Buddhist Apocrypha: 佛說眼明經 The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha

佛說眼明經 The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha 

Continuing in this blog's series on Buddhist apocrypha, here is a positively tiny "sutra", the Fo shuo Yanguangming Jing: The Bright-eye sutra spoken by the Buddha  Just a hundred characters long, it might be more properly characterised as an incantation which cures eye trouble.  

The sutra seems to be relatively popular. There are at last two copies of the sutra online http://www.boder.idv.tw/fsumj.htm and  https://simple.taolibrary.com/category/category50/c50126.htm, and the sutra appears in the otherwise solidly canonical collection of sutras called 五經合刊 published by 和裕出版社 in Taiwan (See appendix 1). What makes this surprising, is that from a preliminary search, a sutra of this name does not appear in any of the Buddhist canons, even as an apocryphon. I have yet to find the sutra's true origin. It does not seem to appear in the Chanmen Risong (Zen daily recitations) which otherwise contains numerous apocrypha, that have been translated elsewhere on this blog

To make matters even more confusing, there is another scripture of the same title 佛說眼明經 , but is somewhat longer. This sutra is associated with the True Buddha School(the sect of Lu Sheng-yen).  However, it appears elsewhere, as for example appended to a copy of the Surangama Mantra that I possess. (see appendix 2) A translation of the sutra into English has been made here http://lotuschef.blogspot.com/2016/06/clear-vision-sutra_27.html as the "Clear Vision Sutra". These two sutras have little in common with one another. For starters, the Clear Vision Sutra begins by invoking Guanyin, and then ends by invoking Mahamayuri. 

For more discussion about this text in Chinese see https://ch.tbsn.org/dynamics/detail/494 and http://www.gelupa.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=19843&extra=&page=1 

大聖末劫經 GREAT SAGE END KALPA SUTRA

 大聖末劫經

GREAT SAGE END KALPA SUTRA 

From https://archive.org/details/dsmjj_images/page/n5/mode/2up 

It might strike the reader as surprising to see the 'laughing buddha' depicted on such a serious scripture, but this is actually the traditional chinese depiction of Maiterya. 

This text is one of a series of rather curious 'folk' scriptures. it will hopefully be first of a series of such scriptures that I intend to translate and will post on this blog. All these sutras have a common theme: A series of disasters will soon come to strike humanity; the wicked will perish, and the good survive. If the readers would repent in time and cultivate morality/distrubute the scripture, then they would be saved. 

The earliest such scripture is the Scripture of the Five Lords 五公經 which I have previously featured here https://edwardwhite123.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-sutra-of-five-lords.html

(I presently possess an English translation of the sutra, but the Chinese text from which I take it is so jumbled that the translation barely makes sense. When I get a better copy of the sutra I will revise the translation and publish it). However the Scripture of the Five Lords is not alone: The Great Sage End Kalpa sutra is another such example. 

Before I go further I should speak of the religious affiliation of the text. The boundaries between buddhism and Daoism have always been blurred in China- especially at a popular level, and this scripture is no exception. We have Maiterya, the future Buddha, as well as Guanyin having a dialogue with the Jade emperor.

 However, as much as this work works in a buddhist/daoist cosmology, it is far from the mainstream chinese buddhist [or indeed, daoist] scripture- not least because there have been numerous rebellions of people who proclaimed themselves as Maitreya. if I recall correctly I did not acquire this text from a Buddhist temple, but rather from a 'tract table' in a Daoist temple, where people place holy books for free distribution. (Chinese Daoists are really more polytheists: they have a more relaxed attitude to these things) 

It is also worth noting how the sutra came to earth- via the well-established method of fuji, or planchette writing -- the sutra's colophon states precisely when and where the  the sutra was revealed. Furthermore, the book from which the sutra is extracted has a whole plethora of messages from the god at the back, likewise revealed through FuJi. The fact that this text was revealed by planchette writing may also show why it is so disjointed: it goes backwards and forwards, often repeating itself. 

I have doubts about some translations, and there may be errors. If my readers can spot such errors or have any other suggestions, I would be glad to hear of them. 

Buddhist Apocrypha: 分珠經 The scripture on the Divisions of the beads

分珠經：偽造

The scripture on the Divisions of the beads (APOCRYPHAL)

This is the second of a series of buddhist apocrypha from that are collected in this 1931 edition of Chanmen Risong: 禪門日誦 Zen Daily Recitations. For an introduction to what this book is, you should read this post about another apocryphon in the same collection, the Scripture of Wondrous Sand 

This present scripture- the Fen Zhu Jing -- 分珠經 -- Scripture of the division of beads  is a curious one. It is composed in two parts that have little to do with one another. 

All genuine Buddhist sutras begin with a scene describing where the Buddha delivered the sutra, as well as  who was present. This text also possesses such a scene, but it was quite obviously, and crudely, tacked on to the "sutra proper", which describes how you can evade  hell, through (in effect) deceiving the underworld guards. This transition is particularly obvious, as the introduction is written in prose, whilst this section is written in seven-character verse, with the title of the scripture even mentioned at the very end of it! 

Like an other apocrypha in this collection (eg: the Scripture of Wonderous Sand above), the scripture on the division of beads expresses a concern about crossing the River Nai. This is the river which separates the world of the living from hell. Sinners are pushed straight into the river to be tormented, whilst the good may ascend a golden or silver bridge over the river. However this bridge is guarded What the scripture shows, is that If you tell the guards of you are from the Naga-puspa assembly (龍華會 Longhua hui = dragon flower assembly) – i.e. the assembly around Nagapuspa tree, under which Maitreya will become a buddha, you will get to crosss the bridge, and go straight to the western paradise of Amithaba without any questions asked. 

The second section of the scripture begins just as abruptly. The assembly asked the Sixth Patriarch (i.e. Huineng) why the japamala has 108 beads.  The replies by giving a list of buddhist lists, the total number of articles adds up to 108. He finishes by describing respectful treatment of a japamala. One of the things that seems to be noted is that you should not put the japamala over the "Storehouse of the seven treasures"-- perhaps meaning buddhist scriptures.  The author has heard of a similar prohibition that is still extant today. 

 The scripture concludes with a reiteration of the benefits of the scripture. 

****

The edition from which I have taken the scripture is accessible here at google books

Note, however, that this book has been digitalised back to front, so as you scroll down the page, you will go earlier in the book. There is a 1915 edition of the Zen Daily Recitations that has this scripture, but it is not punctuated.It is accessible here  There is additional a 19thc manuscript copy of the sutra accessible here https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=UvNpSbgSqFEC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%E5%88%86%E7%8F%A0%E7%B6%93&pg=PP48#v=onepage&q=%E5%88%86%E7%8F%A0%E7%B6%93&f=false but I have not checked the text below against this manuscript. 

Buddhist Apocrypha: 妙沙經 The Scripture of Wondrous Sand

妙沙經 (偽造)

Miao Sha Jing 

The scripture of Wonderous Sand: APOCRYPHAL 

The frontispiece to a Ming-dynasty (萬曆辛丑年=1601  copy of the Scripture, now kept in Tokyo. From  Open Museum 

This scripture will be a first in a series of apocryphal scriptures that are collected in this 1931 edition of Chanmen Risong: 禪門日誦 Zen Daily Recitations. The heart of this book are the Buddhist morning and evening services: collections of scriptures that are chanted in the mornings and evenings by buddhist monasteries, a practise that continues to this day. However, in addition to the morning and evening services, the book contains other material that would be useful to buddhists, like  hymns that would be sung before and after sutras were recited, essays on various aspects of buddhism, tables of religious festivals, mantras for various purposes, and finally, short sutras. 

This is where the current apocryphal text, the "Scripture of Wondrous Sand" Miaosha Jing 妙沙經  fits in. This extremely short scripture is an incantation, invoking hosts of buddhas. The scripture proclaims that reciting it would allow you to deliver yourself- and your ancestors- from hell. In that respect, it resembles things like the Eighty-Eight Buddhas Litany 八十八佛懺 or the Three Thousand Buddhas Repentance litany 三千佛洪名寶懺: Still-practised rites which consist of lists of buddhas's names. it is not inconceivable that this "sutra" started off life as a similar litany that eventually was ascribed magical powers. Indeed, as we shall see, all the apocrypha in the Zen Daily recitations have a common feature: Reciting them has magical power. 

 Unlike other scriptures in the collection, The compilers of this text clearly marked it as 偽造 FALSELY CREATED, or perhaps idiomatically "Apocryphal" But if it was marked as "false", why would it be included in such a collection in the first place?

This was probably because the scripture was probably very popular, The scripture is rather short, and easily memorised even by people of meagre ability, empowering them to take over the destinies of their ancestors and themselves. Indeed, as can be seen above, this popularity spread to elite circles. Emperor Shenzhong-- the Wanli Emperor-- commissioned a copy of the sutra written in gold characters.  Religious professionals could ill-afford to ignore the wishes of their lay clients, who placed trust in such scriptures. 

However, in the end, orthodoxy triumphed. As far as the author can tell, This scripture is no longer recited by modern-day buddhists. As such, this intriguing little incantation has no English translation, apart from what is presented below. 

The Thousand Character Classic numbered 千字文數字對照表

 The Thousand Character Classic  is a Chinese text that contains 1000 characters, of which no character appears twice. This characteristic lent the work to an interesting off-label use: numeration

Because every character in the text is unique, you could use individual characters to compactly represent any number from 1-1000. So instead of writing 七百一十七(717), you could simply write  林 "forest" to represent the number seven hundred and seventeen.  Volumes of the Qianlong Tripitaka 乾隆大藏經  were numbered in this fashion (using the first 724 characters!) , as well as examination cells, etc.  Even until recently, Taiwanese conscripts' serial numbers started with one of the first four characters of the Thousand Character Classic. 

Another related use was the lottery known as Puckapoo, which used the first 80 characters as entries for punters to place bets on. Sometimes the first 100 characters were used, but rather awkwardly characters 98-100 are 弔民伐罪 which could be interpreted as "the people are hanged for their crimes" (the actual meaning is 'the people are consoled; crimes are punished"), and various substitutions were made. 

The system is not perfect. For example, some natural numbers are in the text, and awkwardly not in the corresponding positions. Eg: two is character number 415. A complete list is shown below:

One 壹 =123

Two 二=415 

five 五=151

four 四=149

eight 八=499 

nine 九=609 

hundred 百=613 

thousand 千=603 

ten thousand 萬=143 

To the author's knowledge, no such table corresponding each number of the 1000 character classic to natural numbers has been attempted. As such he places this table on his blog, for the convieneicence of the public. His base text has been the Wikisource text . Some of the characters have alternate forms, or have commonly established subsitutions (eg 元-玄); these are placed in square brackets. If there are any errors or omissions in the text below, please let him know of them, for which he will be most grateful. 

Update 15 April 2024:Fixed bug  where only the first 796  entries were displayed. Thanks, George Pollard! 

UPDATE: 3 July 2024. I have finally have had the spare time to add the simplified characters. The simplified characters are placed in (round brackets) in the text. From a count of the characters, there are 364 of them that have an exclusively simplified form (I am not counting traditional variants like  no. 394 真/眞 or 848 牀/床). 

As my readers would know, In the process of simplification, what were previously separate characters in traditional were merged. This has happened for the following 7 characters in the Thousand Character Classic, (which have been marked with an asterisk in the main text)

i.      102發  and 148髮 ——>「发」

2. 51巨 and 637鉅 ——>「巨」(although 钜 is also known as a simplified form of 637)
3. 47崑 and 633昆——>「昆」
4. 749 慼 and 818戚 ——>「戚」
5. 33 雲and 623云——>「云」
6. 616并 and 933並——>「并」
7. 164絜 and 836潔——>「洁」

As such the text contains 993 different characters when it is printed in the simplified script. Of course, this gives a problem when the text is used to number things (so volume 发 may be either 102 or 348). This might be the case when (say) an old book is republished in Simplified chinese, but otherwise I do not think this would be an issue: if the editors were careful, they would've numbered the books as a primary reference. 

Again, from a linguistic standpoint this merging has no effect. Firstly, the seven words above are already homophones in spoken mandarin. Secondly, by reading the thousand character classic as a whole the context would dispel every ambiguity. So character 102 means "prosper" (in the context of a person's name: Fa of Zhou, i.e. King Wu of Zhou) and character 148 means "hair". 

弔民伐罪，周發殷湯｜吊民伐罪，周发殷汤。

Relieve the people, right the wrong; as did Fa of Zhou and Yin of Tang

    蓋此身髮。四大五常。 ｜盖此身发。四大五常。

These bodies and this hair of ours; Four Great Things, Five Principles. 

(translation based on the one by Nathan Sturman  another copy of his translation)

燒餅歌 The Song of the Shaobing

 燒餅歌 The Song of the Shaobing 

In this post i will offer the first English translation (to my knowledge) translate what has become a somewhat notorious prophetic text: The Song of the Shaobing, sometimes translated as "the burnt biscuit poem"

The text is a dialogue between the first Ming Emperor- Taizu 明太祖 (Hongwu Emperor 洪武, reigned 1368 to 1398) and Liu Bowen 劉伯溫, a famous Chinese sage.The Emperor asks Liu Bowen to deliver him a prophesy of the future of his dynasty, and indeed of China as a whole. What follows is a set of apparently cryptic poems that predict future political events and the names of the personages involved.

Although apparently cryptic, the editions of the poem have glosses that decypher the names of the personages involved. Much of the encoding is done through breaking apart Chinese characters. For example, the surname Wei 魏 can be decomposed into the words 八千女鬼- "8000 lady ghosts"- which is how a man surnamed Wei is named in the poem. Some of these decompositions are fairly obvious, but others are not. As large sections of the poem are written in this manner, it is unsurprising that no complete translation has been made so far.

Much of the poem is dedicated to events of the Qing dynasty- the successor to the Ming. Much is made of the fact that the Qing were Manchus- and thus Barbarians from a Han Chinese perspective. In any case the poem predicts, that with the fall of the Qing, disasters of positively apocalyptic proportions would occur; however at the end of them a new ruler would come to rule china, and usher in an era of peace.

***

Something must be said about The origins of the Song of the Shaobing itself. To my knowledge, the earliest dated printed text is actually rather late - the 27th year of the Republic, or 1938. published in a compendium called 中國二千年之預言  "Seven Chinese prophesies for Two thousand years"   https://books.google.com/books?id=dPokAAAAMAAJ&dq=%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E9%A0%90%E8%A8%80&pg=PP101#v=onepage&q&f=false 

The collection is prefaced by the following note as a sort of certificate of authenticity: [it is also translated into chinese on the facing page]

"In 1859, when the allied English and French troops burnt the Yuan Ming Yuan in Peking, one of the soldiers discovered a box of manuscripts written in Chinese which had been carefully preserved by the Imperial Family. Seeing that they contain pictures, the soldier presented them to Miss Lypia from whom I secured the same. 

In translating them I found that they represented the predictions of a chinese prophet and reference the rise, the fall the tranquility and the turbulence of China. The emperor of the past dynasties prohibited their publication, for they might disturb the minds of the people- and lead to bad consequences

It is indeed our good fortune that they had came into our country and that we may study them. These lines are written as an inroduction

- Maeon (1867)"

I am convinced that this note- and indeed, all the texts in the book are relatively recent forgeries, dating from the late years of the Qing.  However in my opinion that is unproductive, especially when you consider the context.

 Starting in 1849, China was enduring a "Century of humiliation" where, amongst other things the Forbidden City was sacked by foreign troops. The much detested Qing dynasty fell in 1912-- ending the 3000 odd years of imperial rule. As the text was published, China was in the process of a civil war. Given this context, the fall of the barbarian Qing- foretold in the last golden age of China- would seem comforting; the apocalyptic pronouncements of the final part might have seemed plausible, and the arrival of the sage ruler positively intoxicating. Indeed, the note stating that the texts came from a sacked imperial  palace only adds to to the text's authority:With the collapse of the Imperial system, the people of China can now access- and hence control- their own destiny. 

I understand Modern commentaries of the text still exist, but I have yet the time to read them. If I do come round to doing so, I will add their comments to this translation. 

太上感應篇 Taishang Ganying Pian: Three translations

 太上感應篇

太上老君感應篇

Taishang Ganying Pian 

Watters : The KAN YING PIEN OR A Chapter On the Causes which Induce Retribution by the Grand Supreme 

Legge: THE THÂI-SHANG TRACTATE OF ACTIONS AND THEIR RETRIBUTIONS

Carus: TREATISE OF THE EXALTED ONE ON RESPONSE AND RETRIBUTION

Over the past months, we have featured translations of several famous popular Chinese morality books on. The first such book was 關聖帝君覺世真經-- The Sage Therach Guan's true Scripture to Awaken the world: the second was 文昌帝君陰騭文 -- . Wenchang's Treatise on Secret Merit  Now we finally the last of this trilogy, the Taishang Ganying pian-- The treatise of the Highest One on Ganying. 

In the Carus and Suzuki translation of the text. it is stated that this was one of the most widely distributed books of all China. Whilst this is no longer true, the Taishang Ganying Pian is still republished now and then by Chinese religious presses; in fact it is one of the very few regularly distributed religious books that is not a buddhist sutra of some form. Still, it nonetheless is published by Buddhist presses, because the morality espoused in the book should be generally promoted. 

The Taishang Ganying Pian- as are the Sage Thearch Guan and Wenchang Texts- is about Ganying. Generally the term refers to a kind of associateve resonance; a kind of relationship between two objects that are related to each other, and can  interact from a distance. In the context of this text, the interactions are between good or bad deeds, and quality of life. If one does good things, good things would come to you; the converse if one does bad things. In a way it resembles popular notions of karma. However, some aspects of the doctrine may strike modern as strange. For one, the mechanism by which this is done, is by omnipresent spirits. These spirits report acts to the gods, who would correspondingly send good or bad luck to a person. For another, it is taken as a matter of course that retribution can devolve on people other than the sinner. The text explicitly states that Wives and children can die as a consequence of the man's sins; in turn, numerous other miracle tales attest to people's children suffering good (or bad) fortune owing to the deeds of their ancestors. 

Whilst Wenchang's treatise on secret merit is positive-- a series of injunctions on what to do, Taishang Laojun's treatise is negative-- For the most part it is a long list of sins. There are some 137 in total. 

The list of sins may strike the modern reader as strange. It struck some of the translators as strange as well. Extremely egregious sins (murder, rebellion) are condemned in the same terms as one that are relatively minor (killing snakes, pointing at stars). The reason why this is so may be seen from the wider context of Ganying. The consequence of evil deeds is worldy misfortune. If only significant evils were prohibited, every instance of misfortune occurring to a person would be seen as evidence of secret murder, adultery etc. However, by mixing in relatively minor transgressions like pointing at the luminaries, the unfortunate is given the benefit of the doubt. Indeed,  this very treatise condemns the practise: "見他失便，便說他過； on seeing others have misadventures,  Speaks of them as committing faults".