Shānhǎihuì púsà jīng 山海慧菩薩經
Sūtra of the Bodhisattva Wisdom-of-Mountain-and-Sea Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A one-fascicle apocryphal scripture set at the (otherwise unattested) “Yèbō country” 業波國, with a roll-call of twenty-five great bodhisattvas led by Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta, Bhaiṣajyarāja, Bhaiṣajyasamudgata, Samantabhadra, etc., and culminating in the title-figure, the bodhisattva Shānhǎihuì 山海慧 (“Wisdom-of-Mountain-and-Sea”). The text’s chapter title is the curious Āmítuó fó jué zhū dàzhòng guānshēn jīng jiětuō pǐn dìyī 阿彌陀佛覺諸大眾觀身經解脫品第一 — “Amitābha Buddha Awakens the Assembly: Sūtra on Contemplating the Body, Chapter on Liberation, Number One” — which itself reads as a Chinese-style assembled composite.
Abstract
T85n2891 is preserved at Dūnhuáng. The roll-call of twenty-five bodhisattvas is similar in structure to that of the Wǔshí èrshí wǔ púsà (52 / 25 bodhisattvas) tradition that pervades both popular Chinese Pure Land devotion and the closely related Hùshēnmìng and Pǔxián púsà shuō zhèngmíng jīng clusters; the inclusion of the otherwise unknown “Shānhǎihuì púsà” makes the text one of the introduced figures rather than a translation. Cataloguers from the Suí onward register it as 偽妄. The text is treated by Makita (1976) and Cao Ling (2011) among Northern-Dynasties to Suí–Táng popular Mahāyāna 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).