Jiūjìng dàbēi jīng juǎn dì èr sān sì 究竟大悲經卷第二．三．四
Sūtra of Ultimate Great Compassion, Fascicles 2, 3, and 4 Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A long apocryphal sūtra preserved at Dūnhuáng of which only fascicles two, three, and four survive (the first fascicle is lost). The interlocutor is the bodhisattva Wúài 無礙 (“Unobstructed”); the text is structured as a doctrinal exposition of “ultimate compassion” through the medium of the catur-mahābhūta (four great elements: earth, water, fire, wind) recast as karmic-medical aetiology. Each great element grounds a class of “diseases” (病本) and corresponding “liberations” (解脫); the analysis fuses Buddhist catur-mahābhūta doctrine with sinitic medical theory in a manner reminiscent of, but more elaborate than, Nāgārjuna’s medical analogy.
Abstract
T85n2880 is preserved only in the surviving fascicles 2, 3, and 4 (the first fascicle is missing); the editorial state is reflected in the title. The text is one of the longer Dūnhuáng apocrypha and is registered in catalogues from the Suí onward as 偽 or doubtful. Modern scholarship (Makita 1976; Kuo Li-ying 1994) places it in the cluster of confession-and-deliverance apocrypha that fuse doctrinal analysis with ritual-medical aetiology; the linkage of the four great elements to “disease” and “liberation” is a sinicising development not paralleled in canonical Indic Mahāyāna. Cao Ling (2011) provides the fullest modern bibliographic treatment.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).
- Kuo Li-ying, Confession et contrition dans le bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe siècle (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1994).
- 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 first fascicle is lost; what survives is only the central/late stretch of the work, beginning mid-discourse. The textual reconstruction is therefore necessarily partial.