(, J. Jiku Hōgo; K. Ch’uk Pǒphom c. 233-310) was one of the most important early translators of

Mahayana sutras The Mahāyāna sūtras are a broad genre of Buddhist scriptures (''sūtra'') that are accepted as canonical and as ''buddhavacana'' ("Buddha word") in Mahāyāna Buddhism. They are largely preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon, the Tibet ...

into Chinese. Several of his translations had profound effects on East Asian Buddhism. He is described in scriptural catalogues as

Yuezhi The Yuezhi (;) were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat ...

in origin.

Life

His family lived at Dunhuang, where he was born around 233 CE. At the age of eight, he became a novice and took the Indian monk named Zhu Gaozuo () as his teacher. As a young boy, Dhamaraksa was said to be extremely intelligent, and journeyed with his teacher to many countries in the Western Regions, where he learned

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

n languages and scripts. He then traveled back to China with a quantity of Buddhist texts and translated them with the aid of numerous assistants and associates, both Chinese and foreign, from Parthians to Khotanese. One of his more prominent assistants was a Chinese upāsaka, Nie Chengyuan (), who served as a scribe and editor. Dharmaraksa first began his translation career in

Chang'an Chang'an (; ) is the traditional name of Xi'an. The site had been settled since Neolithic times, during which the Yangshao culture was established in Banpo, in the city's suburbs. Furthermore, in the northern vicinity of modern Xi'an, Qin S ...

(present day

Xi'an Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by other names, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain, the city is the third most populous city in Western China, after Chongqi ...

) in 266 CE, and later moved to

Luoyang Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River and Yellow River in the west of Henan province. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang ...

, the capital of the newly formed Jin Dynasty. He was active in Dunhuang for some time as well, and alternated between the three locations. It was in Chang'an that he made the first known translation of the ''

Lotus Sutra The ''Lotus Sūtra'' ( zh, 妙法蓮華經; sa, सद्धर्मपुण्डरीकसूत्रम्, translit=Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtram, lit=Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma, italic=) is one of the most influ ...

'' and the ''

Ten Stages Sutra The ''Ten Stages Sutra'' (Sanskrit: ''Daśabhūmika Sūtra''; ; ) also known as the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, is an early, influential Mahayana Buddhist scripture. The sutra also appears as the 26th chapter of the '' ''.Modern Buddhist studies schol ...

'', two texts that later became definitive for

Chinese Buddhism Chinese Buddhism or Han Buddhism ( zh, s=汉传佛教, t=漢傳佛教, p=Hànchuán Fójiào) is a Chinese form of Mahayana Buddhism which has shaped Chinese culture in a wide variety of areas including art, politics, literature, philosophy, ...

, in 286 and 302, respectively. He died at the age of seventy-eight after a period of illness; the exact location of his death is still disputed.

Works

Altogether, Dharmaraksa translated around 154 sūtras. Many of his works were greatly successful, widely circulating around northern China in the third century and becoming the subject of exegetical studies and scrutiny by Chinese monastics in the fourth century. His efforts in both translation and lecturing on sūtras are said to have converted many in China to Buddhism, and contributed to the development of Chang'an into a major center of Buddhism at the time. Some of his main translations are:Boucher, Daniel. Asia Major THIRD SERIES, Vol. 19, No. 1/2, CHINA AT THE CROSSROADS: A FESTSCHRIFT IN HONOR OF VICTOR H. MAIR (2006), pp. 13-37 (25 pages). Published By: Academia Sinica *'' Saddharmapundarika Sūtra'' (), the "Lotus Sutra" *''Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra'' (''The Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in 25,000 Lines'', ) *The '' Dasabhūmika-sūtra'' (''Ten Stages Sutra,'' ) *The '' Lalitavistara Sūtra'' () *The '' Vimalakīrtinirdeśa'' *The '' Tathāgataguhyaka Sūtra'' (''Secrets of the

Tathāgata Tathāgata () is a Pali word; Gautama Buddha uses it when referring to himself or other Buddhas in the Pāli Canon. The term is often thought to mean either "one who has thus gone" (''tathā-gata''), "one who has thus come" (''tathā-āgata''), o ...

'') *The '' Bhadrakalpikasūtra'' *The '' Śūraṅgama Samādhi Sūtra'' *'' Akṣayamatinirdeśa''

References

Bibliography

* Boucher, Daniel (2006)
Dharmaraksa and the Transmission of Buddhism to China
Asia Major 19, 13-37 * Boucher, Daniel. Buddhist Translation Procedures in Third-Century China: A Study of Dharmaraksa and His Translation Idiom. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Microform. 1996. Print. * Wood, Francis. The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

External links

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dharmaraksa 230s births Year of death unknown Jin dynasty (266–420) Buddhists Chinese scholars of Buddhism Chinese Buddhist missionaries Buddhist monks from the Western Regions Buddhist translators Missionary linguists 3rd-century Chinese translators 4th-century Chinese translators Sanskrit–Chinese translators

Life

Works

See also

References

Bibliography

External links