Dìzàng púsà jīng 地藏菩薩經
Sūtra of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A short apocryphal sūtra in one fascicle on Kṣitigarbha’s hell-saving activity. The text describes Kṣitigarbha residing in the southern Vaiḍūrya world, observing with his pure deva-eye the sufferings of beings in hell — bodies pounded in iron mortars, ground in iron mills, plowed by iron oxen, sawn by iron saws, in cauldrons of boiling water and roaring flames; eaten by hot iron pellets when hungry, drinking molten copper when thirsty. Unable to bear the sight, Kṣitigarbha descends into the hells to share the throne (on a separate seat, but in the same place) with King Yáma 閻羅王, for four reasons: (1) lest Yáma misjudge a sinner’s case; (2) lest the documentary records be confused; (3) lest one whose time has not come be killed; (4) to receive into his care those who have served their punishment and are released. Crucially, the text introduces — for what may be the first time in any extant Chinese text — the rite of making images of Kṣitigarbha, copying the Dìzàng púsà jīng, and reciting Kṣitigarbha’s name as a means of being reborn in Sukhāvatī.
Abstract
T85n2909 is one of the principal Dūnhuáng documents on the early development of the Kṣitigarbha cult in Chinese Buddhism. Together with the canonical Dìzàng púsà běnyuàn jīng (T412, also generally regarded as a Chinese composition by modern scholarship — see Manabe Shunshō 真鍋俊照, Stephen Teiser, and Zhiru Ng) and the Foshuō Dìzàng púsà fāxīn yīnyuán shíwáng jīng 佛說地藏菩薩發心因緣十王經 (the so-called “Sūtra of the Ten Kings”), the Dìzàng púsà jīng underpins the medieval Chinese Buddhist construction of “purgatory” — the bureaucratised hell-system in which Kṣitigarbha intercedes between the dead and the bureaucratic king Yáma. Stephen Teiser’s The Scripture on the Ten Kings (1994) and Zhiru Ng’s The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China (2007) are the principal modern studies; both treat T85n2909 as a key textual stratum in the cult’s formation. Cataloguers from the Suí onward register the work as 偽妄.
Translations and research
- Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994).
- Zhiru Ng, The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007) — definitive monograph; treats this text in detail.
- 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 text presents Kṣitigarbha as enthroned beside King Yáma — a striking innovation that became iconographically standard in East Asian Buddhist hell paintings.