Tiāngōng jīng 天公經
The Sūtra of the Lord of Heaven (recension a) anonymous Chinese composition; critical edition of the Beijing-Library Běixīn 627 recension by 方廣錩 (整理)
About the work
A very short (c. 300 character) apocryphal sūtra in one fascicle, presented here as the first of three Dūnhuáng recensions (a / b / c — corresponding to KR6v0015, KR6v0016, KR6v0017). The text claims to equal in soteriological value the Lotus, the Nirvāṇa and the Avalokiteśvara sūtras: those who copy it grow auspicious luó-wén 螺文 patterns on their hands; those who read it grow doubled radiance in their eyes; those who chant it acquire the cōngmíng 聰明 of repeated kalpas; and “one day, five recitations expunges fifteen million kalpas of sin and yields Buddhahood.”
Abstract
Fāng Guǎngchāng identifies three distinct Dūnhuáng recensions of this sūtra (recension a — Beijing Library Běixīn 627 [base-text of KR6v0015]; recension b — S. 2714 [base-text of KR6v0016, also the Taishō T85n2887 source]; recension c — Beijing Library Běiniǎo 62 [base-text of KR6v0017]). All three are copies from the Guīyìjūn 歸義軍 period (mid-ninth to early-eleventh century). Recension a is the only complete witness, with both head- and tail-titles. Recension b (S. 2714) opens with no introductory frame — clearly missing material — and recension c is severely fragmentary. The text is first listed in Suí Fǎjīng lù 法經錄 (594 CE, j. 4) as wěi 偽 (“forged”), and in Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (j. 18) Zhìshēng 智昇 notes — under the entry Fó chū zhì tǎ jīng 佛初置塔經 — that “this is suspected to be the Tiāngōng jīng of the Fǎjīng lù under another name.” Indeed Běixīn 627 begins precisely with “Fó chū zhù tǎ shí” 佛初築塔時, confirming Zhìshēng’s identification. The sūtra’s luówén / chóngguāng imagery is purely Chinese (the shèngrén zhī xiàng 聖人之相 doctrine of the Confucian sage’s bodily marks), guaranteeing the work’s Chinese provenance. Composition is therefore late-Northern-Dynasties to mid-Suí (terminus ante quem 594), with manuscript transmission continuing into the late Táng.
Translations and research
- Stein, R. A., “Notes sur trois courtes scriptures bouddhiques sino-tibétaines,” in Études tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1971) — early Western treatment of yí wěi jīng of this type.
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976) — situates the Tiāngōng jīng among Chinese popular apocrypha.
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, “Tiāngōng jīng 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
Other points of interest
The recension-divergence (a / b / c) is one of the cleanest documented cases of an apocryphal Chinese sūtra fragmenting into multiple textually independent witnesses — Fāng’s decision to publish each as a separate edition is methodologically programmatic for the Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn series.