| Identifier | T0185 [T] |
| Title | 太子瑞應本起經 [T] |
| Date | 222-229 [Zürcher 1959/2007] |
| Unspecified | Zhi Qian 支謙 [Sakaino 1935] |
| Translator 譯 | Zhi Qian 支謙 [T] |
There may be translations for this text listed in the Bibliography of Translations from the Chinese Buddhist Canon into Western Languages. If translations are listed, this link will take you directly to them. However, if no translations are listed, the link will lead only to the head of the page.
There are resources for the study of this text in the SAT Daizōkyō Text Dabatase (Saṃgaṇikīkṛtaṃ Taiśotripiṭakaṃ).
| Preferred? | Source | Pertains to | Argument | Details |
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[T] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. |
Entry author: Michael Radich |
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[Palumbo 2003] Palumbo, Antonello. “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇṭhaka: White Horse Monasteries in Early Medieval China.” In Buddhist Asia: Papers from the First Conference of Buddhist Studies Held in Naples in May 2001, 168-216. Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian, Studies, 2003. — 205 and n. 110, 206-207 |
Palumbo states that recent scholarship has questioned whether the 太子瑞應本起經 T185 is an original translation. Zürcher has argued that it is "a very able compilation" drawing from at least 修行本起經 T184, 中本起經 T196, 異出菩薩本起經 T188 and one unknown source. Matsuda Yūko (1988) also concluded that there was no Indic text in the same format behind the text. However, Palumbo believes that this "assumption that [T185] is just a compilation of Chinese materials, without a foreign source text, is not as compelling as it might seem". He cites a passage in Zhi Qian's CSZJJ biography which he believes "makes clear that he worked on both the Chinese and the Indian side, and he did have the sources before him when he revised the extant translations". Palumbo himself also holds that it is likely that T188 predates T185. Entry author: Michael Radich |
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[Zürcher 1959/2007] Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Third Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (2007 reprint). — 13, 272 |
Zürcher cites Henri Maspero who has discovered an “unmistakable correspondence” between the Buddha's life story in the Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經 T185 and that of the Mouzi li huo [lun ] 牟子理惑 (preserved in Hong ming ji 弘明集 T2102). Maspero, “Le songe et l'ambassade de l'empereur Ming: étude critique des sources”, BEFEO X, 1901, pp. 95-130. Zürcher later adds that in describing the Buddha's birth, Zhi Qian's text uses the words 夜明 ("the night was bright"). Zürcher identifies this as a likely allusion to a Zuo zhuan 左傳 comment on the Chun qiu 春秋, referring to extraordinary signs observed in the sky in 686 BCE. This Zuo zhuan passage was used by Chinese Buddhist apologists to claim that the auspicious signs that attended the birth of the Buddha had been observed as far away as China, and there was therefore evidence for the veracity of the Buddhist tradition in the Chinese classics; and Zürcher reads this passage as Zhi Qian's attempt to bring this echo into his readers' minds. Entry author: Sophie Florence |
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[Zürcher 1959/2007] Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Third Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (2007 reprint). — 50, 336 n. 137 |
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According to Zürcher, Sengyou attributed thirty-six texts to Zhi Qian 支謙, of which twenty-three have survived: T54, T68, T76, T87, T169, T185, T198, T225, T281, T362, T474, T493, T532, T533, T556, T557, T559, T581, T632, T708, T735, T790, T1011. However, Zürcher notes that T68 “is not mentioned by Dao’an.” This entry includes all twenty-three texts accepted by Zürcher as genuine Zhi Qian translations. Entry author: Sophie Florence |
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[Nattier 2008] Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢 and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica X. Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2008. — 135 |
T185 is traditionally ascribed to Zhi Qian, but Nattier holds that it is a complex case. She says that it has an "extraordinarily complicated" relationship with T184 and T196: "It is not possible to derive any one of them in a straightforward manner from any of the others. What is clear is that all three of these biographies were actively used, and that all of them (including the version originally produced by Zhi Qian) were updated more than once. The text as we have it still bears Zhi QIan's fingerprints, however, one of which is the use of the phrase shen bu mie 'the spirit is not destroyed'. It is also frequently stated that Zhi Qian's T185 borrowed material from another archaic biography of the Buddha...T188. This seems less certain, however....In my view, a direct relationship between these two texts has yet to be demonstrated." Entry author: Michael Radich |
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[Matsuda 1988] Matsuda Yūko 松田裕子. “Chinese Versions of the Buddha’s Biography.” IBK 37, no. 1 (1988): 24-33. |
Matsuda studies the interrelations between various version of the Buddha’s biography, especially in Chinese: the 修行本起經 T184 (ascribed in the Taishō to Zhu Dali 竺大力 and Kang Mengxiang 康孟詳, 太子瑞應本起經 T185 (ascribed in the Taishō to Zhi Qian), Pu yao jing 普曜經 T186 (ascribed in the Taishō to Dharmarakṣa), 方廣大莊嚴經 T187 (ascribed in the Taishō to*Divākara 地婆訶羅), 異出菩薩本起經 T188 (ascribed in the Taishō to Nie Daozhen聶道真), and the Sanskrit Lalitavistara. While it is a cornerstone of Matsuda’s own methodology to accept the canonical ascriptions for most of these texts (27), several of her observations could have important implications for consideration of ascription. 1) T186 and T187 incorporate similar material which is not found elsewhere. In T186:十八變品 Ch. 25, 佛至摩竭國品 Ch. 26, 化舍利弗目連品 Ch. 27, 優陀耶品 Ch. 28第二十五, i.e. T186 (III) 530c21-536c24. In T187, these portions are included in the “*Dharmacakrapravartana” chapter轉法輪品: T187 (III) 611b18-616a17 (the chapter itself begins at 605b9). Matsuda also states that T185 and T186 resemble one another more closely in these passages than elsewhere. 2) As Tokiwa Daijō had already observed, T186 contains some passages that are identical with passages in T184 and T185. Matsuda tabulates these correspondences between T185 and T186 (33). Matsuda’s views on the interrelations between some of these texts are conveniently summarised in diagrammatic form (32), as follows (assuming traditional ascriptions of Chinese texts and attendant dating): 3) T185 has its sources in T184 and two hypothetical texts that Matsuda finds it necessary to posit to account for all the materials, “X” and “Y”. 4) T186 has its sources in T185, “Y”, and the older Indic Lalitavistara. 5) T188 has among its sources “X” (which means that T188 can be used to explain material in T185, for which sources otherwise cannot be found; and the combination of T185 and T188, in turn, warrants the posit of the onetime existence of “X”). Entry author: Michael Radich |
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[Sakaino 1935] Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. — 117-119 |
Sakaino affirms that the Muduo shuxia siwei shi'er yinyuan jing 貝多樹下思惟十二因縁經 [T713] and the Ruiying benqi jing 瑞應本起經 [太子瑞應本起經 T185] are Zhi Qian’s works, as indicated by the vocabulary (e.g., the use of 名像 for ナーマルーパ [nāmarūpa]). Entry author: Atsushi Iseki |
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[Zürcher 1991] Zürcher, Erik. "A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts." in Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen, eds. From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Prof. Jan Yün-hua, 277-304. Oakville, Canada: Mosaic Press, 1991. — 296 n. 20 |
Zürcher claims that the Taizi rui ying ben qi jing 太子瑞應本起經 T185 incorporates many passages of the Xiuxing benqi jing 修行本起經 T184. Entry author: Sophie Florence |
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[Sakaino 1935] Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. — 129-135 |
Sakaino lists 29 “Hīnayāna” titles ascribed to Zhi Qian in LDSBJ (list on 129-130), and claims that there is hardly any doubt that the titles ascribed to Zhi Qian already in CSZJJ are truly his work [by this Sakaino apparently refers to the first ten titles of the list, nine of which were included in Dao’an’s catalogue and the one in CSZJJ. Those ten are the titles associated with this entry --- AI] Entry author: Atsushi Iseki |
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[Kamata 1982] Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄. Chūgoku bukkyō shi, dai ikkan: Shodenki no bukkyō 中国仏教史 第一巻 初伝期末の仏教. Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1982. — 190-191 |
LDSBJ states that Cao Zhi 曹植 proofread 詳定 the [Taizi] Ruiying benqi jing 瑞應本起經 T185, but this must be incorrect. LDSBJ was probably influenced by a mistaken report in GSZ. Entry author: Atsushi Iseki |
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[Fang and Ji 2022] Fang Yixin 方一新 and Ji Huaye 嵇華燁. “Cong Dunhuang xieben kan xiancun Puyao jing de fanyi ji liuchuan” 從敦煌寫本看現存《普曜經》的翻譯及流傳. Dunhuang yanjiu 敦煌研究 1 (2022):107–119. |
Fang and Ji compare ten Dunhuang manuscripts of the Lalitavistara 普曜經 T186 to the Xiuxing benqi jing 修行本起經 T184 (ascribed to Zhu Dali 竺大力 and Kang Mengxiang 康孟詳) and the Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經 T185 (ascribed to Zhi Qian). They show that T186 is closer to T185 in content, structure and wording. Based on this study, they argue that Dharmarakṣa consulted T185, and parts of T186 are revisions/copies (翻版) of T185. Their comparison shows: a) T186 shares some passages with T185, but not with T184; b) the order of some gāthās in T186 is the same as that in T185, but not in T184 (contents and wording of the same gāthās are identical in T186 and T185); c) The wording of content shared between T186 and T185 is mostly the same. On the assumption that these overlaps resulted from T186 copying T185, the authors further state that Dharmarakṣa revised some of the wording in T185, such as 五趣 replacing 五道 and [無]損 replacing [無]減. They suggest that these changes show Dharmarakṣa’s preferred word choices. Entry author: Mengji Huang |
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