Text: T0560; 佛說老母女六英經

Summary

Identifier T0560 [T]
Title 佛說老母女六英經 [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 Guṇabhadra 求那跋陀羅 [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

Edit

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. — 633-638

Sakaino argues that dozens of new ascriptions to Guṇabhadra 求那跋陀羅 added in LDSBJ are incorrect. He shows that the ascriptions for these extant texts are part of a broader pattern whereby Fei Changfang, in LDSBJ, takes titles in groups from lists of anonymous scriptures in Sengyou's CSZJJ, and assigns an entire group holus-bolus to a single or several translators. This procedure leads to a sudden ballooning of a given translator's corpus (if not its creation ex nihilo), and other absurd consequences, like the appearance that a certain translator specialised in texts on a particular topic (because Sengyou grouped titles in his lists by topic). Guṇabhadra is one of the purported "translators" to whom Fei applies this procedure. This entry lists extant texts ascribed to Guṇabhadra to which Sakaino's criticism here applies.

According to Sakaino, Fei lists 78 titles as Guṇabhadra’s work (including the 13 already ascribed to Guṇabhadra in CSZJJ). Among them, as many as 48 titles were actually taken from Sengyou’s “newly compiled catalogue of anonymous scriptures” 新集失譯錄. (Sakaino claims that 13 titles ascribed to Guṇabhadra in CSZJJ are the only reliable record of Guṇabhadra’s work.)

To illustrate the problem, Sakaino lists the groups of titles from Sengyou’s “newly compiled catalogue of anonymous scriptures” that were newly ascribed to Guṇabhadra by Fei without any solid grounds (635-637).

- 10 titles taken from the ones related to the disciples of the Buddha (佛往慰迦葉病經 1 juan, 摩訶迦葉度貧母經 1 juan, and others);
- 18 titles taken from the end of the section of scriptures featuring a person 一人事跡 and the beginning of the succeeding section of ones using metaphors 譬喩經 (殺龍濟一國人經 1 juan, 鸚鵡經 1 juan, and others);
- 6 titles taken from a section of Mahāyāna scriptures (無崖際持法門經 1 juan, 阿難陀目佉尼呵離陀經 1 juan, and others);
- 12 titles (13 titles in LDSBJ since Fei counts the 十二頭陀經 twice as the 十二頭陀經 and the 十三頭陀經) in the section of scriptures with a number used in the title (三小劫經 1 juan, 三因縁經 1 juan, and others); and
- The 禪要呵欲經 1 juan in chan-related titles (the 菩薩呵欲經 in LDSBJ) (Sakaino also points out that the 淨度三昧經 was listed in the same catalogue as well.)

Thus, Sakaino demonstrates that Fei took titles from the certain groups in Sengyou’s “newly compiled catalogue of anonymous scriptures” and allocated them to Guṇabhadra (Sakaino implies clearly that the ascriptions of them to Guṇabhadra are baseless).

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

Edit