Rúlái zài jīnguān zhǔlěi qīngjìng zhuāngyán jìngfú jīng 如來在金棺囑累清淨莊嚴敬福經
The Sūtra of the Tathāgata’s Final Charge from the Golden Coffin on Pure Adornment and Reverence-Born Merit anonymous Chinese-composed apocryphon; critical edition by 侯旭東 (整理)
About the work
The expanded recension (roughly twice the length) of the apocryphal Fó zài jīnguān shàng zhǔlěi jīng (KR6v0054). Also known by short forms Jìngfú jīng 敬福經, Fóshuō jìngfú jīng 佛說敬福經, Jīnguān jìngfú jīng 金棺敬福經, Fó zài jīnguān jìngfú jīng 佛在金棺敬福經, and Rúlái zài jīnguān zhǔlèi qīngjìng jìngfú jīng (with the variant graph 類 for 累 in some witnesses). The text amplifies the earlier Zhǔlěi jīng dialogue between Subhūti 須菩提 and the dying Buddha into an extended treatise on lay sūtra-copying, image-making, and almsgiving — incorporating prohibitions on payment-for-merit, prescriptions for ritual purity (the “sānbāliùzhāi” 歲三月六 fast-day cycle), and elaborated karmic etiologies for defective icons.
Abstract
Jìngfú jīng is recorded as suspect (yí 疑 / wěi 偽) in every Buddhist catalog from Suí Fǎjīnglù 隋法經錄 (594) through Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (730), and was excluded from all historical East-Asian canons. The Japanese Taishō admitted it as T85n2904 on the basis of the partial Dūnhuáng witness Stein 208. The text now survives in three forms: (1) the Císhànsì shíkū 慈善寺石窟 stone-engraving in Línyóu 麟游, Shǎnxī (cave 2, south flank, ca. 1 m above floor — substantially complete but with significant abrasion; coeval with the cave’s excavation in the late Táng Gāozōng 高宗 reign through WǔZhōu period, ca. 670–705); (2) Dūnhuáng Stein 208 (only ca. 100 characters of the head survive — the basis for the Taishō edition); (3) the Fángshān shíjīng 房山石經 cave-9 engraving (no. 9-145) at Yúnjūsì 雲居寺 — an Yōuzhōu 幽州 lay-donor commission of Kāichéng 4 / 4th lunar month / 8th day (= 12 May 839 CE), with text loss near the tail.
The composition window for Jìngfú jīng must lie between the terminus a quo given by the appearance of the short Zhǔlěi jīng on the 589 stele (which was clearly already a redacted text, implying a 6th-c. ancestor) and the terminus ante quem of the late-7th-c. Línyóu engraving. Hóu Xùdōng’s edition uses the Fángshān engraving as the base copy, with the Línyóu stone-engraving (jiǎ 甲) and S.208 (yǐ 乙) as collation copies. Citations in early-Táng lèishū 類書 such as Zhūjīng yàojí 諸經要集 and Fǎyuàn zhūlín 法苑珠林 supply additional collation evidence.
The Jìngfú jīng tradition appears to have circulated widely in the early Táng as a lay-donor handbook on fúyè 福業 (merit-making) — but precisely because it functioned as a lay-popular guide rather than a doctrinal text, it never gained canonical admission. Its survival on stone-engraved cave-temple walls, almost rather than in manuscript, is itself a sociological datum: the text was displayed at the sites of the activities it regulates (sūtra-copying scriptoria, icon-making workshops).
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).
- Buswell, Robert E., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
- Zhāng Zǒng 張總, Dìzàng púsà yánjiū 地藏菩薩研究 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 2003) — discusses Jìngfú jīng in the context of late-North/early-Táng fú-tián 福田 ideology.
- Kuo Liying, “Sutras chinois prétendus traduits du sanscrit: Apocryphes bouddhiques chinois,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989).
Other points of interest
The Línyóu Císhànsì engraving is the longest of the three witnesses and gives a near-complete text; the Fángshān Yúnjūsì engraving is precisely datable to 839 CE and shows the 9th-c. circulating form. The 250-year gap between the two engravings, with substantially the same text, demonstrates that Jìngfú jīng had stabilised in its expanded form by the late 7th c. and circulated essentially unchanged into the late Táng — despite being “non-canonical” throughout.
Links
- CBETA
- T85n2904 (Taishō, partial witness via S.208)
- IDP record for S.208
- Cf. KR6v0054 (the earlier short recension, Zhǔlěi jīng)