Text: T0986; *Mahāmāyūrī-[vidyārājñī]-sūtra; 大金色孔雀王呪經

Summary

Identifier T0986 [T]
Title *Mahāmāyūrī-[vidyārājñī]-sūtra [Radich DDBa]
Date 秦 [T]
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

Edit

Yes

[Radich DDBa]  Radich, Michael. DDB s.v. 孔雀王呪經. — Accessed July 27 2014.

"As Lévi points out, T987 overlaps with T986 in some passages, with simple variations; the bibliographic tradition was in the habit of attaching other material to these fragments; and the 'Kumārajīva' version also overlaps in some respects with the others, though in some cases it is 'mutilated' (mutilée), and it jumps around between different parts of the sequence of the text as known from other, more complete versions. Lévi concludes that all three texts are parts of the same original text, which were separated, garbled, and added to in transmission, and that the ascription of T988 to Kumārajīva is unreliable; Lévi (1915): 24-26." Referring to Lévi, Sylvain. "Le catalogue géographique des yakṣa dans la Mahāmāyūrī." Journal Asiatique 11 (1915): 19-137, esp. 24-26. Radich continues: "Sengyou already knew of various texts with titles related to Mahāmāyūrī: the Dakongque wang shenzhou 大孔雀王神呪 and the Kongque wang za shenzhou 孔雀王雜神呪, each in one fascicle, which he ascribes to *Śrīmitra 尸梨蜜 (fl. ca. 307–mid 4th c.), T 2145.55.10a16–19; and a Kongque jing 孔雀經 in one fascicle which he says was excerpted from the Sheng jing 生經, 27b11. He also mentions that Śrīmitra translated the text in his biography of him, 99a13–14. (Unsurprisingly, a text entitled Mahāmāyūrī is first ascribed to Kumārajīva by Fei Changfang, who did so much to multiply the number of problematic ascriptions in our bibliographic record; T 2034.49.78b10). However, even Sengyou says that one of the texts he catalogues is merely a 'miscellany' 雜 of dhāraṇīs. Given this, and the jumbled present condition of T 986–988, even if Lévi is right that these three texts are vestiges of a single text, we certainly cannot be sure that they derive from Śrīmitra's version."

Entry author: Michael Radich

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  • Title: *Mahāmāyūrī-[vidyārājñī]-sūtra

No

[Funayama 2013]  Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Butten wa dō Kan’yaku sareta no ka: sūtora ga kyōten ni naru toki 仏典はどう漢訳されたのか スートラが経典になるとき. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten: 2013. — 90

Funayama notes that the Shi shuo xin yu 世說新語 asserts that Śrīmitra could not speak any Chinese. This would obviously call into question all attributions that claim he "translated" any text, at least in any ordinary sense in which the word "translate" is understood in modern contexts.

Entry author: Michael Radich

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