《念身經》略考

A Textual Analysis of the Kāyagatāsati Sutta

本文旨在初步澄清kāyagatā sati（念身）一詞的指涉。南傳上座部通常將kāyagatā sati解釋為「對於身體的念」，kāyagatā sati被等同於四念處中的第一念處──觀身。透過佛典口傳歷史的考察，本文對《念身經》的巴利語本（Kāyagatāsati Sutta）及漢譯本與其他早期佛經作比對研究，探討該經可能如何形成與演變，嘗試局部重建現存的巴、漢傳本的共同起源──《念身經》祖本。此祖本大量取材自另外三部較早期而結構完整的經，從此祖本的內容可知，kāyagatā sati原來非僅指「對於身體的念」，而是具有更廣泛的涵義。

This essay aims at preliminary clarification of what is referred to by the term kāyagatā sati (念身 in Chinese) , which is usually rendered as mindfulness of the body and is equated to the first of the four Satipaṭṭhānas in the Theravada tradition. Taking into account the oral tradition of Buddhist texts, an investigation into the Pali and Chinese versions of the Kāyagatāsati Sutta and other early texts leads to the suggestion about how the Kāyagatāsati Sutta may have evolved from three other texts which are internally much more coherent, and proposes a partial reconstruction of an antecedent version of the Kāyagatāsati Sutta from which the Pali and Chinese versions derived. According to this antecedent version, kāyagatā sati did not refer to mindfulness of the physical body only, but it implied much more than that.