Biography

Details of Lokakṣema's life come to us via a short biography by Sengyou (僧祐; pinyin: Sēngyòu; 445–518 AD) and his text 「Collected Records concerning the Tripitaka」 (出三藏記集 Chu sanzang jìjí, T2145).

The name 婁迦讖 is usually rendered in Sanskrit as Lokakṣema, though this is disputed by some scholars, and variants such as Lokakṣama have been proposed. In particular the character 讖 can be read as chen or chan. Sengyou refers to him as Zhīchèn (支讖). The Zhī (支) prefix added to his Chinese name suggests that Lokaksema was of Yuezhi (月支) ethnicity. He is traditionally said to have been a Kushan, though the Chinese term Yuezhi covered a broad area of what is now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Lokaksema was born in Gandhara, a center of Greco-Buddhist art, at a time when Buddhism was actively sponsored by the king, Kanishka the Great, who convened the Fourth Buddhist council. The proceedings of this council actually oversaw the formal split of Nikaya and Mahayana Buddhism. It would seem that Kanishka was not ill-disposed towards Mahayana Buddhism, opening the way for missionary activities in China by monks such as Lokakṣema.

Lokaksema arrived in the Han capital Luoyang toward the end of the reign of Emperor Huan of Han (r.147-168), and between 178-189 CE translated a number of Mahayāna Buddhist texts into Chinese. The editors of the Taishō Tripiṭaka attribute twelve texts to Lokakṣema. These attributions have been studied in detail by Erik Zürcher, Paul Harrison and Jan Nattier, and some have been called into question.

Zürcher considers it reasonably certain that Lokakṣema translated the following:

• T224. 道行般若經. A translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.

• T280. 佛說兜沙經. The Scripture on the Tusita Heaven, part of the proto-Avatamsaka Sutra

• T313. 阿閦佛國經. Akṣohhya-vyūha

• T350. 說遺日摩尼寶經. Kaśyapaparivrata

• T418. 般舟三昧經. Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra

• T458. 文殊師利問菩薩署經. Mañjuśrī's Inquiry Concerning the Bodhisattva Career.

• T626. 阿闍世王經. Ajātaśatru Kaukṛtya Vinodana Sūtra

• T807. 佛說內藏百寶經. The Hundred Jewels of the Inner Treasury.

Harrison is doubtful about T626, and considers that T418 is the product of revision and does not date from Lokakṣema's time. Conversely, Harrison considers that T624 伅真陀羅所問如來三昧經 Druma-kinnara-rāja-paripṛcchā-sūtra ought to be considered genuine.

A characteristic of Lokakṣema's translation style was the extensive transliteration of Indic terms and his retention of India stylistic features such as long sentences. He typically rendered Indic verse as Chinese prose, making no attempt to capture the meter. Based on evidence from Chinese catalogues of texts, Nattier suggests that T224 and T418 are representative of Lokakṣema and might stand as "core texts", i.e. as representative of his style of translating, although both show some signs of later editing. A second tier of texts—T280, T350, T458, and T807—all strongly resemble Lokakṣema's core texts, though with occasional anomalies. T624 and T626 form a third tier with more deviations from the distinctive style of Lokskṣema. If T313 was indeed a translation by Lokakṣema, it has been extensively revised by an unknown editor, though the prose sections are closer to his style than the verse.

Several translations attributed to Lokakṣema have been lost:

• Shoulengyan jing (a version of the Suramgama-samādhi-siitra, already lost in Sengyou's time)

• Guangming sanmei jing "Sutra on the Samadhi of Luminosity"

• Hu banniehuan jing "The Hu Parinirvāṇa Sutra"

• Bo benjing ("The Original *Puṣya Sutra")

Lokaksema's translation activities, as well as those of the Parthians An Shigao and An Xuan slightly earlier, or his fellow Yuezhi Dharmarakṣa (around 286 CE) illustrate the key role Central Asians had in propagating Buddhism to the countries of East Asia.

With the decline and fall of the Han, the empire fell into chaos and Lokakṣema disappears from the historical record so that we do not know the date of his death.

思想

支讖譯籍幾乎全屬大乘，為大乘典籍在漢土翻譯的開端。支讖的譯籍反映了龍樹以前印度大乘經典流行實況，他譯的《寶積經》、《阿閦佛國經》、《般舟三昧經》都是構成大部《寶積》的基層部分。《道行經》是大部《般若》的骨幹。《兜沙經》又屬于大部《華嚴》的序品。呂澂認為可見印度的大乘經典開始就是向境、行、果各方面平均發展的。支讖譯出的《阿闍世王經》(異譯本題名《文殊普超三昧經》，道安經錄說它出于《長阿含》不確)、《問署經》(也作《文殊問菩薩署經》)、《內藏百寶經》、《首楞嚴三昧經》，都以文殊為中心，發揮「文殊般若」的法界平等思想。這些方面暗示出文殊對于大乘傳播的重要關係。

對于以後義學發生影響最大的，莫過于《道行經》。大乘學說本來以般若的緣起性空思想為基礎，由于這部經的譯出便有了趨入大乘的途徑。又因當時思想界有道家的「無名為天地始」等一類說法，恰好作了接受般若理論的準備，也就是通過這類思想使般若理論更快地傳播開來。因它譯文過于簡略，好多義理難得徹底了解，引起了朱士行的西行求法，與《道行》同源異流的《大品般若》也陸續有各種異本的譯傳。

翻譯作品

歷代經錄對支讖譯笈的記載很不一致，《出三藏記集》載為13部27卷。《歷代三寶記》增為21部63卷，《開元釋教錄》認定為23部64卷。呂澂《新編漢文大藏經目錄》認為支讖譯笈現存8種19卷。