A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings

The previous text we read, the Scripture of the Great Origin (Dàběn jīng 大本經) was included in the larger collection of scriptures, the Long  gama Scripture (Cháng āhán jīng 長阿含經, T no.1, vol.1), translated into Chinese by Buddhayaśas and Zhú Fóniàn 竺佛念in 413. This text contains a total of thirty independent scriptures. Pali versions can be found for all but three of these thirty scriptures. The text below, the Scripture 2 of the Account of the World (Shìjì jīng 世記經), is the last of these thirty scriptures. There is no Pali or Sanskrit version of this text; it survives only in this Chinese translation. Most of this text has been translated in Angela Falco Howard, The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha (Leiden: Brill, 1986), Appendix 1, esp. pp.129- 43.

Below is the opening section of the Shìjì jīng. The opening is followed by chapters on Jambudvīpa, the continent of Uttarakuru and Cakravartin respectively. Then follows the chapter on the hells when we will focus on here.¹

Notes

1. Here again, for readers of Japanese, an introduction to the text and helpful annotations are provided in Okayama Hajime 丘山新 et al., Gendai goyaku “Agon kyōten” 《現代語訳 「阿含経典」 : 長阿含経》 (Tōkyō : Hirakawa Shuppansha, 1995- 2002). For the names of the hells and alternate sources on Buddhist hells in East Asia, see Ineke Van Put, “The Names of Buddhist Hells in East Asian Buddhism,” Pacific World 3rd Series No.9, (2007), pp.205-229.