Fó zài jīnguān shàng zhǔlěi jīng 佛在金棺上囑累經
The Sūtra of the Buddha’s Final Charge from the Golden Coffin anonymous Chinese-composed apocryphon; critical edition by 侯旭東 (整理)
About the work
A short Chinese-composed Buddhist apocryphon (yí-wěi jīng 疑偽經) in one fascicle, framed as a final dialogue between the Buddha — seated on the rim of his golden coffin (jīn-guān 金棺) just before his cremation at Kuśinagara — and Subhūti 須菩提 about the proper yí-guǐ 儀軌 (“ritual norms”) for sūtra-copying and image-making by lay donors and craftsmen. The text addresses anti-clerical abuses of the fú-yè 福業 (merit-economy): mass-produced shoddy copies, payment-for-piety, defective iconography, and the resulting karmic consequences.
Abstract
The Zhǔlěi jīng is the earlier short recension (about half the length of the longer Jìngfú jīng form, KR6v0055) of a Chinese apocryphon that is unrecorded in Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 but appears in every Buddhist catalog from Suí Fǎjīnglù 隋法經錄 (594) onward, invariably classified under yíwěi (suspect/forged). It was excluded from all historical East-Asian Buddhist canons; the Japanese Taishō added the longer form (T85n2904) on the basis of Dūnhuáng S.208.
The Zhǔlěi jīng in its short recension is preserved only as a single stone-engraving: the ZhāngQiú Yǔshēng zào jīngxiàng bēi 章仇禹生造經像碑 of Suí Kāihuáng 9 (589 CE), erected at Xīnjiāhǎicūn 辛家海村, Wènshàng 汶上 county, Shāndōng. The carved text is the entire sūtra. Rubbings are held at the National Library of Beijing (no. Gù 顧 179), reproduced in Běijīng Túshūguǎn cáng Zhōngguó lìdài shíkè tàběn huìbiān vol. 6 p.180 and Dūnhuángxué jíkān 1997.1; transcriptions in Lǔ Xùn jí jiào shíkè shǒugǎo 魯迅輯校石刻手稿 vol. 2.5 pp.1083–1087 and Lǐ Jìngjié 李靜傑, Fójiào zàoxiàngbēi 佛教造像碑 p.100.
The composition window is bracketed conservatively by the rise of large-scale lay donation-based stele-cult in the late Northern dynasties (early-mid 6th c.) and the terminus ante quem of the 589 stele itself. Hóu Xùdōng’s edition uses the 589 stele as the base text with no collation copy, occasionally supplementing damaged sections from the longer Jìngfú jīng. Hóu treats Zhǔlěi jīng as the textual ancestor of Jìngfú jīng; that view is now standard.
Translations and research
- Hou Xudong 侯旭東, Wǔ-liù shìjì běifāng mínzhòng fójiào xìnyǎng 五、六世紀北方民眾佛教信仰 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 1998) — extensive treatment of stele-Buddhism in the 5th–6th c., including this text.
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, Hokuchō bukkyō shi kenkyū 北朝佛教史研究 (Tokyo: Daitō, 1974) — context on the yí-wěi-jīng movement of the period.
- Buswell, Robert E., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990) — the standard English collection on the yí-wěi-jīng category.
- Hou Xudong 侯旭東, “Fó zài jīn-guān shàng zhǔ-lěi jīng yǔ Rúlái zài jīn-guān zhǔlěi qīngjìng zhuāngyán jìngfú jīng zhěnglǐ shuōmíng,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 4 (1998).
Other points of interest
The 589 ZhāngQiú Yǔshēng stele is one of the earliest dated stone-witnesses to a Chinese-composed Buddhist apocryphon. It documents the practical concerns of provincial Northern-dynasty lay donor-craftsman networks — shoddy merit-economies, the paying of icon-makers as wage-labour, and bishoprics’ attempt to impose ritual purity-rules on image-making — at a moment when the canon-vs-apocrypha distinction was being institutionalised by the new Suí jīnglù 經錄 bureaucracy.