Ratnagotravibhāga — Translation Notes

These notes record recurring translation decisions for the Ru-Yi English translation of the Ratnagotravibhāga (“An Analysis of the Jewel Lineage”), translated into Chinese under the title Jiujing Yisheng Baoxing Lun (究竟一乘寶性論, “The Treatise on the Ultimate One Vehicle and the Jewel Nature”), Taishō T1611, translated by Ratnamati (勒那摩提) of the Northern Wei dynasty in 511 CE. They exist so that vocabulary stays consistent across every part of this large treatise, and so that terminology without precedent anywhere else on this site is recorded for any later text to inherit rather than re-coin.

The text, and why it matters

The Ratnagotravibhāga is the great systematic treatise of Indian tathāgatagarbha doctrine, traditionally attributed to Maitreya and expounded by Sāramati (or, in a rival attribution, composed by Sāramati alone), surviving complete in a Sanskrit manuscript recovered in Tibet and edited by E. H. Johnston in 1950, as well as in Tibetan and in this Chinese translation. It organizes the tathāgatagarbha teaching scattered across several earlier sūtras — the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśa Sūtra, the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, and others, all either already translated on this site or cited directly within this treatise itself — into a single argument built around the Three Jewels, the tathāgatagarbha itself, and the awakening, virtues, and activity of a buddha. This site’s Śrīmālādevī Sūtra and Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśa Sūtra reading notes both point forward to this treatise repeatedly, since it is one of the most-cited “invisible texts” on this entire site — quoted directly in the translation-notes or body text of the Awakening of Faith, the Treatise on Buddha Nature, the Laṅkāvatāra, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, and the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment — despite never itself having been translated here before now.

A structural note on how this translation handles the Chinese text

Ratnamati’s Chinese translation has an unusual internal structure worth explaining before anything else, since it directly shapes how this collection is organized. The text is divided into four fascicles. The first fascicle (卷一) opens with an original introductory chapter (教化品第一) and then gives, for each of the treatise’s remaining ten chapters in turn, only the bare root verses (偈) — with no prose explanation at all. The second through fourth fascicles (卷二至卷四) then work through the identical ten chapters a second time, from the beginning, reproducing every one of those same root verses verbatim and, this time, following each with the treatise’s own extensive prose commentary (long considered part of the canonical text itself, not a later exegete’s addition), breaking down the verse phrase by phrase and citing supporting sūtra passages at length.

This collection translates the unique introductory chapter (教化品第一) once, from the first fascicle, and then translates chapters two through eleven in their fuller form — verse and commentary together, as they appear across the second through fourth fascicles — rather than translating each verse twice over. The first fascicle’s own bare-verse preview of those same ten chapters is not translated as a separate, second pass, since doing so would only reproduce, without their explanation, verses this collection already presents in full a few pages later. Readers consulting the Chinese source directly should expect this: the verses translated in Parts 2 and onward of this collection will also be found, unglossed, earlier in the source file’s first fascicle.

Structure

The treatise’s eleven chapters are: 教化品 (Introduction), 佛寶品 (The Jewel of Buddha), 法寶品 (The Jewel of Dharma), 僧寶品 (The Jewel of Saṅgha), 一切眾生有如來藏品 (All Beings Have the Tathāgatagarbha — by far the longest chapter, built around nine similes), 無量煩惱所纏品 (Wrapped in Immeasurable Afflictions), 為何義說品 (For What Purpose This Was Taught), 身轉清淨成菩提品 (The Transformation of the Body Into Purified Awakening), 如來功德品 (The Tathāgata’s Own Virtues), 自然不休息佛業品 (The Buddha’s Spontaneous, Unceasing Activity), and 挍量信功德品 (Comparing the Merit of Faith in This Teaching). This collection’s exact page-by-page division is recorded in the index page, and reflects the uneven length of these eleven chapters — the tathāgatagarbha chapter alone runs longer than several entire sūtras already translated on this site.

Reading-note sourcing

Unlike a sūtra requiring an external commentator, this treatise’s own prose sections already function as commentary on its own root verses — a structure this site’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā pages already follow, pairing Nāgārjuna’s verses with Piṅgala’s ancient commentary as one continuous translated text rather than treating the commentary as a separate “reading note.” This collection follows the identical convention: verse and prose commentary are both translated together as the primary text. Reading notes on each page are reserved for cross-references to this site’s already-translated tathāgatagarbha and Madhyamaka corpus, and for structural or doctrinal observations of Ru-Yi Meditation Center’s own — since no external premodern commentary on this specific treatise was located for this project.

Core terminology

Structure — final part count

The treatise’s eleven chapters are divided across 33 parts, following the treatise’s own ten-point outline for its longest chapter (essence, cause, fruit, function, correspondence, manifestation, difference across time, pervading every place, immutability, non-differentiation) and the treatise’s own nine similes for its sixth chapter.

This project is complete as of 2026-09-03.