偽造. 佛說壽生經
The Scripture on Longevity and Life spoken by the Buddha - APOCRYPHAL
This scripture is one of a genre of books regarding the 'incarnation money', a concept that exists in some forms of buddhism and Daoism. Briefly, there is a concept that in the spiritual world, everyone has a literal karmic bank account, or 'coffer'. Per Daoist scriptures like 靈寶天尊說祿庫受生經"Scripture spoken by the Lingbao Heaveny Worthy on rank-coffers and incarnation" and 太上老君說五斗金章受生經 The Scripture Spoken by Taishang Laojun on the Golden Seals of the Five Dippers and Incarnation. Per the former scriptures, this karmic bank account is credited or debited according to one's good or bad deeds. At the same time, one must also draw into this bank account in order to reincarnate into a human body- the 'incarnation debt'. as such no ordinary person is free from a certain amount of debt. If one's debt is not paid- or worse still, increased through bad deeds- then all manner of disasters will strike a person. The converse is true if a person manages to repay his debt, and the scriptures provide instructions on how to do so.
The present scripture, when compared to the above mentioned Daoist scriptures, does not give a detailed account of how the debt works, or indeed, how it can be cleared. It merely states that such a debt exists, there are negative consequences to not repaying it, and recitation of this scripture- and, it seems the Diamond Sutra, clears the debt. However we are not given detailed instructions on how much debt a recitation clears, or indeed, how much incarnation debt a person has in the first place.
However, tables that are circulated with the scripture do provide these details, as for example this copy of the Scripture, published by the Xuanang Cultural Printing Company 玄奘印刷文化有限公司. Briefly, the amount of incarnation debt one owes depends on the year of birth in the sexagenary cycle. The exact amount of debt for each year is stated in guan (a chinese unit of 1000 coins), and the number of recitations of the Scripture of longevity and life this corresponds to. The table also states the number of the 'coffer' from which the debt was withdrawn, as well as the official who is in charge of said coffer. These details are used to fill in a petition that is subsequently burnt, to send it to the relevant officials. This seems to be accompanied with burning a special kind of ritual paper that physically represents the money, although the book does not describe what the paper looks like, here are some images of 'incarnation money' that is used in a daoist ritual to repay the incarnation debt-- a ritual that I incidentally have participated in. Soemetimes paper ingots are used instead.
The table and petition are transmitted separately- but in close proximity- to this apocryphon. This copy of the Zen Daily Recitations contains the Scripture in one part of the book, and the table of debts (with the text of the petition) in another. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_pMqJbJsDt4C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%E7%A6%85%E9%97%A8%E6%97%A5%E8%AF%B5&pg=PP247#v=onepage&q&f=false
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It is one thing to say that this scripture is a buddhist apocryphon; but it is perhaps more valuable to see this scripture as an example of the syncretism between buddhism and daoism in times past; buddhists appropriating daoist theurgy (such as the sexagenery cycle and perhaps the concept of incarnation debt itself).
One of the Daoist Scriptures on incarnation debts, the 上老君說五斗金章受生經 The Scripture Spoken by Taishang Laojun on the Golden Seals of the Five Dippers and Incarnation has been translated by Schafer and Paynter under the title of The Perfected Scripture of the Life Receiving Golden Seals of the Five Dippers as Spoken by Taishang Laojun. it is available here. https://www.amazon.com/Perfected-Scripture-Receiving-Dippers-Taishang/dp/B0CW9L1R2W/ref=pd_vtp_h_pd_vtp_h_d_sccl_2/141-9748089-1902138 I hope to translate the other scripture in due course.
There is additionally an anthropological article on the practise of repaying the coffers, by Rostislav Berezkin entitled Paying for Salvation: the Ritual of ‘Repaying the Loan for Life’ and Telling Scriptures in Changshu, China. https://www.academia.edu/41612226/Paying_for_Salvation_the_Ritual_of_Repaying_the_Loan_for_Life_and_Telling_Scriptures_in_Changshu_China
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In the interests of time and space, I will only post the text of the Scripture of Longevity and life here. The table of incarnation debts, as well as the petition, will be translated in a separate post.
My translation is based on these source texts:
https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/X0024 The Sutra in the Manji Tripitaka sequel I used this as my base text. It has some errors in words and punctuation which I have corrected against the Zen Daily Recitations, below. For a PDF of the original see https://books.google.com/books?id=aLtFAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%E4%BD%9B%E8%AA%AA%E5%A3%BD%E7%94%9F%E7%B6%93&pg=PP1586#v=onepage&q=%E4%BD%9B%E8%AA%AA%E5%A3%BD%E7%94%9F%E7%B6%93&f=false
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qObnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP329#v=onepage&q&f=false A copy of the scripture in a 1930s edn of the Zen daily recitations. The table of incarnation debts in this scripture is here https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qObnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP301#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://archive.org/details/20251124_20251124_1749/mode/2up The copy of the sutra from the Xuanzang Cultural Printing Company alluded to above; it has the tables of debts owed.
