Sānwàn fó tóng gēnběn shénmì zhī yìn bìng fǎ Lóngzhǒng shàngzūnwáng fófǎ 三萬佛同根本神祕之印並法龍種上尊王佛法
The Same-Root Spirit-Secret Seal of the Thirty Thousand Buddhas, Together with the Dharma of the Dragon-Lineage Supreme-Honoured-King Buddha Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A one-fascicle apocryphal scripture combining two distinct units: (1) the “spirit-secret seal” (shénmì zhī yìn 神祕之印) of the thirty thousand Buddhas, presented as a single doctrinal root shared across an immense Buddha-pantheon; and (2) the “Dharma of the Dragon-Lineage Supreme-Honoured-King Buddha” (Lóngzhǒng shàngzūn wáng fó 龍種上尊王佛) — a Buddha-figure connected in canonical sources with a former life of Mañjuśrī. The text contains markedly Daoist-flavoured language including “purple light” (光紫色), the transformation of cinnabar into “flowing star” (流星) and gold “floating in water” (浮水), and fēixiān 飛仙 (“flying transcendent”) cosmology — making it one of the most overtly Daoist of the Buddhist apocrypha.
Abstract
T85n2906 is preserved in a heavily lacunose Dūnhuáng manuscript. The substrate language — purple light of the cinnabar field, liúxīng and fēixiān — is unmistakably Daoist waidan-alchemical and Shàngqīng-celestial. The text claims to combine this Daoist material with the canonical figure of the Dragon-Lineage King Buddha (cf. Sūtra of Mañjuśrī’s Buddha-Land, etc.), producing one of the clearest cases of Daoist-Buddhist hybridisation among the apocrypha. Cataloguers register it as 偽 from the Suí onward. Modern scholarship (Mollier 2008; Cao Ling 2011) places it among the late-medieval Buddhist talismanic apocrypha that systematically borrowed Daoist alchemical vocabulary while presenting themselves as Buddhist sūtras.
Translations and research
- 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).
- 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 catalog meta gives the title as 三萬佛同根本神祕之印並法龍種上尊王佛法, while the Tàishō head reads 三萬佛同根神秘之印並法龍種上尊王佛法 (without 本, with 神秘 rather than 神祕) — both forms are attested in manuscript witnesses; the catalog meta preserves an expanded form.