Text: T0273; 金剛三昧經

Summary

Identifier T0273 [T]
Title 金剛三昧經 [T]
Date 梁陣 [Hayashiya 1941]
Translator 譯 Anonymous (China), 失譯, 闕譯, 未詳撰者, 未詳作者, 不載譯人 [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

[Buswell 1989]  Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-sūtra, a Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

This text is certainly not a translation, and was composed in East Asia. Buswell argues at length that it was composed in Korea.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Hayashiya 1941]  Hayashiya Tomojirō 林屋友次郎. Kyōroku kenkyū 経録研究. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1941. — 1077-1079

Hayashiya's summary of the content of the catalogues on this and related titles is as follows:

The recompiled catalogue of variant translations from the Liang country 新集安公涼土異經録 (Sengyou's reconstitution of a portion of Dao'an's catalogue):
A Jingang sanmei jing 金剛三昧經 is listed in this catalogue and was lost at the time of Sengyou.

Fajing’s Zhongjing mulu and Yancong’s Zhongjing mulu:
Fajing listed the Jingang sanmei jing 金剛三昧經 as an anonymous scripture. The text was still lost at the time of Yancong.

LDSBJ 三寶記 and DZKZM 大周刊定衆經目錄:
LDSBJ classifies the Jingang sanmei jing 金剛三昧經 as an anonymous scripture of the Liang 涼 period. Hayashiya claims that this date of composition is incorrect and it is probably the W. Jin 西晋 period or earlier. DZKZM writes that this text is an anonymous scripture of the N. Liang 北梁 period, but this Liang 梁 is clearly a misspelling of Liang 涼.

KYL 開元錄:
KYL also regards the Jingang sanmei jing as an anonymous scripture of the Liang 涼 period. Adding to this, it also lists the Jingang sanmei jing as a freestanding extant Mahāyāna text, with a length of one scroll 巻 or two scrolls. This ambiguity of the volume indicates the fact that Zhisheng 智昇 newly found that the text that had two scrolls, while the former catalogues recorded it as one scroll.

Hayashiya examines the vocabulary and tone of the surviving Jingang sanmei jing 金剛三昧經 T273 and maintains this text cannot be the one listed in the recompiled catalogue of variant translations from the Liang country 新集安公涼土異經録, since it includes many words that came to be used after the time of Kumārajīva, and those that belong to the system of the tathāgatagarbha tradition. Hayashiya concludes that the Jingang sanmei jing in the recompiled catalogue of variant translations from the Liang country is still lost, and must be listed as an anonymous scripture of the W. Jin 西晋 period or earlier. The surviving T273, the one Zhisheng found, is a different text composed around the Liang Chen 梁陳 period, translated by some anonymous translators.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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No

[Buswell 1990b]  Buswell, Robert. "Introduction: Prolegomenon to the Study of Buddhist Apocryphal Scriptures." In Buswell 1990, 1-30. — 12, 23

Buswell argues that the Jingang sanmei jing 金剛三昧經 (*Vajra-samādhi-sūtra) is a “syncretistic apocryphon.” Buswell cites his own monographic study (Buswell 1990) in order to assert that the text was written in Korea around 685 CE. He presents the anonymous author as a frustrated Sŏn missionary, who faced “an unreceptive, if not downright antagonistic audience.” Buswell proposes that the monk, "distressed over his mission's lack of progress", "resorted to textual forgery...in order to convey his new teachings".

Entry author: Michael Radich

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No

[Nakamura 1987]  Nakamura, Hajime. Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. — 173-174

Nakamura mentions in passing that the 金剛三昧經 T273 (Vajrasamādhi-sūtra) was composed in China. He cites Mizuno Kōgen in Komazawa daigaku gakuhō, no. 13, 1955, pp. 33-57.

Entry author: Sophie Florence

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No

[Benn 2008]  Benn, James A. “Another Look at the Pseudo-Śūraṃgama Sūtra.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68, no. 1 (2008): 57–89.

Benn summarises scholarship by Mochizuki, Lü Cheng, Lo Hsiang-lin [Luo Xianglin], Stael-Holstein, Demieville, Gregory, Faure, Jorgensen, and Jiang Wu that has argued that T945 is an apocryphal sūtra composed in China at the beginning of the eighth century (57 n. 2; 61 ff.). One of the notable studies Benn cites is a monograph dedicated to T945 by Kim Chin-yol.

Benn notes that there is significant confusion in the external evidence, which contain a number of different accounts of how, where, and when the “translation” was made. Later historians and commentators trued to cover up these discrepancies, but only added to the confusion. In this literature “clouds of suspicion” swirl around the possibility that the text was in fact authored by Wu Zetian's minister Fang Rong and his son Fang Guan. However, Benn claims that there is no conclusive proof to connect T945 to the Fangs. Benn suggests that rather, T945 "may have been written in response to certain statements concerning matters of correct practice contained in an influential work by...Yijing.” He thus still associates the text with the milieu at the end of the reign of Wu Zetian.

Benn closely examines the relation of T945 to Chinese literary sources. He demonstrates the unique way in which T945 “adopts and adapts themes found elsewhere in the literature of medieval China, Buddhist and non-Buddhist.” According to Benn, T945 incorporates indigenous Chinese elements into standard Buddhist taxonomies.

The seventh fascicle contains a twelve-fold rubric that, to the best of Benn's knowledge, is not attested in any “genuine” sūtra (Lü Cheng suggests this unusual categorisation is adapted from a passage in Paramārtha’s Diamond Sūtra T237; Lü Cheng, 195). The text lists twelve types of beings that are said to exist in saṃsāra; the first four are familiar in Indian Buddhist discourse, but the next six reveal what Benn calls a “distinctly Chinese conception of the natural order.” By this he means that the imagery employed is drawn from Chinese knowledge practices. For example, we find reference to blind jellyfish (shuimu 水母) a creature otherwise unknown in Buddhist texts, but featured in the Wen xuan 文選. The text goes on to discuss wasps that forcibly adopt other creatures; cannibalistic birds; demonic owls; and a beast called broken mirror (pojing). In addition to these creatures, Benn highlights Taoist themes presented in a Buddhist frame, and the use of a distinctive Chinese demonology. The T945 teaching on the seven elements, which Benn adds “may itself be apocryphal,” uses an extended analogy of the use of mirrors to ignite moxa/mugwort, a typically Chinese method of creating fire from the sun, in order to explain tathāgathagarbha. These passages illustrate the ways in which T945 blends typically Chinese knowledge practices with Mahāyāna ideas.

Benn then demonstrates that one may detect within the thought of T945 a trend towards a kind of militant Mahāyāna asceticism which explicitly condemns various practices and beliefs. For instance, an overconfident meditator leaves his unsettled mind exposed to psychic attack from demonic forces and spouts heterodoxies about destroying stūpas and statues of Buddhas. Benn interprets this as a reaction to Chan rhetoric which locates authenticity in the mind rather than sūtras and statues, as found in the “Bodhidharma anthology” from Dunhuang. Another scenario appears to be directed at those who promote sexual practices associated with esoteric Buddhism. Benn takes this to indicate the attitudes of T945's author(s) toward other religious practitioners and contemporary teachers “during the turbulent religious scene of the early eighth century.”

Benn lists two other texts dating to the same period, which are closely related to T945: T845 can be seen as a precis of T945; and T273 shares several similes and metaphors with both texts.

Entry author: Sophie Florence

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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. — 125-126

The *Vajrasamādhi-sūtra 金剛三昧經 T273 has a number of factors relating it to the "larger version" 大本 of the Lotus Sūtra. It is also related to many other texts, as it calls itself as, in the closing part 結説, a compendium and epitome of multiple sūtras 攝諸經要 and a sūtra summarising the Mahāyāna 攝大乘經. Texts related to T273 include the Mahāyānasaṅgraha 攝大乘論 T1592-T1594, the Da mingzhou jing 大明呪經 T250, and the 菩薩瓔珞本業經 T1485 [itself composed in China --- MR]. Ōno claims that, therefore, it is not appropriate to include T273 in the Lotus portion of the canon 法華部, and the text should be classified as apocryphal, based on the fact that it is in part derived from T1485.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

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