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Willams: Seeing through Images 77
) (Taishō, vol. 20, no. 1161). This text, together with five
other visualization texts supposedly translated in the first third of the
fifth century, form a cluster known collectively as the Visualization
Sutras (guan jing, ). They all share a number of common features. The
authenticity of at least two of these have been called into question: the
Foshuo Guan Wuliangshou fo jing (Taishō, vol. 12, no. 365), and the Guan fo
sanmei hai jing () (Taishō, vol. 15, no. 643). For a discussion
of the first text see Meiji Yamada, ed., The Sūtra of Contemplation on the
Buddha of Immeasurable Life as Expounded by Śākyamuni Buddha (
), trans. and annotated by the Ryukoku University Translation
Center (Kyoto: Ryukoku University, 1984), pp. xi–xl; for a discussion of
the second, see Nobuyoshi Yamabe, “The Sūtra on the Ocean-Like Samādhi
of the Visualization of the Buddha: The Interfusion of the Chinese and Indian
Cultures in Central Asia as Reflected in a Fifth Century Apocryphal Sūtra”
(PhD diss., Yale University, 1999), pp. 115–124 and 186–215. Because of the
many similarities among these six texts, questioning the authenticity of
these two works in turn raises the issue of whether any of these texts are
based on an Indic original.
28. Jueding pini jing () (Taishō, vol. 12, no. 325, pp. 38c–39a). The
text is also known as the Upāliparipṛcchā-sūtra. It was later retranslated
in the early eighth century by Bodhiruci as part of the Chinese Ratnakuṭa
collection.
29. The text in curly brackets is supplied through reference to the
parallel texts, Beijing 8344/Yu 16 from Dunhuang and the first fascicle of
Zhisheng’s (, fl. 730 CE) Ji zhujing lichanyi () (Taishō, vol.
47, no. 1982, pp. 456c–457a) compiled in 730 CE. Beijing 8344/Yu 16, whose
text is representative of this subgenre among the Dunhuang manuscripts,
entitles this ritual “The Abridged Method of Repentance for Reverencing
the Buddhas of the Seven Registers [Taken from] The Scripture Spoken by
the Buddha on the Visualization of the Two Bodhisattvas the King of Healing and
Supreme Healer ().”
The conventions followed in the numbering of these arrays of buddhas
are: numbers in bold indicate those arrays of buddhas referred to in the
Scripture Spoken by the Buddha on the Visualization of the Two Bodhisattvas the
King of Healing and Supreme Healer; and underlined numbers refer to those
arrays of buddhas for which the individual names are to be recited and
whose names have been inscribed prior to the repentance prayer in the
lower register on the wall outside Lingyu’s cave.
30. Other versions of this ritual indicate that this list begins with Akṣobhya
Tathāgata; see, e.g., Beijing 8344/Yu 16 and Taishō, vol. 47, no. 1982, p.
456c.4.
31. I.e., the mlecchas (miliche, ).