Xīn púsà jīng 新菩薩經 (T2917B)
Sūtra of the New Bodhisattva (recension B)
About the work
The second of two parallel Dunhuang recensions of the Xīn púsà jīng, edited as Taishō no. 2917B (paired with KR6u0053 T2917A) in the gǔyì / yísì section of T85. The text is one juan, badly mutilated in its opening lines (large lacunae filled with □ in T), and consists of much the same matter as recension A: a frame in which the Bodhisattva (here without the 賈耽 chancellorial edict) urges beings to recite Amituó Fó 阿彌陀佛 a hundred-thousand-fold each day; a list of six fatal diseases for the present year (sudden death, sudden death by accident, death in childbirth, death from non-observance of the abstinence, intestinal heat, suicide); the standard merit-copying formula (one copy saves the body, two the household, three the village); the “stone-fallen-from-heaven” topos at the gateway of an unnamed county-seat in Liángzhōu 涼州 (Western Hexi corridor); and a colophon dated 長安四年五月十五日 = 15th day of the 5th month, Cháng’ān 4 (= 18 June 704 CE in Wǔ Zétiān’s reign).
Prefaces
The text carries a single paratextual element: the closing date colophon 長安四年五月十五日 (704 CE).
Abstract
The Cháng’ān-4 colophon is the earliest datable witness for the Xīn púsà jīng cluster and has often been taken at face value as the date of original composition. Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮 (Gikyō kenkyū, 1976) and subsequent commentators are more cautious: the date attaches to this manuscript witness, not necessarily to the textual archetype, and the parallel recension KR6u0053 (T2917A) reframes the text under the late-Zhēnyuán chancellor 賈耽 (730–805), suggesting that the cluster was repeatedly anchored to different reign-periods and chancellor-figures as it was recopied through the eighth and ninth centuries. The tightest defensible bracket for the text in its received form is therefore from 704 (the earliest colophon witness) to the closing of the Dunhuang library cave (early 11th century), with a most-likely zone in the eighth and ninth centuries. The genre is the classic late-Tang warning sūtra (jǐngshì jīng 警世經) studied by Makita: a short scripture that combines apocalyptic prophecy of plague and demonic war, a list of fatal diseases, a stone-from-heaven origin myth that authenticates the scripture as celestial, and a merit-copying formula that promotes its own circulation. The text’s mutilations and orthographic peculiarities (e.g. the unusual character forms 𠥱, 𤯔) reflect the physical state of the Dunhuang manuscript witness rather than a corrupt textual line.
The work is unattested in the medieval Buddhist registers; like its sisters, it survives only via the Dunhuang cave deposits and was edited in the Taishō from the Stein and Pelliot collections.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1976), the foundational analysis of the Xīn púsà jīng / Quànshàn jīng / Jiù zhū zhòngshēng cluster, treating recensions A and B together.
- Kyoko Tokuno, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues,” in R. E. Buswell, ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu, 1990), 31–74.
- Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu, 1994), context for late-Tang merit-copying apocrypha.
Other points of interest
The dating colophon 長安四年五月十五日 (Cháng’ān 4 = 704) is one of only a handful of internally dated colophons among the Dunhuang Buddhist apocrypha and is therefore frequently cited in surveys of the genre as an terminus ante quem for the text-cluster as a whole. Whether the date indicates composition or merely a copy-act is contested; see Makita 1976 and Sunayama Minoru 砂山稔’s textual studies for divergent positions.
Links
- CBETA
- CANWWW T85N2917B (canwww/div09.xml)