Szútrák a hosszú élethez Amoghavajra fordításában

In the 20th volume of the Taishō Canon (大正新脩大蔵経), there are fivetexts that were all supposedly translated by Amoghavajra 不空 in the 8thcentury, and share the same subject: longevity. One of them is the FugenEnmei scripture 普賢延命経. In order to better understand its content, I willexamine the other four scriptures. First, I discuss their arrival to China andJapan, then I present their protagonists, key elements, and last I give a shortintroduction of the mantras (or dhāraṇīs) found in the texts.Although they are assembled in the Taishō Canon, their history is fullof questions and ambiguities. First of all, there is the question of their title,since only two of the four texts seem to be originally from the continent. Thetranslator is given in two of the texts; however, the Chinese and JapaneseBuddhist catalogues and canons, from time to time, seem to differ in theirattribution. The subjugation story of Gōzanze 降三世 and Daijizaiten 大自在天 creates another problem, for their scene is not to be found in the 8thcentury translations of the Kongōchō kyō 金剛頂経, only in the 10th centuryversion of Dānapāla. This raises the question why the supposed translator,Amoghavajra, or his master Vajrabodhi, did not include this scene in theirversion of the former scripture, which is one of the chief texts in the esoterictradition.