地藏菩薩本願經The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva

A sūtra in two fascicles, set out here in thirteen units and five layers. The thirteen units are the sūtra's own thirteen chapters — the chapter divisions are plain in the text itself, this edition draws no divisions of its own, one unit answers to one chapter, and no chapter is cut through. The five layers are five ways of reading the same chapter.

(In this edition unit means chapter; section means a division made by the sūtra or by the commentator himself — as when the line-by-line mirror divides the introduction of chapter one into a general and a particular introduction. The two words are never used for one another.) A reader need not begin with the thickest layer, but should first know what each layer can answer and what it cannot stand in for.

I. What Each Layer Does

Plain Reading and Exposition are never merged: the Plain Reading follows the text and only that; the Exposition opens the sense. The Apparatus is the layer of evidence; the Essentials are an entrance, not a comprehensive digest. The last four layers each exist in Chinese and English.

II. The Order of the Thirteen Chapters

The introduction

1. Spiritual Powers in the Palace of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three — the Buddha in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, 「為母說法」—“teaching the Dharma for his mother” 〔T13n0412 0777c12〕. The buddhas of the ten directions assemble; ten kinds of light-cloud go forth and sixteen subtle sounds. Mañjuśrī asks their number and the Buddha answers 「吾以佛眼觀故，猶不盡數」—“even beholding them with the buddha-eye, I cannot come to the end of the count” 〔T13n0412 0778a19〕. Then the simile of dust and kalpas, and two accounts of former lives — an elder's son who saw the marks of a buddha and made his vow, and a brahmin's daughter who kept a buddha's name in mind and so learned where her mother had been reborn.

The main exposition, nine chapters

2. The Assembly of the Divided Bodies — dividing and assembling are two ends of one motion. The Buddha strokes the crowns of the divided bodies and entrusts the work to them; Kṣitigarbha joins his numberless bodies into one form and states his pledge three times over.
3. Contemplating the Karmic Conditions of Beings — Māyā asks after the evil destinies that karmic retribution calls forth; Kṣitigarbha answers with five kinds of guilt, and glosses the name of the Uninterrupted in five senses. Of the three chapters answering to affliction, karma, and suffering, this is affliction.
4. The Karmic Impulsions of the Beings of Jambudvīpa — two kings who took different roads, and Bright Eyes who saved her mother; then a list of twenty-three deeds set against their requitals.
5. The Names of the Hells — Samantabhadra asks and Kṣitigarbha answers: forty-four names, and fourteen further clauses that name no hell but show it by what is done there.
6. The Tathāgata's Praise — the Buddha sends forth light and praises Kṣitigarbha himself: the benefit of seeing, hearing, and doing reverence; the requital of slighting him; the three declarations at a sickbed; the ten fast days; and at the close the sūtra's three names.
7. Benefiting the Living and the Dead — what may and may not be done between a death and the forty-ninth day. The elder Great Eloquence asks about offerings for the dead, and the answer is 「七分之中，而乃獲一」—“of seven parts, he receives but one” 〔T13n0412 0784b10〕; the other six belong to the living.
8. The Praise of King Yama and His Multitude — thirty-four ghost kings named; the ghost king Master-of-Life says of his own work 「在我本願」—“it lies in my original vow” 〔T13n0412 0785b13〕, and the Buddha's judgment upon him is 「實非鬼也」—“he is in truth no ghost” 〔T13n0412 0785c17〕.
9. Reciting the Names of the Buddhas — a whole chapter that is nothing but a roll of nineteen buddha-names, each with a threshold of its own; it closes on a rhetorical question.
10. Weighing the Merit and Conditions of Giving — a scale with two pans: the highest giving to the lowest; a single turning of dedication that changes the fruit of an entire passage; and three grades of kalpa, where the direction the scale is read in matters.

The circulation, three chapters

11. The Earth Spirit's Protection of the Dharma — the shortest chapter in the sūtra. The earth spirit Firm-and-Stable speaks first not of herself but of the ten benefits that come of setting up an image; and all she asks in return is one sūtra.
12. The Benefit of Seeing and Hearing — thirty-two radiances go forth from the crown, and eight matters beyond thought are set out in order from the heavens down to the doorway; four of them happen in dreams.
13. The Entrustment to Humans and Gods — a second stroking of the crown, and the name called twice: 「地藏！地藏！」—“Kṣitigarbha! Kṣitigarbha!” 〔T13n0412 0789a26〕. Ākāśagarbha asks after the blessings, and the Buddha answers with two lists, twenty-eight benefits and seven. This sūtra does not end in universal rejoicing; it says only that the whole assembly 「合掌而退」—“joined their palms and withdrew” 〔T13n0412 0789c29〕.

III. The Nine Topics of the Apparatus

Every chapter's Apparatus follows one frame:

1. Placement in the outline — the mirror's three sections, the four passages of the main exposition, the three of the circulation, and the subdivisions of each;
2. Cross-recension collation — this sūtra exists in a single translation, and this topic is empty in all thirteen chapters; it says so plainly and records what was searched;
3. Scriptural grounds — the sūtras and treatises the commentator cites and what each attests, together with the sūtras of the same honored one read alongside;
4. The gloss of the passage — the mirror's phrase-by-phrase gloss;
5. Differing glosses — each recorded with the recension or work it belongs to; three canon numbers of one book are never treated as three commentators;
6. Terms — first occurrences: the Chinese, what the mirror transmits, the citation, and the sense;
7. Simile and figure — the similes and syntax the passage itself carries;
8. Citation and transmission — cross-reading within the sūtra, and later transmission (rites, gazetteers, recorded sayings, and encyclopedias, each marked for what it is);
9. Textual witnesses — variant readings, divergences of graph between base text and mirror, and discrepancies in the mirror's own citations.

Where a topic has nothing, it says so rather than being silently dropped.

IV. Some Paths Through

• If you have a quarter of an hour — read the Opening Essentials, then the Essentials of chapter thirteen. That is where the whole thing gathers.
• If you want to know what this bodhisattva vowed — read chapters one and two together. The two accounts of former lives are where the vow comes from; the assembly of the divided bodies is its scale.
• If you want to know why the hells are spoken of at all — read chapters three, four, and five in order. They answer to affliction, karma, and suffering, and the order cannot be reversed: the hells are those to be transformed, not the theme of the teaching.
• If you want to know what to do — read chapters six and seven together. The first is what the living do for themselves and for others; the second is what the living do for the dead, and one thing among them the sūtra says plainly must not be done.
• If you want to see how low the threshold goes — read chapters nine and ten together. One name; a single hair, a single mote. And having gone that low, the sūtra still insists that wisdom is the root.
• If you want to walk it through from the beginning — start at chapter one. The order of the thirteen units is the order of the text.

A suggested order: Plain Reading → Essentials → Exposition → Apparatus. Stop at the Essentials if you want it short; go on to the Apparatus if you want it deep. The Source-Text is always there to return to.

V. Where the Source-Text and the Apparatus Should Be Read Together

The three syntaxes of the hell-names; the two forms of the ghost-king names; the differing thresholds of the nineteen buddha-names; the two forms among the thirty-two radiances; the overlap of the twenty-eight benefits with the seven; whether the three names of the Uninterrupted are one hell or two; and the mirror's three fascicles against the base text's two — in each of these the text itself divides into forms and layers. Read the Source-Text and the Apparatus together there, and do not let a single Essentials page or a single commentator's gloss stand in for the whole body of evidence.

I. The Base Text, and a Sūtra in a Single Translation

• Base text: The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, T13n0412, two fascicles in thirteen chapters, attributed at the head of the fascicle to 「唐于闐國三藏沙門實叉難陀譯」—“Śikṣānanda, śramaṇa and Tripiṭaka master of Khotan, under the Tang” 〔T13n0412 0777c10〕. The Source-Text layer runs from the title at the head of fascicle one to the title at the close of fascicle two, holding this Chinese translation graph for graph.
• There is no alternate recension of this sūtra. Topic two of the Apparatus — cross-recension collation — is therefore empty in all thirteen chapters; it says so plainly and records which recensions were searched. It is never silently dropped, and no other sūtra is put in its place.
• Sūtras of the same honored one are read alongside, and are not alternate recensions: the Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha Sūtra, T13n0411 (Xuanzang, Tang); the Daśacakra Sūtra, T13n0410 (translator unrecorded), an alternate recension of the foregoing; and the Sūtra of Divining the Requital of Good and Evil Karma, T17n0839 (doubts in the catalogues recorded without adjudication). All three enter the Apparatus under scriptural grounds and under citation-and-transmission, never under cross-recension collation.
• A comparison is a lamp turned on this sūtra, not a scale weighing two sūtras: one may say that this sūtra carries one layer more here, one layer fewer, or places a matter elsewhere; one may not say that another sūtra is the better.
• The attribution is recorded without adjudication: the Tang catalogues do not record this sūtra. The attribution at the head of the fascicle is not altered, no reconstruction is offered, and the question is carried under the collation topic of each chapter's Apparatus.

II. One Mirror, and Its Three Canon Numbers

There is a single line-by-line mirror: the Outline and Commentary on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, X21n0384, six fascicles, compiled by Lingcheng of the Qing — 「古鹽匡菴青蓮苾芻靈椉父輯」—“compiled by the bhikṣu Qinglian Lingcheng of Kuang'an in Guyan” 〔X21n0384 0653a05〕. This is the first Qing-dynasty mirror in this series; its period is marked as it stands, it is cited as the word of a Qing author, and it is never spoken of as belonging to the same layer as the masters of Tang and Song.

Three canon numbers, one book — not three commentators. The Guiding Thread to the Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, X21n0383, and the Outline of the Kṣitigarbha Sūtra, X21n0382, are the front matter of the Outline and Commentary: X21n0382 opens with 「地藏菩薩本願經科註目次」—“Table of contents of the Outline and Commentary on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva” 〔X21n0382 0621c04〕, listing beneath it the outline, the preface, and the guiding thread; and “Qinglian” is Lingcheng's own style-name, the close of the Guiding Thread being signed 「嗣興天台教觀正宗第五世」—“fifth-generation successor in the orthodox lineage of Tiantai teaching and contemplation” 〔X21n0383 0639a22〕. Three numbers side by side therefore do not constitute three differing commentaries and cannot serve as independent corroboration.

• In reader-facing text the mirror is always called the Outline and Commentary. The head of the fascicle writes the second graph differently, 「地藏菩薩本願經卷上科注卷之一」—“Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, fascicle one; Outline and Commentary, fascicle one” 〔X21n0384 0653a04〕; both forms occur in the original, verbatim citations reproduce whichever stands there, and running prose follows the table of contents.
• The mirror runs to three fascicles, the base text to two; the two are linked by chapter, never by fascicle: 「地藏菩薩本願經卷中科注卷之三」 〔X21n0384 0700b04〕 is followed at once by chapter five, and 「地藏菩薩本願經卷下科注卷之五」 〔X21n0384 0740a04〕 by chapter ten, whereas the base text's first fascicle holds chapters one through six. The canon attests both arrangements: 「地藏菩薩本願經〔二卷流通本作三卷〕」—“The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva 〔in two fascicles; the circulating edition makes it three〕” 〔J31nB271 0821a07〕.
• Two systems of dating stand together: the close of the Guiding Thread is dated 「皇清康熙二十二年」—“the twenty-second year of Kangxi of the august Qing” 〔X21n0383 0652b02〕, while two prefaces at the front are dated to the fifth year of Jōkyō in Japan and the postface to the third year of Genroku. The composition belongs to the Qing and the printing to Japan; both are recorded and neither is chosen.
• Zhixu's Rite of Repentance and Vows in Praise and Veneration of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, X74n1486, is a ritual witness: its author avows 「敬宗十輪」—“I take the Daśacakra reverently as my source” 〔X74n1486 0587a04〕, and the wording of its great hymn comes from the Daśacakra and not from this sūtra. It never stands as witness to the wording of this sūtra.
• Where the mirror cites a sūtra that exists in more than one translation, the recension it follows is fixed before the citation is made. Two instances: “the Daśacakra” draws on both T13n0411 and T13n0410; “the Golden Light” follows Dharmakṣema's T16n0663 rather than Yijing's T16n0665, and the spine of the gloss on the earth spirit comes from Zhiyi's Words and Phrases of the Golden Light Sūtra, T39n1785. The rule is not confined to the Daśacakra but holds for every sūtra with more than one translation.

III. Policy on Sanskrit

• No modern critical edition of a Sanskrit text is treated as an authority over the wording of this edition; Roman script is an aid to pronunciation and never a textual ground.
• Roman script must rest on what the ancient masters transmitted. Such transmission occurs in three places: the mirror's gloss (「梵語」／「梵名」／「此云」／「唐言」), a transliteration in a sūtra of the same honored one, and a transliteration in the sūtra itself. Where none of the three yields a form, none is supplied.
• The forms this mirror transmits are rich — persons, places, objects, and colors, fourteen in all, each anchored under topic six of its chapter's Apparatus. Among them: 「地藏之名準佛說八大菩薩曼陀羅經」—“the name Kṣitigarbha follows the Sūtra of the Maṇḍala of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas Spoken by the Buddha” 〔X21n0383 0639c23〕, 「應云乞灑」—“it should be said kṣa” 〔X21n0383 0639c24〕〔the two graphs joined as one syllable〕hara-ja, 「義翻地藏」—“rendered by sense as the store of the earth” 〔X21n0383 0639c24〕; 「梵名涅哩鋤，此翻堅牢」—“the Sanskrit name is Nielichu; here it is rendered Firm-and-Stable” 〔X21n0384 0748b05〕; 「梵語誐誐曩獻惹，此云虗空藏」—“in Sanskrit Ege'nangxianre; here it means the store of space” 〔X21n0384 0765b13〕.
• Where the ancient worthy says plainly that a name is not ascertained, that is recorded as it stands, the Chinese sound is kept, and no reconstruction is made: 「悅帝利未詳」—“Yuedili: not ascertained” 〔X21n0384 0674b03〕; of the six transliterated king-names, 「祁利失王等，未見翻譯」—“King Qilishi and the rest: no rendering has been found” 〔X21n0384 0725b02〕; and of the zhataka bird the mirror's inline note says 「恐是斑鳩之梵語，俟載考」—“perhaps the Sanskrit for a turtledove; it awaits further inquiry” 〔X21n0384 0698c14〕.
• Where the ancient masters transmitted nothing, nothing is invented — not for proper names, not for technical terms, not for numbered sets.

IV. Citation and Counting

• 「」 marks a verbatim citation: punctuation follows the base text, an inner quotation is kept as it stands, and an interlinear note is enclosed in 〔…〕. 『』 marks the translator's own modern-language phrasing and is never used for citation.
• Every citation carries a page anchor, and the anchor is the nearest preceding <lb> before the first graph of the cited phrase. The collection is always written out: the base text as 〔T13n0412 0778a19〕, the mirror as 〔X21n0384 0653b02〕.
• Wherever a statement counts occurrences, the count is of graphs, not of the lines containing them; and wherever a statement says “all,” “every,” or “throughout,” the items were enumerated before the statement was written.
• When a counted phrase is carried into reader-facing text, its qualifier is carried with it: quotation marks placed around a counted phrase change what is being counted from a sense into a string of graphs. To speak of the sense, drop the quotation marks.

V. Lists of Names Are Never Merged

Six passages of this sūtra consist of lists of names. Every one is rendered item by item — never abridged, never gathered under “and so forth” — and where the sūtra's own phrasing divides a list into forms, the reader-facing layers keep those forms apart:

Strings of magnitude (beyond thought, beyond discussion, beyond measure, beyond expression) are of another kind than names and are rendered into ordinary modern language rather than treated as proper terms.

VI. Recorded Without Adjudication

Divergences among texts, doubts recorded in the catalogues, and matters the commentator himself calls undecidable are set down side by side: not forced into agreement, not ranked, and never used to alter a single graph of the base text. Five are prominent:

1. The attribution — the Tang catalogues do not record this sūtra; the head of the fascicle is left as it stands.
2. The three names of the Uninterrupted — Utmost Uninterrupted, Great Avīci, Uninterrupted. The mirror states 「無間、阿鼻二大地獄，或合或離，自古難定」—“whether the two great hells Uninterrupted and Avīci are one or two has been hard to settle since antiquity” 〔X21n0384 0701b05〕. The ancient worthy says it is undecidable, and this edition does not decide it in his place; the reader-facing layers set the names side by side as the sūtra writes them.
3. The mirror's fascicle-division — three against the base text's two; both arrangements are attested in the canon, the linkage runs by chapter, and neither is declared original.
4. The mirror's dating — composition in the Qing, printing in Japan; both recorded.
5. The source of the five senses of the Uninterrupted — the mirror names them itself as time, form, suffering, fruit, and life; another tradition ascribes a different set to the Tattvasiddhi, and that treatise yields no occurrence of it. The source is unascertained and is recorded without adjudication.

VII. The Layers and What Each Does

Source-Text (classical Chinese, never re-translated) · Plain Reading · Exposition · Apparatus · Essentials; the last four each in Chinese and English.

• Plain Reading: a continuous modern restatement covering every graph, each section headed with its number, its name, and its locus; speech reported in the sūtra is set in 『』.
• Exposition: material for teaching the Dharma. The sūtra is the subject of its sentences, and the mirror's name belongs to the opening placement paragraph and to the closing “Transmission” section. Every point of doctrine must actually be taught — that the material stands gathered in the Apparatus is not sufficient.
• Apparatus: all nine topics are present — placement in the outline, cross-recension collation, scriptural grounds, the gloss of the passage, differing glosses, terms, simile and figure, citation and transmission, collation. Where a topic has nothing for a passage, it says so and records what was searched.
• Essentials: a reader-facing text standing on its own, setting its own headings and naming no commentator — it is not a digest of the Exposition.

The Chinese Translator — Śikṣānanda

The head of the fascicle gives the attribution verbatim: 「唐于闐國三藏沙門實叉難陀譯」—“translated by Śikṣānanda, śramaṇa and Tripiṭaka master of Khotan, under the Tang” 〔T13n0412 0777c10〕. This page confirms the translator's identity from the attribution in the base text and from what the ancient masters record, and treats no undocumented biographical figure as evidence in collation.

The line-by-line mirror glosses that attribution graph by graph at the head of its own fascicle. Of Khotan: 「正云瞿薩怛那，唐言地乳」—“properly it is called Kusatana; in the Tang tongue, Earth-Milk” 〔X21n0384 0653a10〕. Of the translator's name the mirror takes the latter half: 「難陀，唐翻學喜」—“nanda, rendered in the Tang tongue as Delight-in-Learning” 〔X21n0384 0653a23〕.

The Tang catalogues do not record this sūtra. This edition records that without adjudication: the attribution at the head of the fascicle is not altered, no reconstruction of its history is offered, and no later account of its circulation is used to fill the gap. The translator's name is written as the base text gives it, and the sūtra's provenance is set down honestly as unattested in the Tang catalogues.

Śikṣānanda's work appears elsewhere in this series in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra Entered into by the Mahāyāna, T16n0672, in seven fascicles — where three Chinese translations are read side by side. Here there is a single translation and nothing to collate against. One translator; one sūtra with three recensions to check, and one with none. A reader should know the difference.

The Mirror — Lingcheng

Lingcheng, style-named Qinglian, of the Qing. The head of the Outline and Commentary reads 「古鹽匡菴青蓮苾芻靈椉父輯」—“compiled by the bhikṣu Qinglian Lingcheng of Kuang'an in Guyan” 〔X21n0384 0653a05〕; the close of the Guiding Thread is signed 「嗣興天台教觀正宗第五世」—“fifth-generation successor in the orthodox lineage of Tiantai teaching and contemplation” 〔X21n0383 0639a22〕, the bhikṣu Qinglian Lingcheng. He declares his own lineage to be the orthodox line of Tiantai teaching and contemplation, and the instruments with which he reads the sūtra — the four siddhāntas, the three truths, the six identities, the four teachings — are accordingly the house method of Tiantai and not terms this sūtra supplies. Wherever this edition uses such an instrument, it is marked as the mirror's.

Why he wrote at all, he says himself: 「迨今尚無撰集法門，殊為闕典」—“to this day no one has compiled a treatment of this teaching; it is a signal gap among the books” 〔X21n0383 0639a05〕. From the Tang translation onward a phrase-by-phrase commentary was wanting, and it came only in the Qing. This volume is therefore the first Qing-dynasty mirror in the series; its period is marked as it stands and never merged into the layer of the masters of Tang and Song.

Two further numbers belong to the front matter of the same book. The Guiding Thread, X21n0383, glosses the title only and does not gloss the chapters phrase by phrase; the Outline of the Kṣitigarbha Sūtra, X21n0382, gives headings with no gloss, and its attribution is to be divided between two hands — 「秦谿青蓮大師定」—“settled by the great master Qinglian of Qinxi” 〔X21n0382 0622a04〕, and arranged by 「門人岳玄」—“his disciple Yuexuan” 〔X21n0382 0622a05〕. What the outline settles is Qinglian's, that is Lingcheng's; the arranging is his disciple's, and the two are named apart rather than run together as one hand.

As for the book that survives, its composition belongs to the Qing — the close of the Guiding Thread is dated 「皇清康熙二十二年」—“the twenty-second year of Kangxi of the august Qing” 〔X21n0383 0652b02〕 — while the printing belongs to Japan: two prefaces at the front are dated to the fifth year of Jōkyō, and the postface at the end to the third year of Genroku. Both are recorded and neither is chosen over the other.

The Author of the Ritual Witness — Zhixu

Zhixu of the Ming composed the Rite of Repentance and Vows in Praise and Veneration of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, X74n1486. In this edition it never stands as witness to the wording of this sūtra, and the reason is the author's own avowal: 「敬宗十輪」—“I take the Daśacakra reverently as my source” 〔X74n1486 0587a04〕; in the circumambulation he names three sūtras with 「南無大乘大集地藏十輪經」—“Homage to the Mahāyāna Mahāsaṃnipāta Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha Sūtra” 〔X74n1486 0586c02〕 first among them, and the wording of his great hymn comes from the Daśacakra. It is ranked here as a ritual witness and recorded for the practice it transmits.

The same author's Knowing the Fords of the Canon, J31nB271, serves this edition differently: it records the sūtra as 「地藏菩薩本願經〔二卷流通本作三卷〕」—“The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva 〔in two fascicles; the circulating edition makes it three〕” 〔J31nB271 0821a07〕, and so attests within the canon that both arrangements circulated, and that the three-fascicle division is not the mirror's alone.

The Translator and Annotator of This Edition — Shi Huijing

The Plain Reading, Exposition, Apparatus, Essentials, and the English mirror of this edition are translated and annotated by Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡).

The order of work is this: hold Śikṣānanda's text first; take Lingcheng's Outline and Commentary as the line-by-line mirror; read alongside it the sūtras of the same honored one — the Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha Sūtra, the Daśacakra Sūtra, and the Sūtra of Divining the Requital of Good and Evil Karma; and admit rites, gazetteers, recorded sayings, and encyclopedias under citation-and-transmission, each marked for what it is. The choice of terms, the English syntax, the layering of doctrine, and the account of the text's history are the annotator's responsibility throughout; an ancient master's words are always attributed, always dated to his period and to the recension he glosses, and the authority of the ancient masters is never used to cover the editor's own responsibility.

This bibliography lists the base text, the line-by-line mirror, and the works read alongside them on which this edition actually rests, and it distinguishes honestly between works collated graph by graph against their own canonical text and works cited but not so collated. Works cited only in passing in a single chapter are governed by the canon numbers and page anchors given under topics three and eight of that chapter's Apparatus. Authority is confined to scripture and to the ancient masters; no modern study is listed as a doctrinal ground. Titles and attributions are taken from each work's own opening and colophon in the canon, not from secondary report.

I. The Base Text

There is no alternate recension of this sūtra in the canon. Topic two of the Apparatus is therefore empty in all thirteen chapters, and says so plainly while recording what was searched. That the Tang catalogues do not record this sūtra is recorded without adjudication.

II. One Mirror, Three Canon Numbers

There is a single line-by-line mirror. The three numbers separately issued in the Zokuzōkyō come from Lingcheng's one hand: X21n0382 and X21n0383 are the front matter of X21n0384, and they do not constitute three differing commentaries.

• Why the work was written: 「迨今尚無撰集法門，殊為闕典」—“to this day no one has compiled a treatment of this teaching; it is a signal gap among the books” 〔X21n0383 0639a05〕.
• The lineage the author avows: 「嗣興天台教觀正宗第五世」—“fifth-generation successor in the orthodox lineage of Tiantai teaching and contemplation” 〔X21n0383 0639a22〕; the instruments of his reading are the house method of Tiantai, and are marked as his wherever used.
• The period is marked as Qing on the evidence of 「皇清康熙二十二年」—“the twenty-second year of Kangxi of the august Qing” 〔X21n0383 0652b02〕, while two prefaces at the front are dated to the fifth year of Jōkyō in Japan and the postface to the third year of Genroku. Composition in the Qing, printing in Japan — both recorded.
• The mirror's base text runs to three fascicles against the base text's two, so the linkage runs by chapter and never by fascicle; both arrangements are attested in the canon by 「地藏菩薩本願經〔二卷流通本作三卷〕」—“The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva 〔in two fascicles; the circulating edition makes it three〕” 〔J31nB271 0821a07〕.

III. Sūtras of the Same Honored One (read alongside · not alternate recensions)

A comparison is a lamp turned on this sūtra, not a scale weighing two sūtras.

IV. Cited by the Mirror and Collated Graph by Graph Here

Each of the works below has had its own canonical text drawn off into a line-anchored file; every citation carries that work's own canon number and page anchor, and the mirror's quotation of a work is never allowed to stand in for the work's own text. Where the mirror's quotation and the text diverge, both are recorded under topic nine of the chapter concerned.

A · Sūtras

B · Treatises

C · Commentaries and Reference Works

V. Later Transmission, Each Marked for What It Is

VI. Cited by the Mirror but Not Collated Here

The following are cited by the mirror or by works of later transmission; this edition reproduces the citation and its anchor, and neither asserts anything about the work's survival nor substitutes another text for it: the Tattvasiddhi, T32n1646 (the treatise to which the other tradition's five names are ascribed, though not one of the four forms occurs in it — the source is unascertained and is recorded without adjudication); the Essential Record of the Responses of the Three Jewels, T51n2084 (compiled by Feizhuo, Song); the Six Tablets of the Śākya Clan, B13n0079 (compiled by Yichu); the Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Du of Meixi in Dongshan, J39nB447; and the Outline and Commentary on the Repentance of the Compassionate Bodhimaṇḍa, X74n1496 (attested by Xizong, Qing).

Where the mirror cites a work that is not in hand — as with the record it points to in glossing 「魍魎」 — that it is not in hand is recorded as it stands and nothing is supplied in its place.

VII. The Bounds of Sanskrit and of Modern Materials

This edition treats no modern Sanskrit edition and no modern scholar as an authority over the wording of the text. Roman script serves only as an aid to pronunciation and must rest on what the ancient masters transmitted — in the mirror's gloss (「梵語」／「梵名」／「此云」／「唐言」), in a transliteration in a sūtra of the same honored one, or in a transliteration in the sūtra itself. Where none of the three yields a form, none is supplied.

The forms this mirror transmits number fourteen and cover persons, places, objects, and colors, each anchored under topic six of its chapter. Among them: 「地藏之名準佛說八大菩薩曼陀羅經」—“the name Kṣitigarbha follows the Sūtra of the Maṇḍala of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas Spoken by the Buddha” 〔X21n0383 0639c23〕, 「應云乞灑」—“it should be said kṣa” 〔X21n0383 0639c24〕〔the two graphs joined as one syllable〕hara-ja, 「義翻地藏」—“rendered by sense as the store of the earth” 〔X21n0383 0639c24〕; 「梵名涅哩鋤，此翻堅牢」—“the Sanskrit name is Nielichu; here it is rendered Firm-and-Stable” 〔X21n0384 0748b05〕; 「梵語誐誐曩獻惹，此云虗空藏」—“in Sanskrit Ege'nangxianre; here it means the store of space” 〔X21n0384 0765b13〕.

Where the ancient worthy says plainly that a name is not ascertained, that is recorded as it stands: 「悅帝利未詳」—“Yuedili: not ascertained” 〔X21n0384 0674b03〕; and of the six transliterated king-names, 「祁利失王等，未見翻譯」—“King Qilishi and the rest: no rendering has been found” 〔X21n0384 0725b02〕. Where the ancient masters transmitted nothing, nothing is invented — not for proper names, not for technical terms, not for numbered sets.

Tibetan and modern manuscript materials do not enter into any decision about the wording of this edition.

These indices follow the order of the base text in two fascicles and thirteen chapters. They serve for navigation only and set up no outline of their own. Clicking a unit name opens that chapter's five reading layers. Page anchors given here are to the base text, T13n0412; the line-by-line mirror and every other work cited keep their own canon numbers.

I. The Thirteen Chapters

Fascicle boundaries: fascicle one runs from 〔T13n0412 0777c08〕 to 〔T13n0412 0783c21〕; fascicle two from 「地藏菩薩本願經卷下」—“The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, fascicle two” 〔T13n0412 0783c24〕 to 〔T13n0412 0790a01〕.

II. The Outline of the Whole

III. The Hells (chapter 5 · forty-four named, and fourteen clauses naming none)

Three series, each with its own syntax; this edition keeps them apart.

Series A · 「復有地獄，名曰」, twenty-two 〔from T13n0412 0782a06〕: Four-Cornered · Flying Blades · Fire Arrows · Crushing Mountains · Piercing Spears · Iron Carts · Iron Bed · Iron Ox · Iron Garments · A Thousand Blades · Iron Donkey · Molten Copper · Embracing the Pillar · Flowing Fire · Ploughing the Tongue · Chopping the Head · Burning Feet · Devouring the Eyes · Iron Pellets · Contention · Iron Axe · Much Anger.

Series B · 「更有」, twenty-two 〔from T13n0412 0782a18〕: Wailing · Tongue-Pulling · Dung and Urine · Copper Locks · Fire Elephants · Fire Dogs · Fire Horses · Fire Oxen · Fire Mountains · Fire Stones · Fire Beds · Fire Beams · Fire Hawks · Sawing the Teeth · Flaying the Skin · Drinking Blood · Burning Hands · Burning Feet · Inverted Thorns · Fire Houses · Iron Houses · Fire Wolves.

Series C · 「或有地獄」, fourteen clauses that name no hell but show it by what is done there 〔from T13n0412 0782b06〕: the tongue taken and ploughed by an ox · the heart taken and eaten by a yakṣa · a cauldron brought to the boil and bodies cooked in it · a copper pillar heated red and embraced · many fires that run one down · nothing but cold ice from end to end · nothing but dung and urine without limit · nothing flying but iron caltrops · fire-spears massed in numbers · nothing but the striking of chest and back · nothing burned but the hands and feet · iron serpents coiling and knotting · iron dogs driving one to and fro · all alike made to ride iron mules.

Burning Feet occurs in two series and is not merged: in series A it belongs to the retinue of Avīci, in series B to the “there are besides” series, and the mirror glosses the two apart 〔X21n0384 0702c12〕〔X21n0384 0704a21〕. The two principal hells stand out from both: Utmost Uninterrupted and Great Avīci — of which the mirror states 「無間、阿鼻二大地獄，或合或離，自古難定」—“whether the two great hells Uninterrupted and Avīci are one or two has been hard to settle since antiquity” 〔X21n0384 0701b05〕. The ancient worthy says it is undecidable, and this edition does not decide it in his place.

IV. The Ghost Kings (chapter 8 · thirty-four)

Two forms, kept apart: twenty-eight rendered by sense as ghost kings, and six kept in transliteration, whom the sūtra calls king and not ghost king.

Rendered by sense, twenty-eight 〔from T13n0412 0784c04〕: Evil and Poison · Many Evils · Great Contention · White Tiger · Blood Tiger · Red Tiger · Scatterer of Calamity · Flying Body · Lightning Flash · Wolf-Fang · Thousand Eyes · Devourer of Beasts · Bearer of Stones · Master-of-Wasting · Master-of-Calamity · Master-of-Food · Master-of-Wealth · Master-of-Livestock · Master-of-Birds · Master-of-Beasts · Master-of-Sprites · Master-of-Birthing · Master-of-Life · Master-of-Sickness · Master-of-Perils · Three Eyes · Four Eyes · Five Eyes.

Kept in transliteration, six 〔from T13n0412 0784c11〕: Qilishi〔祁利失〕 · Great Qilishi〔大祁利失〕 · Qilicha〔祁利叉〕 · Great Qilicha〔大祁利叉〕 · Anazha〔阿那吒〕 · Great Anazha〔大阿那吒〕. Three times over the mirror says plainly that it does not know — 「祁利失王等，未見翻譯」—“King Qilishi and the rest: no rendering has been found” 〔X21n0384 0725b02〕 — and so the Chinese sound is kept and no reconstruction is made.

The enumeration in the base text agrees with the mirror's own count, 「已上三十四位」—“thirty-four in all above” 〔X21n0384 0725b18〕.

V. The Buddha-Names (chapter 9 · nineteen)

Ten named singly 〔from T13n0412 0786a01〕: the Tathāgata Boundless Body · the Tathāgata Jewel Nature · the Tathāgata Red Lotus Supreme · the Tathāgata Lion's Roar · Buddha Krakucchanda · 「號毘婆尸」—“named Vipaśyin” 〔T13n0412 0786a16〕 · the Tathāgata Jewel Supreme · the Tathāgata Jewel Mark · the Tathāgata Kaṣāya Banner · the Tathāgata Great Universal Mountain King.

Nine pointed to in general 〔from T13n0412 0786a28〕: Buddha Pure Moon · Buddha Mountain King · Buddha Wisdom Supreme · Buddha Pure Name King · Buddha Wisdom Accomplished · Buddha Unsurpassed · Buddha Wondrous Sound · Buddha Full Moon · Buddha Moon Face.

• The sixth carries no suffix in the base text — alone among the nineteen it is followed neither by “Tathāgata” nor by “Buddha,” and the mirror's quotation of the sūtra supplies none. This edition sets it down as the base text has it and supplies nothing.
• The two Mountain Kings are not merged — the tenth, the Tathāgata Great Universal Mountain King, and Buddha Mountain King among those pointed to in general, differ in outline-position and in gloss.
• The mirror gives a Sanskrit form or a sense-gloss for five: Red Lotus 「亦名鉢特摩」; Krakucchanda 「梵名也。此云所應斷」—“a Sanskrit name; here it means What Ought to Be Cut Off” 〔X21n0384 0736c07〕; Vipaśyin 「此云勝觀」—“here it means Supreme Contemplation”; Jewel Supreme 「梵名囉怛曩毗婆」; Mountain King 「梵名勢禮捺囉惹」—“the Sanskrit name is Shelinaruozhe” 〔X21n0384 0738b17〕. For the other fourteen every such formula yields nothing, and that is recorded honestly; no Sanskrit form is conjectured.
• Of 「除五無間罪」 the mirror glosses the verb plainly as removal: 「除者，去之也。非聽除而不銷也」—“to remove is to take away. It is not that they are let off and not dissolved” 〔X21n0384 0739a24〕.

VI. The Hair-Mark Radiances (chapter 12 · thirty-two)

The sūtra divides them into two forms of its own accord; the two are not merged into one name.

The first twenty read 「毫相光」, hair-mark lights 〔from T13n0412 0787b23〕: White · Great White · Auspicious-Sign · Great Auspicious-Sign · Jade · Great Jade · Purple · Great Purple · Blue · Great Blue · Azure · Great Azure · Red · Great Red · Green · Great Green · Gold · Great Gold · Felicitous-Cloud · Great Felicitous-Cloud.

The last twelve read 「毫光」, hair-lights 〔from T13n0412 0787b28〕: Thousand-Wheel · Great Thousand-Wheel · Jeweled-Wheel · Great Jeweled-Wheel · Sun-Wheel · Great Sun-Wheel · Moon-Wheel · Great Moon-Wheel · Palace · Great Palace · Sea-Cloud · Great Sea-Cloud.

The mirror gives Sanskrit forms for five of the colors (white, purple, blue, red, gold); for azure and green it turns instead to the dictionaries; for the rest it glosses the sense only, and where no Sanskrit form can be attested none is supplied.

VII. The Three Lists of Benefits

The two lists share only two entries: the fourth of each is not falling back from awakening, and the last of each is becoming a buddha at the end; the remaining thirty-one differ. Neither list has a parallel anywhere in the canon — they are a layer proper to this sūtra and are not attached to the numbered sets of any other.

VIII. The Sanskrit Forms the Mirror Transmits (fourteen · each anchored in its chapter's Apparatus)

Nine further forms for objects and colors occur in chapter twelve (uṣṇīṣa · Shuli · Luocha/Lecha · Niluo · Aluna · Yiniyan · Pisajia · Motou/Mili · Duoluo), each anchored under topic six of that chapter. Where the mirror says a name is not ascertained, no reconstruction is made: 「悅帝利未詳」 〔X21n0384 0674b03〕, the six transliterated king-names, and the zhataka bird.

IX. The Fixed File Paths of Each Unit

Every directory is named NN_slug, where NN is the chapter number. Each holds nine files:

• NN_slug_source.md — Source-Text;
• NN_slug_baihua_zh.md / _en.md — Plain Reading;
• NN_slug_yishu_zh.md / _en.md — Exposition;
• NN_slug_apparatus_zh.md / _en.md — Apparatus;
• NN_slug_xinyao_zh.md / _en.md — Essentials.

X. Front Matter

• Opening Essentials
• Introduction
• Reading Guide
• Conventions
• Translators
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Colophon and Citation

XI. Sources at a Glance

I. Colophon

The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva — translation and annotation

• Base text　The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, translated by Śikṣānanda, śramaṇa and Tripiṭaka master of Khotan under the Tang — T13n0412, two fascicles in thirteen chapters.
• Translation and annotation　Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡).
• Series　指月 · Han Canonical Translations · the Original Vow axis.
• Completed　Summer 2026.
• Form　Thirteen units following the sūtra's own thirteen chapters, each unit in five layers: Source-Text, Plain Reading, Exposition, Apparatus, Essentials. The Source-Text remains in classical Chinese; the other four layers each exist in Chinese and English.
• Standing　v1.0 — the five reading layers of the thirteen chapters (one hundred and four files in Chinese and English), together with the nine pieces of front matter and the contents page, were read through and ratified by Shi Huijing in the summer of 2026.
• License　CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution · NonCommercial · ShareAlike).

II. How to Cite

The full form gives the chapter number, the chapter name, the layer, and the base-text anchor:

Shi Huijing, The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva: Translation and Annotation, chapter 9, “Reciting the Names of the Buddhas” · Exposition · 指月 · Summer 2026 〔T13n0412 0785c22〕.

The short form:

Shi Huijing, The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva: Translation and Annotation, chapter 〔number〕, “〔name〕” · 〔layer〕 · 指月 · Summer 2026 〔T13n0412 PPPPCLL〕.

• Layer names: Source-Text / Plain Reading / Exposition / Apparatus / Essentials.
• Base text: the canon number for the whole work is T13n0412; a citation of an actual sentence adds the page, register, and line.
• Chapter number: the thirteen units of this edition are the sūtra's own thirteen chapters, not divisions made by this edition — unlike a one-fascicle sūtra carved into units — so a citation may simply give the chapter number.
• Fascicle number: the base text has two fascicles, the first holding chapters one through six and the second chapters seven through thirteen. The line-by-line mirror's base text runs to three fascicles (chapters 1–4 / 5–9 / 10–13) and does not agree; wherever a fascicle of the mirror is meant, say so, and do not let it be confused with a fascicle of the base text.
• The mirror and the works cited: when citing, from within the Apparatus, a passage of X21n0384, X21n0383, or X21n0382, or of T13n0411, T13n0410, T17n0839, or any other work cited there, keep that work's own canon number and page anchor and do not rewrite it as T13n0412.

III. About This Edition

This edition takes Śikṣānanda's T13n0412 as its sole base text. There is no alternate recension of this sūtra in the canon, and so there are no collation witnesses; topic two of the Apparatus is empty in all thirteen chapters, and it says so honestly rather than filling the place with another sūtra. What is read alongside are sūtras of the same honored one — Xuanzang's Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha Sūtra, T13n0411; the Daśacakra Sūtra, T13n0410; and the Sūtra of Divining the Requital of Good and Evil Karma, T17n0839 — which enter the Apparatus under scriptural grounds and under citation-and-transmission, never under cross-recension collation.

The line-by-line mirror is Lingcheng's Outline and Commentary on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, X21n0384, in six fascicles, of the Qing; the Guiding Thread, X21n0383, and the Outline of the Kṣitigarbha Sūtra, X21n0382, separately numbered in the Zokuzōkyō, are its front matter, and the three come from one hand and are not three differing commentaries. The mirror's period is marked as Qing and never merged into the layer of the masters of Tang and Song. Wherever its outline or its gloss is cited, it is marked as the mirror's; and where the mirror cites a sūtra that exists in more than one translation, the recension it follows is fixed before the citation is made.

The Apparatus takes its authority from scripture and from the ancient masters alone, and cites no modern scholarship. Roman script serves only as an aid to pronunciation and must rest on what the ancient masters transmitted; the forms this mirror transmits number fourteen, each anchored under topic six of its chapter, while names the mirror itself calls unascertained keep their Chinese sound and receive no reconstruction, and where nothing was transmitted, nothing is supplied.

Divergences among texts, doubts recorded in the catalogues, and matters the commentator himself calls undecidable are set down side by side, not forced into agreement, not ranked, and never used to alter a single graph of the base text. Five are prominent: the attribution, which the Tang catalogues do not record; whether the three names of the Uninterrupted are one hell or two; the mirror's three fascicles against the base text's two; the mirror's two systems of dating; and the unascertained source of the five senses of the Uninterrupted. Each is carried in the Apparatus of the chapter concerned, where a reader may follow the anchors back.

The five reading layers of the thirteen chapters and the nine pieces of front matter have alike been read through and ratified by the translator. What makes a ratification is the translator's own reading and doctrinal judgment; neither a complete set of files nor a clean run of the mechanical gates is allowed to stand in for it — the gates can show that nothing is false, not that nothing is missing.

This edition is not a retranslation meant to replace Śikṣānanda, nor does it put a commentary in the place of the sūtra. What it does is hold the source text, let one mirror and the works cited each stand in their own place as evidence, and build for readers now a text that can be entered layer by layer and traced back to its sources.

Shi Huijing · 指月 · The Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva · Colophon · Summer 2026