Text: T1524; 無量壽經優波提舍

Summary

Identifier T1524 [T]
Title 無量壽經優波提舍 [T]
Date 529-531 [Tsujimoto 2011]
Translator 譯 Bodhiruci, 菩提流支, 菩提留支 [T]
[orally] "translate/interpret" 傳語, 口宣[...言], 傳譯, 度語 Buddhaśānta, 佛陀扇多 [Sakaino 1935]

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. — 655-656

Sakaino states that Ratnamati 勒那摩提, Bodhiruci 菩提流支, and *Buddhaśānta 佛陀扇多 were contemporaries in the Northern Dynasty period, and that it is recorded that Ratnamati started translating scriptures in China first, followed by Bodhiruci, and then by Buddhaśānta. However, Sakaino claims that Buddhaśānta probably came to China earlier than the other two. Sakaino gives the following support for this claim:

For translation works ascribed to these three figures, the tradition rarely reports an oral translator/interpreter 傳語, even though an interpreter should have been necessary. The preface of the Daśabhūmika 十地[經]論 T1522, however, states that Ratnamati and Bodhiruci were the translators 譯出, and Buddhaśānta was the oral translator/interpreter 傳語. From this, Sakaino infers that Buddhaśānta was the person who worked as the oral translator/interpreter 傳語 for the other two in other cases as well. Sakaino infers that Buddhaśānta must have arrived in China earlier than the other two, and thereby had longer to learn the language. This entry is associated with all texts ascribed to the trio, to which this suggestion might apply.

Entry author: Atsushi Iseki

Edit

No

[Corless 1996]  Corless, Roger J. "T'an-luan: The First Systematizer of Pure Land Buddhism." In The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, edited by James Harlan Foard, Michael Solomon and Richard Karl Payne, 107-138. Berkeley Buddhist Studies 3. Berkeley: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California and Berkeley, and Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1996. — 112

"The entire text [T1524] claims to have been written by Vasubandhu and translated by Bodhiruci, but, being extant only in Chinese and having some un-Sanskrit grammatical peculiarities (such as Chinese puns), it may be pseudepigraphical."

Entry author: Michael Radich

Edit

No

[Tsujimoto 2011]  Tsujimoto Toshirō 辻本俊郎. "Muryōju kyō ron to Bodhiruci" 『無量寿経論』とBodhiruci . Ajia gakka nenpō アジア学科年報 4, no. 2 (2011): 53-66.

A commentary on the Sukhāvatīvyūha 無量壽經 is ascribed to Vasubandhu under the Chinese title Wuliangshou jing youpotishe 無量壽經優波提 T1524. The translation is ascribed to Bodhiruci (Bodhiruci I, working under the N. Wei). Tsujimoto points to problems raised by the existence in catalogues of two different datings for this translation, 531 or 529. This is perhaps related to a problem already noticed in prior scholarship, that the wording of the extant Taishō text of T1524 diverges from the wording of excerpts from the text as quoted in other works, especially in Tanluan.

Tanluan 曇鸞 wrote a sub-commentary on T1524, the Wuliangshou jing youpotishe yuansheng jie 無量壽經優婆提舍願生偈 T1819. Tsujimoto reviews traditions about the encounter of Tanluan with Bodhiruci (entangled with a rather legendary-sounding account about Tanluan's prior account with Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 in search of elixirs of long or eternal life). Tsujimoto surmises that this must have been the occasion on which Tanluan received the root text of the Vasubandhu commentary from Bodhiruci. The problem is that these events are supposed to have taken place in 529 at the latest. If that is true, it would make the translation date of 531 impossible, because the root text would not yet have been translated when Tanluan met Bodhiruci. Some scholars have suggested, on the basis of this confusion, that T1524 might not in fact have been translated by Bodhiruci. Tsujimoto sets out to solve this problem based upon an investigation of external evidence (in catalogues etc.) and internal evidence (translation terms and style).

Tsujimoto's conclusion is that T1524 is in fact by Bodhiruci. In relation to the problem of the two dates, and two (partly) transmitted versions of the text, he proposes that Bodhiruci in fact translated the root text twice, so that both dates are correct. In other words, Tanluan would have received in 529 a first version of the text, and cited it in his own work; Bodhiruci would then have revised his translation to produce the version of 531, attested in T and old manuscripts. In closing, Tsujimoto refers to (and argues against) early work by Takase Shōgon 高瀬承嚴 (in 1917), who had attempted to solve the puzzles presented by the same set of evidence, but proposed as a solution the idea that Bodhiruci's original translation had been revised by some later hand, not by Bodhiruci himself.

Entry author: Michael Radich

Edit