Shi’er you jing; Biography of the Buddha; Origin Story; Śākya Clan; Chinese Buddhist Texts
摘要
There are over a dozen translations of biographies of the Buddha in the Chinese Buddhist canon, the Shi’er you jing being one of them. Scholarly attention to some aspects of this text started over a hundred years ago, but basic issues such as its provenance and the connection between its contents and other early Chinese Buddhist translations need serious critical review. As a preliminary attempt, this paper first combs through all the information regarding this text in the traditional Chinese bibliographies and finds that the text had always been considered by traditional Chinese Buddhist bibliographers to be an authentic translation, although the information presented by Fei Zhangfang’s catalogue is confusing, if not mistaken. By analyzing other Chinese-written works which either quoted from or referred to this text the same conclusion is arrived, which means that various Chinese masters had too taken the text as a genuine translation. The paper next highlights some of the obvious issues surrounding this text and makes some research notes on the main points of the major episodes of the early life of Śākyamuni Buddha. It specially focuses on the Origin Story of the Śākya clan, the Bodhisattva’s descending from heaven, Siddhartha’s wives, early ministry career of the Buddha and the ending part of the text of which a missing part was identified in the Jingü yixiang. Finally the paper selectively identifies a couple of writing issues that might betray its mixed identity as a translated text. The tentative conclusion the paper reached is that this text might have been a hybrid apocrypha, containing something genuinely foreign and organized probably by a Chinese hand. It is hoped that this paper will serve to pave the way for future, more detailed studies, since such problem as how much the Buddha’s early preaching overlapping with the Buddhist texts available in China by the time this text appeared needs more efforts and bigger scale than this short paper could offer.
目次
Abstract Introduction: Previous Studies and Remaining Issues 95 The Traditional Chinese View on the Provenance of the Text 96 Analysis of Its Contents 101 Some Issues in the Text of the Scripture 107 Concluding Reflections 110 References 119
