Shìjiā guānhuà huányú jīng 釋家觀化還愚經
Sūtra in which Śākya[muni] Observes [the Suffering Beings] and Transforms a Foolish [Couple]
About the work
A short anonymous Chinese Buddhist apocryphon in one juan, edited as Taishō no. 2918 in the gǔyì / yísì section of T85. Unlike its neighbouring “warning sūtras” the text is a self-contained didactic narrative. In Śrāvastī (舍衛國) a stingy and irreligious householder couple refuses to give alms; the Buddha, taking pity on their stupidity, manifests as a wandering monk and goes to their door for food. When the wife abuses him, he stages a feigned death — his body bloats, worms emerge from mouth and nose, his entrails dissolve — terrifying her into flight; he then withdraws and rests beneath a tree. The husband, returning home, hears the story, takes up bow and sword, and pursues the monk to attack him. The monk responds by manifesting himself within an inviolable lapis-lazuli (vaiḍūrya) city; the husband can find no entrance. The monk requires him first to lay down his physical weapons, then explains that the gate will open only when he discards “the bow and sword in his heart” (心中惡意弓刀). The husband repents, returns to fetch his wife, and both prostrate as disciples and ask for the dharma. The Buddha’s reply is delivered in gāthā form, praising broad learning (多聞), upholding the dharma, vigorous practice, the discipline that issues in wisdom, and the dharma of nirvāṇa. He then displays his Buddha-marks; the couple, “shattering twenty koṭi of evils”, attains the srota-āpanna fruit.
Prefaces
The text has no preface or paratext; it opens directly with 昔舍衛國有一貧家 and ends with the attainment-formula 壞二十億惡得須陀洹道.
Abstract
The text is a Chinese composition disguised as a translated Indian avadāna; it is unattested in any of the medieval Indian-translation catalogues from the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 onwards and is classified by the Taishō editors as 疑似 (suspected apocryphon). It survives only through Dunhuang manuscript witnesses. The narrative reuses two well-attested motifs from earlier Chinese-Buddhist literature: (1) the staged-death conversion of a stingy householder, found in early avadāna anthologies and in works such as the Zá pìyú jīng 雜譬喻經 (T204–T206) and the Xián yú jīng 賢愚經 (T202); and (2) the verses that close the discourse, which are a near-direct quotation from the Duōwén pǐn 多聞品 of the Chinese Fǎjù jīng 法句經 (T210, Dharmapada). The combination — narrative frame plus Fǎjù-derived verse — is characteristic of Chinese Buddhist morality texts of the Six Dynasties to early Tang, and the work is best dated to that period (broadly 5th–9th c.); a tighter bracket is not defensible from internal evidence alone.
The title’s distinctive phrase 觀化還愚 (literally “observing [the suffering of beings] and turning [them] back from folly”) echoes a Dàzhì dù lùn 大智度論 register and is otherwise unattested in canonical translated literature, supporting the apocryphal classification.
Translations and research
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1976), survey of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha including the Dunhuang yísì-bù materials.
- Kyoko Tokuno, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues,” in R. E. Buswell, ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990), 31–74.
- No dedicated monographic study of the Shìjiā guānhuà huányú jīng has been located.
Other points of interest
The closing gāthā — 多聞持堅固 / 奉法為垣墻 / 精進難踰毀 / 從是戒慧成 … — is a nearly verbatim citation of the opening of the Duōwén pǐn 多聞品 (chapter on broad learning) of the Chinese Fǎjù jīng 法句經 (T210, vol. 4, p. 564a–b), translated by Wéiqínán 維祇難 and Zhú Jiàngyán 竺將炎 in the third century. The borrowing is one of the clearer indications that the text is a Chinese composition rather than a translated Indian work.
Links
- CBETA
- CANWWW T85N2918 (canwww/div09.xml)