Text: T0641; 佛說月燈三昧經

Summary

Identifier T0641 [T]
Title 佛說月燈三昧經 [T]
Date (Liu) Song [Ōno 1954]
Unspecified An Shigao, 安世高 [Ono and Maruyama 1933-1936]
Translator 譯 Xian gong, 先公 [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).

Assertions

Preferred? Source Pertains to Argument Details

No

[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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  • Title: 佛說月燈三昧經
  • People: Xian gong, 先公 (translator 譯)
  • Identifier: T0641

No

[Buswell 2004]  Buswell, Robert E., Jr. "Sugi's Collation Notes to the Koryŏ Buddhist Canon and Their Significance for Buddhist Textual Criticism." The Journal of Korean Studies 9, no. 1 (2004): 129-184. — 145, 155-156

Buswell reports that Sugi was confronted by two versions of the *Samādhirājacandrapradīpa-sūtra (as is still the case in the present Taishō, viz. T640 and T641), both of which were ascribed to Xiangong 先公. Sugi accepted that T640 was the authentic Xiangong translation, because "the structure and size of the Khitan recension matched the information on the text given in the headnote to the sūtra...cited in KYL". KYL had reported that there were originally two separate versions of the text, another by An Shigao. "Since [T641] does not include the alternate title of Xian'gong's [sic] translation and as its size is nearly double that given for the text in KYL, Sugi concludes that the attribution here cannot be correct. Sugi suspects that this Kaibao edition [Sugi's source for T641 was the Kaibao/Koryŏ version] was actually An Shigao's translation, which KYL had presumed lost."

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Ono and Maruyama 1933-1936]  Ono Genmyō 小野玄妙, Maruyama Takao 丸山孝雄, eds. Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 佛書解說大辭典. Tokyo: Daitō shuppan, 1933-1936 [縮刷版 1999]. — vol. 2, pp. 77-78

According to Hayashi Taiun 林岱雲, the 月燈三昧經 T641 ascribed to Xian gong 先公 is included only in the Korean edition, not in SYM.

Hayashi asserts that T641 should be reascribed to An Shigao. According to him, this work of An Shigao was long lost, and when it was found it was mistaken for Xian gong’s version, since the two had the same title and length (1 fascicle).

According to Hayashi, different scriptural catalogues state that T641 is a shortened version 抄訳 of part 7 of the full version 大本 of the same text. However, Hayashi argues that T641 is only slightly similar to the latter half of the part 5 of the extant ten-fascicle Narendrayaśas 耶連提耶舍 version, while differing greatly in content from it. Hayashi infers that as T641 does not have the introductory and closing sections required by the proper structure of a scripture, it is probably an excerpt text from the Liu zhong fa men pin 六種法門品 of the 大本.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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No

[Ōno 1954]  Ōno Hōdō 大野法道. Daijō kai kyō no kenkyū 大乗戒経の研究. Tokyo: Risōsha 理想社, 1954. — 321-322

There are two texts ascribed to Xian gong bearing the title Yuedeng sanmei jing 月燈三昧經. The second, T641, is only fragmentary, and is included in the Korean edition only. Unlike T640, which is common to all editions of the canon, the contents of T641 do not correspond to any part of the Yuedeng sanmei jing 月燈三昧經 T639, but the phraseology 語調 is similar to a section in juan 5 where four types of distinction 四種分別 are listed. The ascription of T641 to Xiangong 先公 is due to the confusion of this text with T640 (the ascription of which Ōno does not challenge). LDSBJ lists in the section of An Shigao’s works a Yuedeng sanmeijing 月燈三昧經, of which he says 一巻出大月燈三昧經. KYL accepts this entry, stating that the text is missing 缺本. However, Ōno claims that the vocabulary of this fragmentary version is that of the (Liu) Song period or later, and the text should be reclassified as anonymous.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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No

[Naitō 1970]  Naitō Ryūo 内藤竜雄. "Hō Kyō roku ni tsuite 法經錄について." IBK 19, no. 1 (1970): 235-238.

Naitō gives some general information about Fajing's 法經 Zhongjing mulu 眾經目錄 T2146. It was composed in the space of two months in 594 by a commission of 22 scholars. Hayashiya argued that the catalogue was composed in preparation for the copying of the full canon. Naitō argues that there must have been some circumstances precipitating the rush. He notes that suspicious texts were also recorded and categorised as such, which would be odd if the sole purpose of the catalogue was to list works to be included in an approved version of the canon. He therefore proposes that the catalogue, and the canon connected to it, were prepared as a response to the notorious incident in Guangzhou in 593 surrounding the use of the Zhancha jing 占察經, in which practices of self-flagellation, "stupa repentance" rites, and the "mixing of the sixes" were connected with the use of a scripture that a commission of experts then declared spurious. Among the reasons they gave that the text was inauthentic was that the text was recorded in no earlier catalogues, which Naitō treats as circumstantial evidence that there was a mentality current that could see the compilation of a new catalogue as associated with a similar agenda to determine which texts were authoritative and, by implication, which were spurious, in order to forestall recurrence of like incidents.

Naitō also treats the problem of the sources of Fajing's work. Determination of his sources is made difficult by the fact that the catalogue does not explicitly give its sources. Fei Zhangfang/Changfang says that Fajing had seventeen catalogues at his disposal, but then does not himself admit that so many catalogues were extant in their time. Naitō reports very briefly that he has compared the treatment of extant translations in Fajing with treatment in other sources, for a total of 79 translators and 556 works, but here gives no details, rather, promising to report his findings in another venue. He notes that a total of 428 texts were ascribed to named translators in CSZJJ, but in Fajing, that number increases to 459 for translators down to the end of the Qi (i.e. before Sengyou's time). In other words, Fajing has added at least 31 new ascriptions. As a matter of fact, there are 34 more ascriptions on which Fajing does not agree with CSZJJ, for a total of 65 new ascriptions. Naitō is unable to determine Fajing's sources for these ascriptions, but he notes that in total, they entail, among other things, the addition of nine new "translators" to the record: Tanguo 曇果 [cf. T196], Tankejialuo 曇柯迦羅 [to whom no extant texts are ascribed today], Kang Sengkai 康僧鎧 [cf. T360, T1432, X11], Fajian 法堅 [cf. T495], Zhi Fadu 支法度 [cf. T17, T527], An Faqin 安法欽 [cf. T816, T2042], Fahai 法海 [cf. T1490], Xian gong 先公 [cf. T640, T641], and Xiang gong 翔公 [cf. T234].

Naitō argues that probably five catalogues were in fact extant at Fajing's (and Fei's) time, in addition to GSZ: CSZJJ, Baochang's 寶唱 catalogue, Li Kuo's 李廓 catalogue, Fashang's 法上 catalogue, and the Zhongjing bielu 眾經別錄. Prior scholarship had understood that Baochang collected information from a range of older catalogues, and that Baochang was in turn the proximate source for the use of information from these older catalogues in Fei's LDSBJ (Naitō refers to Tokiwa for this view). Naitō doubts this, because he believes that Baochang only reported 226 ascriptions for sutras, and this number probably did not exceed 300 even when śāstras and vinaya works are taken into account; but this total is too few to account for the profusion of new information reported under the Sui. He notes further that comparison to CSZJJ, the only case in which we can check Fei's information against his source, shows that when LDSBJ says "see such-and-such a catalogue", it only means that the title is listed in the source, not the ascription --- CSZJJ is cited in this manner for texts that CSZJJ itself clearly treats as anonymous.

Naitō also discusses Fajing's probable use of Fashang's catalogue. He notes that Fashang stopped at about 568-570, and that Fajing does the same. He takes this fact to indicate that Fajing just took Fashang's information over holus-bolus, and suggests that ascriptions to Fajian, Fahai, and Xian gong were probably added on this basis.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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