Jìngdù sānmèi jīng 淨度三昧經
Sūtra of the Pure-Crossing Samādhi anonymous Chinese-composed apocryphon; critical edition by 大內文雄 (整理) and 齊藤隆信 (整理)
About the work
A Chinese-composed Buddhist apocryphon (yíwěi jīng 疑偽經) in three fascicles, articulating the doctrinal-ritual complex around the bāwángrì zhāihuì 八王日齋會 (“eight-king-day fast assembly”) — a system of eight specific calendar-days (the four solstices/equinoxes and the four cross-quarter days) on which lay Buddhists must observe fasts under the supervision of eight celestial dìwáng 帝王 (“kings”), each of whom inspects and reports lay merit-and-demerit. This bāwáng fast-system is one of the central popular-Buddhist ritual structures of medieval Chinese Buddhism, shaping subsequent Pure-Land and Dìzàng-cult practice.
Abstract
The catalog history is unusually rich and traces the work’s contested canonical status. Sēngyòu 僧祐’s Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (515) j. 4 records a 2-fascicle “Jìngdù sānmèi jīng” in the “newly compiled list of continued anonymously-translated miscellaneous sūtras” (xīnjí xùzhuàn shīyì zájīnglù 新集續撰失譯雜經錄); j. 5 records a 4-fascicle chāojīng 抄經 (selective extract) by Xiāo Zǐliáng 蕭子良 (460–494) of the Southern Qí; j. 12 records its citation in his Fǎyuàn záyuán yuánshǐ jí 法苑雜緣原始集 as the source-text for the “bāwángrì zhāiyuánjì” 八王日齋緣記. Sēngyòu was therefore particularly attentive to the bāwáng material in this sūtra. By the Suí, the situation diverges: Fǎjīng 法經’s Zhòngjīng mùlù 眾經目錄 (594) j.1 admits a 3-fascicle version into the canon, but j.2 classifies the Xiāo Zǐliáng chāojīng as wěiwàng 偽妄 (forged); Fèi Chángfáng 費長房’s Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶記 (597) records four ostensible translations (Tánmáo 曇曜 of Northern Wèi, Zhìyǎn 智儼 of LiúSòng, Bǎoyún 寶雲, Qiúnàbátuóluó 求那跋陀羅 — manifestly impossibly all of one text); Yànzōng 彥琮’s Zhòngjīng mùlù 604 j.4 wěiwàng lists Xiāo Zǐliáng’s 3-fascicle chāo. By the WǔZhōu Dàzhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù 大周刊定眾經目錄 (695) the 3-fascicle version was entered as authentic; Zhìshēng 智昇’s Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元錄 (730) j.18 returns it to yíhuò zàixiáng 疑惑再詳 (suspect, requiring further analysis) and explicitly refuses canonical admission. Yuánzhào 圓照’s Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù 貞元錄 follows Zhìshēng. As a result, the work was excluded from all later Chinese canons.
The work survives in two parallel 3-fascicle manuscript witnesses: (a) the Nanatsu-dera 七寺 manuscript canon (Nagoya, Japan), (b) Dūnhuáng manuscripts. The Nanatsu-dera witness is the only complete copy. Both descend from a common Wǔ-Zhōu-period rùzàng 入藏 ancestor that was the canonised authentic text — itself derived from earlier 6th-c. Suí-period material. Through that chain back to Sēngyòu’s 5–6th c. records, the composition window for the work-as-we-have-it can be conservatively bracketed at 460–502 (LiúSòng late through Southern Qí end), consistent with citation by Xiāo Zǐliáng (494). The text is therefore an early-medieval (LiúSòng to Southern Qí) Chinese composition that successfully passed as a translation through several centuries before being dis-authenticated by Tang scholastic catalogers.
Translations and research
- Ōuchi Fumio 大内文雄 and Saitō Takanobu 齊藤隆信, Jōdo sanmai-kyō no kenkyū 淨度三昧經の研究 (the editorial introduction to the Zàngwài edition).
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1976) — foundational Japanese study of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha including this text.
- Buswell, Robert E., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
- Forte, Antonino, “The Relativity of the Concept of Orthodoxy in Chinese Buddhism: Chih-sheng’s Indictment of Shih-li and the Proscription of the Dharma Mirror Sutra,” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Buswell (1990) — methodological context for the catalog history.
Other points of interest
The bāwángrì fast-system articulated here is the institutional ancestor of the later shízhāirì 十齋日 system canonised in the Dìzàngbóusà shízhāirì (KR6v0077–KR6v0084), and through that into the popular Shíwáng 十王 (Ten Kings of Hell) tradition. Jìngdù sānmèi jīng is therefore a key node in the long history of Chinese popular Buddhist calendar-and-merit practice.
Links
- CBETA
- Nanatsu-dera manuscript canon
- IDP records for Dūnhuáng witnesses
- Cf. KR6v0077–KR6v0084 (Dìzàng púsà shízhāirì, the institutional descendant)