Rethinking the Category of Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha

Abstract

This paper reexamines the category of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha, sūtras composed in China rather than translated from Indian originals. Scholars have insisted on their importance for the study of Chinese Buddhist practices. I propose that the relationship between Indian Buddhist and local Chinese practices may be more ambiguous than this analysis suggests. I take my evidence from dhāraṇī sūtras. The Book of Consecration (Taisho 1331) has been interpreted as a Chinese Buddhist apocryphon. A list of deities reminiscent of Taoist registers appears in the opening section of this sūtra. But here some dhāraṇīs transcribed into Chinese characters in earlier translations of dhāraṇī sūtras are broken up and turned into lists of deities. This may be apocryphal, but in some translations of another dhāraṇī sūtra a dhāraṇī is translated as a list of deities. The distinction between translation and apocryphal composition is difficult to draw. The preoccupation with the Chinese setting and practice might also lead to failures to appreciate the importance of Indian elements. The Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras was compiled in China, yet as a work attributed to an Indian ācārya it offers the earliest known record of a crucial development in the evolution of Esoteric Buddhism in India.