Xiànzài shífāng qiān wǔbǎi fó míng bìng zá fó tóng hào 現在十方千五百佛名並雜佛同號
The Names of the One Thousand Five Hundred Buddhas of the Present in the Ten Directions, Together with Miscellaneous Buddhas of Identical Title Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A one-fascicle Buddha-name catalogue, set in the genre of fómíng 佛名 (“Buddha-names”) devotional litany. The text gives an enumerated catalogue of one thousand and five hundred currently-existing Buddhas of the ten directions, plus an appendix of “Miscellaneous Buddhas of Identical Title” — homonymous Buddhas. The framing instructions promise that one prostration before the entire roster, recited up to one thousand times, accrues the standard merit-list of fómíng practice. The text functions as a liturgical chant-script for medieval Chinese Buddha-name confession services (fómíng chànhuǐ).
Abstract
T85n2905 is preserved in Dūnhuáng manuscripts (Tàishō witness “orig”). The text belongs to the broader medieval Chinese fómíng genre, the most prestigious member of which is the canonical Five-Thousand-Three-Hundred Buddha-Names (T441, attributed to Sanghabhara) and the Three-Thousand Buddha-Names (T446) by Bodhiruci; many of the fómíng texts in T85 are abbreviated, augmented, or reordered Chinese-composed extensions of the canonical lists. The “miscellaneous Buddhas of identical title” addendum is itself a hallmark of this stratum: medieval Chinese liturgical texts increasingly accommodated multiple Buddhas of the same name (e.g. several “Sūryāṃśu” or “Maṇiketu” Buddhas) — a phenomenon parallel to, and probably influencing, the doctrinal “many Buddhas of one name” topos. Cao Ling (2011) provides bibliographic detail; Kuo Li-ying (1994) treats fómíng practice in the context of confession ritual.
Translations and research
- Kuo Li-ying, Confession et contrition dans le bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe siècle (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1994).
- 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).