Text: T0637; 佛說寶如來三昧經

Summary

Identifier T0637 [T]
Title 佛說寶如來三昧經 [T]
Date [None]
Unspecified Anonymous (China), 失譯, 闕譯, 未詳撰者, 未詳作者, 不載譯人 [Sakaino 1935]
Translator 譯 *Gītamitra, 祇多蜜, 祇多羅 [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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No

[Bagchi 1927]  Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra. Le canon bouddhique en Chine: Les traducteurs et les traductions. Sino-Indica: Publications de l’Université de Calcutta, Tome 1er. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1927. — 349-351

CSZJJ knows only one work ascribed to *Gītamitra, viz. a Pu men pin jing 普門品經, which is lost [T2145:55.12a18-20]. This means that for both of the extant works ascribed to *Gītamitra, viz. 寶如來三昧經 T637 and 菩薩十住經 T284, the ascription is first found in LDSBJ.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Sakaino 1935]  Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. — 261-265

Sakaino begins by noting that the original of the “Larger Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra” 大品 =光讚經 T222 ascribed to Dharmarakṣa was probably brought to China from Khotan 于闐 by *Gītamitra(?) 祇多羅, a monk of Khotanese birth. The name 祇多羅 refers to the same person as 祇多蜜 recorded in the catalogues. However, Sakaino argues that *Gītamitra probably never translated any texts himself. This would imply that the ascriptions to *Gītamitra presently carried by T284 and T637 are erroneous. CSZJJ lists just one title, the Pu men jing 普門經 as the work of *Gitamitra (cf. T315 ascribed to Dharmarakṣa). LDSBJ, by contrast, ascribes 25 titles in 46 juan to him. KYL subsequently accepts most of these ascriptions, listing 13 titles in 45 juan as his work, excising only “offshoot” or “byproduct” scriptures 別生 from the ascriptions given in LDSBJ.

Sakaino argues that the ascriptions to *Gitamitra given by LDSBJ are highly likely to be fabrications on Fei's part. He shows that as many as 21 out of the 25 titles ascribed to *Gitamitra in LDSBJ overlap with scriptures ascribed to Dharmarakṣa in the same work. In Sakaino's view, this clearly indicates that the ascriptions to *Gitamitra were mistakenly mixed up 誤傳混雜 with those to Dharmarakṣa. Even the single title that CSZJJ also ascribed to *Gitamitra, viz., the 普門經, might be confused with Dharmarakṣa’s 普門經 in LDSBJ. Sakaino claims that it is virtually impossible that two scholars who were active in the same region in the same time translated so many of the same texts, and that here again, we see clearly the unreliability of LDSBJ.

Sakaino suggests that it is possible that *Gitamitra was somehow involved in Dharmarakṣa's translation project, but also, that this claim is impossible to prove, since Dharmarakṣa's biography does not mention him. Sakaino also gives further detailed discussion of the sources of confusion about some individual titles (no longer extant) on the LDSBJ list of *Gitamitra's works.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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No

[Shi Jiyan 1997]  Shi Jiyan 釋繼彥. “Bao rulai jing he Pusa shizhu jing yizhe lüekao” 《寶如來經》和《菩薩十住經》譯者略考. Dharma Light Lyceum 法光學壇 1 (1997): 61-72.

Ven. Jiyan 釋繼彥 argues the ascription of the Bao rulai jing 寶如來經/Bao rulai sanmei jing 寶如來三昧經 T637 to *Gītamitra 祇多蜜 is problematic. The content of T637 is very similar to that of the Wuji bao sanmei jing 無極寶三昧經 T636 translated by Dharmarakṣa 竺法護. Additionally, records regarding titles corresponding to T637 in Buddhist catalogues are inconsistent. Jiyan examines the catalogues to determine how the present T637 came into the canon, and how its ascription to *Gītamitra arose.

Jiyan finds that the title Bao rulai jing 寶如來經 may have originally referred to a "dubious scripture"疑經. This is supported by a record originally from the so-called "Dao'an lu": 道安錄, which attributes the composition of the text to a person named Hu (or with an ethnic Identity perceived as hu) from the Southern Seas (南海胡作). Sengyou 僧佑 cites this record in the CSZJJ, and therefore does not list the Bao rulai jing 寶如來經 as a variant translation of the Wu baoji jing 無極寶經.

However, Jiyan points out that starting with Fajing, other catalogues, such as Yancong, Jingtai, and DTNDL all treat the Bao rulai jing as a lost translation, and regard the Wu baoji jing and the Bao rulai jing as variant translations of the same Indic text. This is because these catalogues record Dharmarakṣa as the translator of the Wu baoji jing, but do not mention the translator of the Bao rulai jing. It should be noted that some versions of Fajing's catalogue in later printed canons attribute the translation of the Bao rulai jing to *Gītamitra, but this is a later addition.

LDSBJ records a second work under the same title as Dharmarakṣa's Wu baoji jing, and ascribes It to *Gītamitra. This is a new record, which was not previously known. LDSBJ also regards the Bao rulai jing and Wu baoji jing as a pair of variant translations, but does not list the translators for both texts. However, it is unclear which version of the Wu baoji jing is referred to here, whether it was translated by *Gītamitra or Dharmarakṣa.

Jiyan also notes that other catalogues, similar to those mentioned earlier, make similar assertions, and identifies a new problem that enters the record with DZKZM, which regards the Bao rulai jing as the same text as the Wu baoji jing translated by *Gītamitra. In this sense, the Wu baoji jing translated by *Gītamitra does not actually exist, and has been replaced by the Bao rulai jing translated by *Gītamitra. This problematic ascription is also found in the interlinear commentary of the Wu baoji jing in the KYL, which asserts that the Wu baoji jing translated by Dharmarakṣa shares the same underlying Indic text as the so-called Bao rulai sanmei jing 寶如來三昧經 translated by *Gītamitra. Jiyan argues that this problematic ascription has persisted until today because the KYL was the authoritative basis for entry of texts into subsequent editions of the canon.

Entry author: Chengpeng Li

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