17. ESOTERIC SCRIPTURES IN THE CONTEXT OF CHINESE
BUDDHIST TRANSLATION PRACTICE
Richard D. McBride IIThere are several fundamental problems in any attempt to describe the
place of esoteric scriptures in the context of the translation of Buddhist
scriptures into Chinese in the period prior to 700 C.E. On one hand,
scriptures dealing with thaumaturgy date back to the beginning of
Buddhism in China and are not necessarily esoteric. The early and pur-
portedly Hīnayāna translator An Shigao (fl. 148), for example,
translated the Sūtra on the Brahmans’ Avoiding Death (Poluomen bisi
jing , T. 131), which tells how four brahman ṛsịs (xian-
ren ), cultivated various wholesome dharmas and the five spiritual
penetrations or supernormal powers (shentong ) and were able to
allay death; thus demonstrating to the Chinese audience of this sūtra
that physical immortality is possible (Maspero 1971, 446; 1981, 411).
On the other hand, the Mahāyāna approach to the Buddhadharma is
consistently described polemically as the esoteric tradition (mijiao
) in several seminal sūtras of the mainstream Mahāyāna tradition,
such as the Avataṃsaka sūtra, and by medieval Chinese exegetes in
their commentarial expositions (McBride 2004). Another problem is
that all Buddhist sūtras were probably edited during the early Song
period, when the first official woodblock edition of the Buddhist canon
was carved between 972 and 983 in Chengdu (and perhaps in later edi-
tions as well ). This being the case, how does one define what is esoteric
and can one systematically categorize translated sūtras as esoteric?
Those adhering to the scholarly opinions of L. Austine Waddell
and Guiseppe Tucci, who hold the teleological position that “dhāraṇī
represent the kernel from which the first Tantras developed,” define
early esoteric scriptures as dhāraṇī collections and spirit-spell sūtras
(shenzhou jing ). More recently, Michel Strickmann classi-
fied dhāraṇī sūtras as “proto-tantric” and proposed that the Dhāraṇī
Spirit-Spell Sūtra preached by the Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisat-
tvas (Qifo bapusa suoshuo da tuoluoni shenzhou jing
, T. 1332) is the first major anthology of Buddhist
spells. He suggests this sūtra is a late fourth-century or early fifth-