Sūtra of the Lotus

See also: Lotus

The Sūtra of the Lotus or Sūtra on the White Lotus of Dharma Sublime is one will sūtra very popular in the Bouddhisme mahāyāna. It is the base of the Buddhist schools Tiantai and Nichiren.

The term is transcribed Saddharmapundarīka-sūtra in Sanskrit; Miàofǎ Liánhuā Jīng (妙法蓮華經) in Chinese, Myobeop Yeonhwa Kyong in Korean and Myōhō Renge Kyō in Japanese. The Chinese title is generally shortened in Fǎhuā Jī (法華經), or Hokkekyō in Japanese.

The text appears for the first time several centuries after the death of the Bouddha. According to the translator Burton Watson, Sūtra of the Lotus could in the beginning be written in a dialect Prâkrit before being later translated into Sanskrit to grant a greater respectability to him.

Sūtra of the Lotus was initially translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksa in the neighborhoods of 290 before being retranslated in seven booklets by Kumārajīva into 406. In the middle of the XIXe century, Eugene Burnouf made a translation in French of it, starting from the version sanskrite, it was the first to translate it in a Western language. This will sûtra was translated into English by Leon Hurvitz, Burton Watson, and other translators.

Certain sources consider that Sūtra of the Lotus has a prolog and an epilog and that those are respectively Sūtra with the infinite directions ( Muryogui Kyō in Japanese) and Sūtra of the meditation on the dignity of that which seeks the illumination ( Fugen Kyō in Japanese).

Random links: