Zuìmiào shèngdìng jīng 最妙勝定經
Sūtra of the Supreme Wonderful Victorious Concentration anonymous translation; critical edition by 方廣錩 (整理)
About the work
A short apocryphal meditation sūtra in one fascicle (also titled Zuìmiào dìng shèng jīng 最妙定勝經 or Miào shèngdìng jīng 妙勝定經) framed as a teaching by Śākyamuni at Wángshě chéng 王舍城 (Rājagṛha), prompted by Mañjuśrī. The doctrinal centre is the proposition that chán-dìng 禪定 (meditative concentration) — not exegesis or scholastic reasoning — is the supreme Buddha-dharma, and that even the four pārājika and five ānantarya offences can be expiated through correct meditation. The text was a foundational influence on the Tiāntái tradition: Huì-sī 慧思 is reported to have taken up meditation after reading it, and Zhì-yǐ 智顗 (here, the “Zhì-qīng” 智青 the Fāng tíjiě names is a known textual variant for Zhì-qǐ 智顗) and Zhàn-rán 湛然 cite it repeatedly.
Abstract
Despite this exegetical influence, Zhòng jīng mùlù 眾經目錄 (Suí Fǎjīng 法經) and Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (Tang Zhìshēng 智昇) both classed the work as 疑 (“doubtful”) or wěi 偽 (“forged”) — Zhìshēng noting that it “in literary structure resembles the Zuìmiào chū jiào jīng; one is genuine and one is forged, but it is not yet possible to tell which.” It was therefore excluded from the canon and lost. Fāng’s edition is based on two Dūnhuáng witnesses: Beijing Library Běixīn 330 (the base text — complete, originally collected by the Ōtani 大谷 expedition and published in lead-type by Zoku zōkyō 續藏經 with errors; later transferred to Beijing) and Beijing Library Běilín 1757 (a recently identified fragment). A Tibetan translation is preserved in the Peking Bka’-‘gyur (and in Pelliot tibétain 102 from Dūnhuáng); the existence of the Tibetan version is itself suggestive that the work may have circulated as a translation from an Indian or Khotanese original, but Fāng treats this as undecided. The composition window is therefore broadly Southern-Northern Dynasties — the terminus ante quem is set by Huìsī’s reading (c. mid-sixth century).
Translations and research
- Sekiguchi Shindai 關口真大, Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū 天台小止觀の研究 (Tōkyō: Sankibō, 1961) — Tiāntái meditation tradition and its sources.
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄, Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai 天台学—根本思想とその展開 (Kyōto: Heirakuji, 1968) — citations in Zhì-yǐ and Zhàn-rán.
- Nishiwaki Tsuneki 西脇常記, “Zui-Tō ni okeru chūgoku-sen kyōten” 隋唐における中国撰経典, Bukkyō shigaku kenkyū 25.2 (1983) — survey of Chinese-composed sūtras.
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, “Zuìmiào shèngdìng jīng 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
Other points of interest
- The text is one of the rare cases of a 疑偽 sūtra whose Tiāntái-ancestry is documented almost contemporaneously with its composition, making it an unusually sharp window onto how yí wěi jīng could become canonical-grade exegetical authorities at the moment of school formation.
- The tíjiě preserves the typographical slip “智青” for 智顗 / 智者大師 Zhìqǐ — this is a copyist’s confusion that has migrated into the printed Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn and is faithfully preserved here (a minor but characteristic slip).