Dìzàng púsà shízhāirì 地藏菩薩十齋日
The Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Ten Fast-Days (Recension I, Witness 1) anonymous Chinese composition; critical edition by 張總 (整理)
About the work
The first of eight recensions of a short Chinese-composed Buddhist zhāiyí 齋儀 (“fast-day ritual”), also titled Xuánzàng fǎshī lǐbài zhúyuè yǒu shízhāirì 玄奘法師禮拜逐月有十齋日, Měiyuè yǒu shízhāirì 每月有十齋日, or Dàshèng sìdà zhāirì 大乘四大齋日. The text specifies, for each of ten calendar days per month, (a) the celestial deity who descends to inspect human conduct, (b) the buddha or bodhisattva whose name should be invoked on that day, (c) the hell that the practitioner can avoid by observing the fast, and (d) the karmic period (in kalpa) of expiation gained.
Abstract
Although institutionally minor, this text was one of the most widely circulated short ritual manuals of medieval Chinese Buddhism. Eighteen witnesses are now known: sixteen Dūnhuáng Chinese manuscripts, two Tibetan-language manuscripts, plus the Bǎodǐngshān 寶頂山 stone-engraving (Dàzú niche 20, the famous Dìzàngshíwáng dìyùbiàn 地藏十王地獄變). Zhāng Zǒng’s edition, the first to integrate all witnesses, divides them into six systems (xìtǒng 系統) and eight recensions (yìběn 異本) on the basis of title-form, content-organisation, and yǔjù 語句 lineage. KR6v0077 is Recension 1, Witness 1 (printing from Beijing University Library D.074, no collation copy).
The Japanese Taishō (T85) prints a text from S.2568 alone, missing the structural picture. Zhāng Zǒng demonstrates that the Dàzú engraving (12th–13th c.) is critical for the text’s history: at least the inscription on the Dìzàngshíwáng dìyùbiàn niche derives from this zhāirì tradition. The composition window is conservatively given as Táng (most witnesses being palaeographically datable to 7th–10th c. Dūnhuáng); the pseudo-attribution to Xuánzàng 玄奘 is one of several signs of late- or post-Táng circulation.
The text is one of the principal Chinese-Buddhist documents of the shízhāirì 十齋日 (“ten fast-days”) system — itself a development of the earlier bāwángrì 八王日 system articulated in Jìngdù sānmèi jīng (KR6v0076). The descent of celestial inspection-deities, the day-by-day buddha/bodhisattva invocation, and the explicit claim of hell-avoidance through fast-observance — these features make the Shízhāirì a primary mediator between the bāwángrì tradition and the later Shíwáng jīng 十王經 / Yánluówáng 閻羅王 cult-complex.
Translations and research
- Soymié, Michel, “Les dix jours de jeûne du Kṣitigarbha,” in Contributions aux études sur Touen-houang (Geneva: Droz, 1979) — foundational French study of the eleven Dūnhuáng witnesses then known.
- Zhāng Zǒng 張總, Dìzàng púsà yán-jiū 地藏菩薩研究 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 2003) — synthesizes the Shí-zhāi-rì materials in the broader Dìzàng context.
- Teiser, Stephen F., The Scripture on the Ten Kings (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994) — context.
- Howard, Angela F., Summit of Treasures (Trumbull, CT: Weatherhill, 2001) — the Dàzú niche.