Dược sư kinh 藥師經 [Skt. Bhaiṣajyaguru Sūtra]

1 p.l., 38 folding leaves. 8vo (280 x 174 mm.), orig. wrappers with cover wrappers, old stitching. Thần Xá: An Thái, [French colonial period].


An extremely rare woodcut book, printed by nuns in a rural monastery in northern Vietnam. “An eponymous Mahāyāna sutra that recounts the qualities, vows, and pure land of the buddha Bhaiṣajyaguru — the Master of Healing, also known as the Medicine Buddha, or the Tathāgata of Lapis-Lazuli Light. The scripture was most likely written in northern India during the early centuries of the Common Era. [In this sutra,] Bhaiṣajyaguru vowed that his name, if merely uttered, would cure diseases, free prisoners, secure food and clothing for the impoverished, and produce other similar benefits. He also vowed that his body would be as resplendent as lapis lazuli itself so that it might illuminate the world” (Donald Lopez & Robert Buswell, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, “Bhaiṣajyagurusūtra”).


The Scripture of the Medicine Buddha (T. 450), translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Xuanzang (602–664) in the year 650 C.E., has been a popular text in East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. In our copy, the sutra itself is bookended by a liturgical opening (including the “Incense Praise,” praises for the Buddha, and a “sutra-opening gāthā”) and a final homage to the Medicine Buddha. According to the colophon bound at the beginning of the volume, the scripture was printed for a specific occasion by three bhikkhuni, or ordained Buddhist nuns affiliated with the An Thái temple 安泰寺, in the Thần Xá village 神舍村 of the An Lại commune 安賴社, in the Thanh Khê canton 清溪, Đại An district 大安縣, Nam Định province 南定省 of northern Vietnam.


Only the names of two of them are fully legible: they are Quảng Thuận 廣順 and Quảng Thành 廣成. They printed and disseminated this Scripture of the Medicine Buddha with a sincere mind when the statues of three of their masters were completed and placed into stupas. In their colophon, they traced the lineage of themselves and their masters to the bhikkhuni An Dương Tháp 安陽塔, dharma name Nguồn Hạnh 源幸 and pseudonym Minh Lâm 明琳.


Despite the country’s long history of Buddhist and Confucian learning, woodblock-printed books published within Vietnam itself are far fewer in number than their Chinese or Japanese counterparts. This scarcity is owed to the high cost of domestic production: according to the estimate of Kathlene Baldanza, as late as the 19th century, “the labor cost of printing in Vietnam was five to ten times higher than in China. Even ink and brushes were more expensive to produce in Vietnam.” Extensive international trade between northern Vietnam and southern China — where plentiful books were printed at very low costs — meant that “it was generally cheaper to purchase books from China than to buy them locally” (“Publishing, Book Culture, and Reading Practices in Vietnam,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 13.3 (2018), pp. 10–11).


Beyond the limited cases of official and temple-based publishing, Vietnamese publishers were pushed toward niche genres such as Sino-Vietnamese dictionaries, ritual manuals, or morality books. Regardless of genre, woodblock-printed books from Vietnam are very difficult to find today outside a few major collections, such as the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies in Hanoi and l’École française d’Extrême-Orient in Paris. We will not focus on the humid climate of the country or the massive destruction of the nation’s cultural heritage during its long war of independence in the post World War II period.


The catalogue of materials kept at the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies mentions two copies (VHv.1071, AC.116) of the Scripture of the Medicine Buddha printed in 1911, and it is unclear if those were printed with the same woodblocks as ours. We know for certain, however, that no material at the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies gives the An Thái temple as the place of publication, despite the large numbers of temples and monasteries listed. This copy, being an example of Vietnamese women’s printing in a rural monastery, is extremely rare.


Fine copy. First leaf a little frayed and the outer wrappers are quite frayed.


❧ Li Guimin 李貴民, “Zaizhi yu bianyi: Yuenan hanchuan fojiao dianji de zhuanhua 再製與變異——越南漢傳佛教典籍的轉化,” Foguang xuebao 佛光學報 7, No. 1 (2021): pp. 111–37. Yuenan Hannan wenxian ziliaoku 越南漢喃文獻資料庫, Academia Sinica.