūnhuáng-circle apocrypha.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).
- Cao Ling 曹凌, Zhōngguó fójiào yíwěijīng zōnglù 中國佛教疑偽經綜錄 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 2011).
Other points of interest
The chapter-numbering “第二十九” implies a non-standard recension of the Lotus with at least 29 chapters; no such expanded Lotus is attested as a continuous text, and the chapter circulates as an autonomous one-fascicle scripture.