Dàfāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng Pǔxián púsà xíngyuàn wáng pǐn 大方廣佛華嚴經普賢菩薩行願王品
Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: Chapter on the King of Samantabhadra’s Vow-Practices Anonymous Chinese composition; Dūnhuáng-only recension of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna.
About the work
A second Dūnhuáng-only recension of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna (cf. KR6u0043 T85n2907), here presented as a chapter of the Avataṃsaka (Huáyán jīng). The verse opening overlaps in meaning but not in wording with the parallel KR6u0043 recension: “May I take refuge with my pure body, speech, and mind / before all the Buddhas of the ten kṣetra-fields and the three times…” The two recensions differ in line-by-line wording but represent the same underlying Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna prayer. The framing of the verse as a “chapter” of the Avataṃsaka suggests a slightly different transmission line from KR6u0043.
Abstract
T85n2908 forms a paired Dūnhuáng recension of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna with KR6u0043. As argued by Yuyama and others, the existence of multiple parallel Chinese verse recensions of the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna — distinct from the canonical Prajña translation (T293) — is a consequence of the prayer’s centrality in popular ritual; multiple translators evidently rendered the verses independently, and some recensions never made it into the centralised cataloguers’ canon. The Tàishō editors, finding these recensions in Dūnhuáng manuscripts, grouped them with the doubtful texts of T85 rather than reintegrating them. The text is therefore not properly an “apocryphon” but a non-canonical recension. Cao Ling (2011) discusses this status in detail.
Translations and research
- Akira Yuyama 湯山明, articles on the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna.
- 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).