Fó shuō Jīngāng jīng zuǎn 佛說金剛經纂
The Buddha’s Spoken Compilation on the Diamond Sūtra anonymous Chinese popular composition; critical edition by 方廣錩 (整理)
About the work
A short three-part popular Buddhist text in one fascicle organised around devotion to the Jīngāng jīng 金剛經 (Vajracchedikā). Part one is a qǐqǐng 啟請 invocation of the eight Vajra-generals (青除災, 辟毒, 黃隨求, 定除災, 白淨水, 赤聲火, 紫賢, 大神 jīngāng) plus a merit-formula declaring that “one recitation of this Compilation equals 300,000 recitations of the Diamond Sūtra.” Part two is a míngjiè 冥界 narrative: a Liú-surnamed woman from Běishānxiàn 北山縣 dies and meets King Yama, who instructs her to recite this text and reveals the Diamond Sūtra’s exact word-count: 5,149 characters, 69 buddhas, 51 shìzūn, 85 rúlái, 36 mentions of Subhūti, 26 invocations of “good men and women.” Part three appends Xuánzàng’s Shízhāi rì 玄奘法師十齋日 (ten fasting-days) and Shíèr yuè lǐfó rì 玄奘法師十二月禮佛日 (twelve monthly Buddha-worship days) calendars.
Abstract
The text is unrecorded in any Buddhist catalogue and excluded from all canonical editions. Fāng Guǎngchāng identifies the unique witness as a torn manuscript split between two collections: P. 3024 verso (BnF, with the head-title) plus S. 2565 verso (BL, with the tail-title); the two halves rejoin perfectly. The internal date “Tiānlì yuán nián” 天曆元年 — if it refers to the Yuan-Wenzong era of 1328 — would put the manuscript well outside the conventional terminus of Dūnhuáng cave-deposit (early 11th c.), and would force a reconsideration of the Cangjingdong 藏經洞 closure-date, raising one of the most-discussed problems in modern Dūnhuáng studies. Fāng tempers this conclusion by noting that no “Běishānxiàn” 北山縣 administrative unit is attested in any Yuan or earlier xíngzhèng 行政 record. The composition is therefore SòngYuán popular Buddhism, in the same genre as the Zhāng Jūdào rù mǐng gùshì 張居道入冥故事 (which propagandises the Jīnguāngmíng jīng) and the Huáng Shìqiáng rù mǐng gùshì 黃仕強入冥故事 (which propagandises the Pǔxián púsà shuō zhèngmíng jīng).
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F., The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994) — methodological framework for míng-jiè tour narratives and their use in popular sūtra-promotion.
- Mair, Victor H., Tang Transformation Texts (Cambridge MA: Harvard, 1989) — context on the popular zuǎn 纂 (digest/compilation) genre.
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, “Fó shuō Jīngāng jīng zuǎn 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
Other points of interest
- The Diamond Sūtra’s 5,149-character count given in the text is one of the few extant medieval enumerations and corresponds precisely to standard Kumārajīva editions, indicating the compiler had direct access to a printed-edition word-count rather than a manuscript guess.
- The fictitious “Xuánzàng’s ten fasting days” is a popular pseudonymous element that recurs in numerous later YuánMíng popular Buddhist texts; it is one of the earliest dateable attestations of this motif.
Links
- CBETA
- IDP records: P.3024v + S.2565v