Chindian Myth of Mulian Rescuing His Mother On Indic Origins of the Yulanpen Stra: Debate and Discussion

This book addresses the thorny issue regarding the authenticity of the Yulanpen Stra, the scriptural source for the Yulanpen Festival or Hungry Ghost Festival in East Asia. The stra, which features Mulian (Skr. Maudgalyyana) adventuring into the Preta realm to rescue his mother, is catalogued in the Chinese Buddhist bibliography with the Indo-Scythian Dharmaraka (Ch. Zhu Fahu, ca. 266308) given as the translator. However, in modern Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholarship, the stra is more often than not regarded as a Chinese Buddhist apocryphal scripture and the Mulian myth as an apocryphal story created by Chinese Buddhists to foster the sinicisation and transformation of Indian Buddhism mainly on the grounds that there is no extant Yulanpen Stra in Indic sources and that the stra stresses Confucian filial piety and ancestor worship. This book challenges these widely held beliefs by demonstrating that filial piety and ancestor worship are not peculiar to Confucian China but also inherent in Indic traditions and that the stra is a Chinese creative translation rather than an indigenous Chinese composition.