A critical study and an annotated translation of Shangxing pin 上行品, the first chapter of the Da mingdu jing 大明度經

Abstract

This thesis examines the formative history of the Shangxing pin 上行品 (“Chapter of the Supreme Practice”), which is designated in the Taishō edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon as the first chapter of the Da mingdu jing 大明度經 (“The Scripture of Great Understanding of the Crossing”; hereafter SXP-T), accompanying its anonymous interlinear commentary (hereafter SXP-G). The study culminates in the production of an annotated translation of the text, providing insight into its early developmental stages by examining how the Indic Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (“The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines”) was initially translated and subsequently interpreted in commentarial traditions by local Buddhists in Southern China during the Three-Kingdoms Era (220-280 C.E.). The study first demonstrates that the SXP-T is not merely a genuine translation but, in fact, a highly sinicized Buddhist translation based on its adjustments to the scriptural narrative and the contextualised translation of key technical terms (e.g., bodhisattva, prajñāpāramitā, sarvajñatā). By examining the commentarial mechanism—that is, the application of lemmas in glosses and their textual correlations to the SXP-T—of the SXP-G, it then identifies twenty-one items that are structurally mispositioned glosses. By observing pre-400 C.E. Buddhist and secular historical sources, it suggests that such extraordinary textuality was caused by the slip-application (qian 籤), which originated from Confucian commentarial practices. To interpret its doctrinal connection to the third-century Buddhist community, the last part of the study painstakingly examines not only explicit quotations but also certain unannounced Buddhist sources employed by the Master (i.e., 師云/師曰) and his unnamed disciples. For instance, it examines Zhi Qian’s 支謙 (193-252 C.E.) Wiemojie jing 維摩詰經 (T474; Vimalakīrtinirdeśa) and its direct influence on the understudied Falv sanmei jing 法律三昧經 (T631), a pre-350 C.E. Buddhist composition previously known to modern scholars mainly for featuring Mahāyāna monastic regulations. Part II of the project provides the first scholarly translation of the Shangxing pin. It includes a synoptic edition developed sentence-by-sentence between the Chinese edition, which prioritises the second Korean edition (Kr2) as the base version along with twelve other pre-modern canonical editions as references, and the Sanskrit Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (Aṣṭa.). Additionally, it provides an annotated English translation based on critical punctuation of textual variants. Through conducting a philological study on lexical items, this part expands our understanding of their applications not only in the Shangxing pin but also in specific controversies and vicissitudes of early Chinese Buddhist translations.