Pǔxián púsà xíngyuàn wáng jīng 普賢菩薩行願王經
Sūtra of the King of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva’s Vow-Practices Anonymous Chinese composition; Dūnhuáng-only verse recension of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna.
About the work
A short verse scripture in one fascicle, devoted to the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna — the famous “vow-practices” of Samantabhadra. The opening lines praise the Buddhas of the ten directions and the three times, take refuge with body, speech, and mind, and pledge to make universal homage with the power of Samantabhadra’s vow-practices. The text is a verse-only recension; it has no narrative frame, no setting at Vulture Peak or any other locale, and no discursive prose. It thus differs from the canonical Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna embedded in the Avataṃsaka (Buddhabhadra and Śikṣānanda recensions), and from the standalone Pǔxián púsà xíngyuàn pǐn (T293, by Prajña, late 8th century).
Abstract
T85n2907 and its companion text KR6u0044 (T85n2908) are two Dūnhuáng manuscript recensions of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna that diverge slightly from each other and from the canonical T293 recension. Modern scholarship (Cao Ling 2011; Akira Yuyama, Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guṇa-saṃcaya-gāthā and parallel studies) treats them as alternate Chinese-circulating recensions, possibly representing earlier translations or earlier Tibetan-influenced retranslations of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna — not as Chinese-composed apocrypha in the strong sense, but as non-canonical recensions of an originally Indic verse work. Their inclusion in the Yiweibu of T85 reflects the Tàishō editors’ decision to group all non-canonical Dūnhuáng witnesses together rather than to integrate them with the Avataṃsaka canon.
Translations and research
- Akira Yuyama 湯山明, several articles on the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna tradition.
- Jens-Uwe Hartmann, “The Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna,” contributions to Indian and Buddhist Studies and Indo-Iranian Journal.
- 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).