Dàwēiyí qǐngwèn 大威儀請問
Inquiry on the Great Deportment Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A short apocryphal homily on ritual purity in the handling of scripture. The opening prescribes a striking inventory of micro-transgressions and their cosmically magnified consequences: handling a scripture without first washing the hands with bean-flour soap is met with three hundred million years’ rebirth as a worm in a privy; scratching one’s body or speaking idly while reading scripture incurs eight hundred koṭi of years in the dark hells and two hundred koṭi of years’ rebirth as a fox or hare; spitting before a scripture or carrying it between one’s teeth incurs the same penalties. The text is a striking instance of the apocryphal genre in which homiletic fervour produces wildly inflated karmic bookkeeping.
Abstract
T85n2884 is preserved in Dūnhuáng manuscripts. The text is stylistically and topically related to the Pǔxián púsà shuō zhèngmíng jīng KR6u0015 and to other “rule of decorum” (威儀) apocrypha that codify monastic ritual practice for late-Northern Dynasties and early Táng monastic communities. It is registered as 偽 in the catalogues of the Suí onward; modern scholarship places it among “monastic discipline” (戒律 / 威儀) apocrypha. The text is a useful index of the social anxiety surrounding the proper handling of sacred books in medieval Chinese Buddhism, and is one of the more vivid examples of the apocryphal tendency to convert ritual disrespect into hyperbolic karmic punishment.
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).