I have now translated the main teachings from the Karma-vibhaṅga-sūtram, an early Buddhist text in Sanskritised Prakrit, which expands on a text similar to the Cūḷa-kamma-vibhaṅga-sutta of the Pāḷi Majjhima-nikāya (MN 135).
Whereas the latter has just 14 deeds and results, which are summarised, rather than spelt out, the Karma-vibhaṅga has these 14 and 66 more, and spells out clearly the type of deeds that bring the results recorded, for good or bad.
The text is taken from the edition by Sylvain Lévi in 1932, and this is the first English translation of the text to be published, as far as I am aware.
The work was done as part of the ongoing work on the Borobudur reliefs as this text, or something very similar to it, was the basis for the relief work on what is now known as the hidden base at the monument.
Although there is a great deal of expansion from a more primitive original text, the work is evidently still very much within the early Buddhist tradition, and shows no evidence of any later Mahāyāna teachings.
In this edition I have extracted the main teachings from the discourse, but not the examples that accompanied it for now, as it is apparent that none of the examples were illustrated at Borobudur, and none of the translations available in Chinese and Tibetan had any examples included.
I do hope to return to the text at a later date and also translate the examples, as that would be a real addition to our knowledge of the stories that were known during the final compilation of the text, and might be used to better date it.
For now, I hope people will take time to read the work as it is another example in a growing body of works from the neglected strata of early – but non-Pāḷi – Buddhist texts that I have translated over the years.
The work is published in both Text and Translation and in English Translation. And is made available in html, pdf, epub & mobi formats.
