THE SUTRA OF INFINITE MEANINGS.

Đại thừa vô lượng nghĩa kinh 大乘無量義經 [Ch. Da cheng wu liang yi jing; The Mahayana Sutra of Infinite Meanings, T. 276].

Woodblock-printed. 27 joined sheets (numbered except 3 & 27), 62.5 folding leaves, red edges. Tall narrow 8vo, bound between wooden boards. Hà Nội: Kì vũ tự 祈雨寺, 1889 (date of publisher’s colophon; copy perhaps printed in 1922).

A beautiful and rare example of Vietnamese printing in the accordion (“sutra-binding” or orihon) format. We find no Vietnamese edition of this sutra in WorldCat, and only the later, 1906 edition is listed in the Vietnamese Han-Nom Literature Database, surviving in two copies at the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies (AC.403 & 498).

The Sutra of Infinite Meanings, together with the Lotus Sutra and the Sutra on the Meditation of Samantabhadra (Ch. Guan pu xian jing 觀普賢經), are traditionally held to constitute the Threefold Lotus Sutra, wherein the brief Sutra of Infinite Meanings served as the introduction or “opening sutra” to one of the most philosophically profound and culturally influential texts in East Asian Buddhism. Although the Sutra of Infinite Meanings is considered today by many scholars to be an apocryphal text, the canonical bibliography of Sengyou 僧祐 (445-518) holds that it was translated by Dharmajātayaśas sometime before 481. The identification of this sutra with a text by the same title mentioned in the first chapter of the Lotus Sutra was established by Liu Qiu 劉虬 (438-95) in his 485 Preface to the sutra, an identification that quickly became widely accepted in Buddhist East Asia.

Like the Lotus Sutra, the Sutra of Infinite Meanings emphasizes the transformative power of the Buddha’s word itself, which even in the abridged form of a single verse or a single line eternally delivers the hearer from the world of suffering. The belief in this teaching of the Threefold Lotus Sutra motivated centuries of Buddhist printing in East Asia. To briefly quote from the sutra’s third chapter (“Ten Virtues”):

“If living beings are able to hear this sutra, though they hear only one recitation, one verse, or just one line, and are thereby able to comprehend and master hundreds, and thousands, ten thousands, millions of meanings, then although they have earthly desires, it will be as though they were free of earthly desires, and they will go in and out of the realm of birth and death without thoughts of fear or dread. Toward living beings they will acquire minds of pity and tenderness, and they will confront all phenomena with brave and stalwart thoughts”–trans. Burton Watson, The Lotus Sutra and Its Opening and Closing Sutras (2009), p. 23.

Our copy opens with the Preface of Động Thượng Thanh Nguyên 峒上清源, dated Gia Long 嘉隆 15 (1816), followed by the dates of two reprints: Minh Mạng 明命 18 (1837) and Đồng Khánh 同慶 3 (1888), the latter being carried out by the monks Thanh Đoan 清端 and Thanh Nghĩa 清義 on behalf of their master, Từ Tính 慈性. The printed colophon, written by the artisans Nguyễn Văn Việt 阮文越 and Nguyễn Văn Giáp 阮文甲 of Thanh Lưu xã 青蓼社, an important center for Buddhist publishing in the Hà Nội region, is dated Đồng Khánh 同慶 4 (1889) and gives an exhaustive list of donors and the amounts of their donations. The colophon also specifies that Thanh Đoan and Thanh Nghĩa come from the Kì vũ tự 祈雨寺 monastery in Hà Nội province 河內省, Hoài Đức prefecture 懷德府, Từ Liêm district 慈廉縣, Hạ Trì canton 下池總, Thượng Cát commune 上葛社, and that the completed woodblocks were to be kept in this monastery. A handwritten colophon by the monk Thanh Khoan 清寬 and others from the Nam Định province dates the printing and binding of this particular copy to the Nhâm Tuất 壬戌 year (1922?), 2951 years after the birth of the Buddha.

Pristine copy.

❧ Yuenan Hannan wenxian ziliaoku 越南漢喃文獻資料庫, Academia Sinica.