Liùdào lúnhuí tú jìsòng 六道輪迴圖偈頌
Verses for the Diagram of the Six Paths of Rebirth anonymous Chinese composition; critical edition by 陳明光 (整理)
About the work
A short cycle of Chinese Buddhist jì 偈 (gāthā / verses) inscribed at the Liùdào lúnhuí tú 六道輪迴圖 (Diagram of the Six Paths of Rebirth) at the Dàfówān 大佛灣, Bǎodǐngshān 寶頂山, Dàzú 大足. The verses gloss the iconographic centrepiece of Zhào Zhìfèng’s 趙智鳳 thirteenth-century Dàzú programme — the great wheel-of-existence sculpture that fills a southern-cliff niche, depicting the six destinies (deva, asura, human, animal, preta, hell) within the outer rim of dependent origination.
Abstract
See KR6v0045 for the broader context of Chén Míngguāng’s Dàzú-inscription editorial cluster. The verses include the well-known stanza “Within the wheel of the three realms in ten thousand bodies, ever sinking through the karmic floods of greed and love; look outside the wheel — Buddha-numbers as the sands of the Ganges, all of them once dwellers within the wheel.” (三界輪中萬種身，自從貪愛業沉淪。君看輪外恒沙佛，盡是輪中舊日人).
Translations and research
- See KR6v0045.
- Howard, Angela F., “The Wheel of Life,” in Summit of Treasures (2001) — iconographic analysis of the Dàzú Liùdào sculpture.