Zhāifǎ qīngjìng jīng 齋法清淨經
Sūtra on the Purity of Vegetarian Fast Practice Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A short apocryphal sūtra in one fascicle, set at the Bamboo Grove (Veṇuvana) Vihāra at Rājagṛha. Mahāmaudgalyāyana opens the dialogue: while begging in the city, he saw “several thousand-myriad” beings whose heads were as great as Mount Tài, whose bellies were as Mount Sumeru, with throats and necks as fine as needles, who walked with the noise of five hundred carts, with smoke pouring from their large mouths — the classic medieval Chinese iconography of the preta / hungry ghost. The Buddha replies that these are former beings who, having sponsored zhāi (vegetarian-fast) banquets, broke their own fast at midday and so incurred this rebirth. The text exhorts strict observance of the zhāi-fast, and is a key document for the medieval Chinese fast-and-feast ritual culture.
Abstract
T85n2900 is preserved in a Dūnhuáng manuscript privately held in the Ryūkoku University 龍谷大學 collection (Hobogirin no. 2900: “Coll. Université Ryūkoku”). The text is one of several short zhāi-discipline apocrypha that promote strict observance of the lay vegetarian fast — a piece of Chinese Buddhist practice not formally required in Indic Vinaya but central to medieval Chinese lay devotion. The text was composed in conjunction with the wider Yúlánpén festival culture and the zhāihuì gathering culture of the Northern Dynasties. Cataloguers from the Suí onward register it as 偽 or doubtful. Christine Mollier and Stephen Teiser, among others, treat the text in the context of medieval Chinese fast-festival practice.
Translations and research
- Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) — context.
- Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).