劫

Readings

Pinyin: jié

Wade-Giles: chieh

Hangul: 겁

Korean MC: geop

Korean MR: kŏp

Katakana: コウ

Hepburn: kō

kiếp

kalpa

• An eon, a world-period. An abbreviation of the transliteration 劫波 for Sanskrit kalpa and Pāli kappa (Tib. bskal pa) [Note: Kalpa is now listed in English language dictionaries]. The longest period of time in the Indian cosmology. An age—the period of time between the creation and recreation of a world or universe. An unimaginably long unit of time, therefore also called a "great time-node" 大時節. Defined in Indian cosmology as a day of Brahmā or 1,000 yugas, a period of four hundred and thirty-two million years of mortals, measuring the duration of the world; (a month of Brahmā is supposed to contain thirty such kalpas; according to the Mahābhārata twelve months of Brahmā constitute his year, and one hundred such years his lifetime; fifty years of Brahmā are supposed to have elapsed. (Skt. muṣita, caura). Also written with the character 刧 and transliterated as 劫簸 and 劫跛.

  Kalpas are distinguished according to their general characteristics and their length. For example, the four kalpas of formation, existence, destruction, and nonexistence, as a complete period are called mahākalpa 大劫. Each great kalpa is subdivided into four incalculable kalpas asaṃkhyeya-kalpas 阿僧祇劫: (1) kalpa of destruction (Skt. saṃvarta-kalpa; Pāli samvaṭṭa-kappa); (2) kalpa of utter annihilation, or continuation of chaos kalpa (Skt. saṃvarta-siddha; saṃvarta-sthāyī; samvaṭṭa-ṭṭhāyī); (3) kalpa of formation 成劫 (Skt. vivarta-kalpa; Pāli vivaṭṭa-kappa) (4) kalpa of abiding of the formed world 住劫 (Skt. vivartasiddha, vivartasthāyī-kalpa; Pāli vivaṭṭa-ṭṭhāyī); or they may be taken in the order 成住壤空. Each of the four kalpas is subdivided into twenty antara-kalpas, 小劫 or small kalpas, so that a mahākalpa consists of eighty small kalpas. Each small kalpa is divided into a period of 増 increase and 減 decrease; the increase period is ruled over by the four cakravartīs in succession, i.e. the four ages of iron, copper, silver, gold, during which the length of human life increases by one year every century to 84,000 years, and the length of the human body to 8,400 feet. Then comes the kalpa of decrease divided into periods of the three woes, pestilence, war, famine, during which the length of human life is gradually reduced to ten years and the human body to 1 foot in height. There are other distinctions of the kalpas.

  A small kalpa is represented as 16,800,000 years, a kalpa as 336,000,000 years, and a mahākalpa as 1,334,000,000 years. There are many ways of illustrating the length of a kalpa:

  1. pass a soft cloth over a solid rock 40 li in size once in a hundred years, when finally the rock has been thus worn away a kalpa will not yet have passed 磐石劫 (Skt. parvatôpama-kalpa);
  2. or a city of 40 li, filled with mustard seeds, one being removed every century till all have gone, a kalpa will not yet have passed 芥子劫 (Skt. sarṣapôpama-kalpa) .
  3. The period required for one to take away all the poppy seeds in a ten-mile square city, if one took away one seed every three years.
  4. The period required for a celestial woman to wear away a ten-mile-cubic stone if she touched it with her garments once every three years.

  In terms of qualitative characteristics, kalpas are also distinguished into the two kinds of (1) śūnya kalpas 空劫 during which buddhas do not appear and (2) the aśūnya 不空劫 kalpas during which buddhas appear to save sentient beings. The kalpa in which one Buddha appears is known as śara. The kalpa in which two buddhas appear is known as manda. That kalpa in which three buddhas are born is known as vara and the one in which four are born is known as śaramanda. Buddha-kalpa is that in which five buddhas are born. It is said that in the present kalpa, known as the Good Kalpa (賢劫, 善劫) there are 1,000 buddhas.

  [resp. Charles Muller; source(s): JEBD, Soothill, Hirakawa, YBh-Ind, Yokoi, Iwanami]
• A year 年; to pass through a year. [resp. Charles Muller; source(s): Nakamura]
• Robber, gangster, brigand 盜賊 (Skt. stena). 〔金七十論三類注〕 [resp. Charles Muller; source(s): Nakamura]
• To threaten, to plunder, to steal, to deprive, snatch. To openly rob others' properties. 〔大智度論〕[resp. Charles Muller; source(s): Nakamura]

Dictionary References:

Bukkyō jiten (Ui), 299

Bulgyo sajeon, 26a

Zengaku daijiten (Komazawa U.), 302d

Iwanami bukkyō jiten, 245

A Glossary of Zen Terms (Inagaki), 212

Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary (Daitō shuppansha), 175b/194

Japanese-English Zen Buddhist Dictionary (Yokoi), 399

Zengo jiten (Iriya and Koga), 6-P10, 13-P347, 19-P213

Bukkyōgo daijiten (Nakamura), 392b

Fo Guang Dictionary, 2811

Ding Fubao

Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary (Hirakawa), 0202

Bukkyō daijiten (Mochizuki), (v.1-6)1018c

Bukkyō daijiten (Oda), 468-2

Sanskrit-Tibetan Index for the Yogâcārabhūmi-śāstra (Yokoyama and Hirosawa)

Lokakṣema's Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (Karashima), 255

Copyright © 2010 -- Charles Muller

generated: 2014-02-07