Text: Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa “bieben” 別本; 毘摩羅詰(堤/提)經

Summary

Identifier [None]
Title Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa “bieben” 別本 [Usuda 1981]
Date [None]
Translator 譯 Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什, 鳩摩羅, 究摩羅, 究摩羅什, 拘摩羅耆婆 [Usuda 1981]

Assertions

Preferred? Source Pertains to Argument Details

No

[Usuda 1981]  Usuda Junzō 臼田淳三. “Perio 2006 ban Kan’yaku butten chūshaku sho danpen o megutte: Kumarajū yaku izen no Yuima kyō chūshaku sho ぺリオ三〇〇六番漢訳仏典注釈断片をめぐって 鳩摩羅什以前の維摩経注釈書.” Bukkyō shigaku kenkyū 仏教史学研究 23, no. 2 (1981): 1-18.

Usuda argues that the bieben (an "alternate version" of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa referred to 27 times in the collected commentaries of Kumārajīva and his disciples, T1775) is an earlier draft translation of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa by Kumārajīva himself. Every citation from the bieben is followed by an explanation from Kumārajīva. Usuda argues that Kumārajīva would not comment in this manner on somebody else’s translation, and that discussions of the bieben were therefore incorporated into T1775 (as part of the complex compilation history of that text) from an earlier circulating independent VKN commentary by Kumārajīva only.

Entry author: Michael Radich

Edit

No

[Kimura 1987]  Kimura Senshō 木村宣彰. “Chū yuima kyō shoin no betsubon ni tsuite 注維摩経所引の別本について.” IBK 35, no. 2 (1987): 99-104.

Kimura argues that the bieben (an "alternate version" of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa referred to 27 times in the collected commentaries of Kumārajīva and his disciples, T1775) is an earlier draft translation of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa by Kumārajīva himself. Kimura's reasons are as follows:

Kumārajīva’s circle were critical of the earlier translations; however, Kumārajīva’s comments are not critical of the bieben; rather, Kumārajīva explains in detail the differences between the wording of the bieben and of T475, sometimes with reference to the Indic source text;

the bieben features the term shiji 實際 (bhūtakoṭi), which is a Kumārajīva coinage;

it is known that in other cases, the Kumārajīva group similarly worked with earlier draft translations before finalising the extant versions of their texts.

Kimura suggests further that the bieben was probably in fact the text with the title 毘摩羅詰(堤/提)經, to which Sengrui wrote an extant preface, and reference is made in MPPU and the correspondence of Kumārajīva and Lushan Huiyuan. He also suggests that Jizang probably refers to this same text in a passage where he explicitly says that there are two version of the sūtra, citing wording which does not match any extant VKN.

Entry author: Michael Radich

Edit

No

[Okayama 1977]  Okayama Hajime 丘山新. “Chū Yuimakitsu kyō shoin no ‘betsubon’ ni tsuite『注維摩詰経』所引の「別本」について.” IBK 26, no. 1 (1977): 154-155.

Okayama suggests that the bieben (an "alternate version" of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa referred to 27 times in the collected commentaries of Kumārajīva and his disciples, T1775) is precisely the “Zhu” version of VNK that Sengzhao mentions in his preface. Taking “Zhi” as T474, as ascribed to Zhi Qian, he asks whether the “Zhu” supposedly responsible for the bieben is Zhu Fahu = Dharmarakṣa, or Zhu Shulan. Okayama regards it as difficult to answer this question, because he believes that no other texts by Zhu Shulan survive to serve as a point of comparison. At the same time, he also points out that Kumārajīva’s “new” translations tended to be retranslations of major texts in the Dharmarakṣa corpus (such as the Śūraṃgamasamādhi , the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Prajñāpāramitā , and the Bhadrakalpika). On these grounds, Okayama surmises that the bieben was more likely the “lost” Dharmarakṣa translation.

Entry author: Michael Radich

Edit