Zhi Qian
| Zhi Qian | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 支謙 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 支谦 | ||||||||
|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Zhī Qiān |
| Wade–Giles | Chih1 Ch'ien1 |
Zhi Qian (Chinese: 支謙; pinyin: Zhī Qiān; fl. 222–252 CE) was a Chinese Buddhist layman of Yuezhi ancestry who translated a wide range of Indian Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. He was the grandson (or according to another source, the son) of an immigrant from the country of the Great Yuezhi, an area that overlapped to at least some extent with the territory of the Kushan Empire. According to the Chinese custom of the time, he used the ethnicon "Zhi" as his surname, to indicate his foreign ancestry.
Born in north China, at an early age Zhi Qian became a disciple of Zhi Liang, who in turn had been a disciple of the famous translator of Mahāyāna scriptures, Lokakṣema (fl. c. 168–189 CE), who was likewise of Yuezhi ancestry. Toward the end of the Han Dynasty, as chaos spread throughout the north, Zhi Qian migrated with several dozens of his countrymen to the southern Wu kingdom. Settling first at Wuchang, then in Jianye after 229 CE. According to the earliest extant biography, contained in Sengyou's Chu sanzang ji ji, completed c. 518 CE, the Wu ruler, Sun Quan was so impressed with Zhi Qian's abilities that he appointed him tutor to the crown prince.
Toward the end of his life Zhi Qian became an upāsaka, taking the five lay precepts and retiring to a monastic environment in the mountains. When he died at the age of sixty (in 252 CE or shortly after), the Wu ruler of the time, Sun Liang, is said to have written a letter to the monastic community mourning his death.
Though it seems likely that Zhi Qian had already begun translating Buddhist texts while in the northern capital of Luoyang, the bulk of his translation activity was carried out in the south. His translations—of which more than two dozen are extant today—span a wide range of genres and include both Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna scriptures. Among them are a number of āgama texts (i.e., non-Mahāyāna sūtras corresponding to scriptures found in the sutta section of the Pāli canon), didactic verses (including a version of the Dharmapada and of the *Arthapada, corresponding to the Pāli Aṭṭhakavagga), a biography of the Buddha, and several Mahāyāna sūtras, of which some of the most famous are the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha (dealing with the Pure Land of Amitābha), the Shorter Perfection of Wisdom scripture (corresponding to the Sanskrit Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā), and an early version of what subsequently became the Buddhāvataṃsaka.
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