Foshuo 佛説 (spoken by the Buddha) in the title of Some Chinese Buddhist Scriptures

Abstract

To anyone familiar with Chinese Buddhist texts, it is common knowledge that the title of some Chinese Buddhist sutra scriptures begins with the phrase of foshuo佛説 (‘spoken by the Buddha’ or ‘expounded by the Buddha’), a phrase literally emphasizing that the given scripture was preached by the Buddha. This phenomenon appears neither in the Pali scriptures nor in Tibetan translation of Indian Buddhist texts. As an attempt to find out the formation of this peculiar phenomenon of Chinese Buddhist literature, this paper identifies the cause of the phenomenon through a survey of some earliest hand-copied manuscripts of Chinese Buddhist texts (authentic and dubious) as well as the printed editions of traditional Chinese Buddhist canon, an examination of the catalogues of Chinese Buddhist texts, and discussions of the ways in which the phrase was added in the texts surveyed. The paper suggests that the cause of the adding might be due to the intention to authenticate the relevant texts in early period of Chinese Buddhism.