Fanwang jing. (J. Bonmōkyō; K Pǔmmang kyǒng 梵網經). In Chinese, "Brahmā's Net Sūtra," the scripture is often cited by its reconstructed, but unattested, Sanskrit title, the *Brahmajālasūtra. This scripture is reputed to have been translated by KumārajIva in 406, but it is most likely an indigenous Chinese scripture (see apocrypha) composed during the middle of the fifth century. The Fanwang jing, in its current recension in two rolls, purports to be the tenth chapter of a much longer, 120-roll scripture tided the Bodhisattvaśīlasūtra, which is otherwise unknown. The first roll provides a description of the buddha Vairocana and the ten different stages of the bodhisattva path. Because subsequent Chinese indigenous scriptures that were closely related to the Fanwang jing, such as the Pusa yinluo penye jing, provided more systematic presentations of these soteriological models, this first roll was not widely studied and was typically omitted in commentaries on the scripture. Far more important to the tradition is the second roll, which is primarily concerned with the "bodhisattva precepts" (bodhisattvaśīla); this roll has often circulated independently as Pusajie jing (*Bodhisattvaśīlasūtra) "The Book of the Bodhisattva Precepts"). This roll provides a list of ten major and forty-eight minor Mahāyāna precepts that come to be known as the "Fanwang Precepts," which became a popular alternative to the 250 monastic precepts of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya (also known as the Sifen Lü). Unlike the majority of rules found in other non-Mahāyāna vinaya codes, the bodhisattva precepts are directed not only at ordained monks and nuns, but also may be taken by laymen and laywomen. The Fanwang jing correlates the precepts with Confucian virtues such as filial piety and obedience, as well as with one's buddha-nature (foxing). Numerous commentaries on this text were composed, and those written by Fazang, Mingkuang (fl. 800 CE), and the Korean monk T'aehyǒn (d.u.) were most influential. As the primary scriptural source in East Asia for the bodhisattva precepts, the Fanwang jing was tremendously influential in subsequent developments in Buddhist morality and institutions throughout the region. In Japan, for example, the Tendaishū monk Saichō (767-822) disparaged the prātimokṣa precepts of the traditional vinaya as being the precepts of hInayāna adherents, and rejected them in favor of having all monastics take instead the Mahāyāna precepts of the Fanwang jing. In Korea, all monastics and laypeople accept the bodhisattva precepts deriving from the Fanwang jing, but for monks and nuns these are still seen as complementary to their main monastic vows. (Source: "Fanwang jing." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 295. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
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Text Metadata
| Text exists in | ~ Tibetan |
|---|---|
| Canonical Genre | ~ Kangyur · Sūtra · mdo sde · Sūtranta |
