2 - Etymologies of Yulan, Pen and Yulanpen

Summary

Maudgalyāyana features prominently both as a filial son and as a devout monk in the Yulanpen Sūtra. This Sūtra bears the compound word yulanpen in its title. The headword pen is a common noun in Chinese, meaning ‘basin’, ‘vessel’ or ‘bowl’, whereas its disyllabic dependent or modifier yulan does not make any sense in and of itself except understood as a transliteration of an Indic word that relates to the offering ritual performed on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, but it is not clear as to what is exactly meant by yulan in its Indic origin because of lack of the original text(s) of the Sūtra for reference.

Etymological Interpretations by Monk Scholars from Tang-Song China

Around the mid-seventh century, the Tang dynasty (618–907) monk scholar Xuanying (fl. 645) provided a detailed explanation of the word yulanpen in the Sounds and Meanings of All Scriptures in the Buddhist Canon (Yiqie jing yinyi, C056n1163_013):

This word [ yulanpen] is misleading. Its correct form is wulanpona, meaning ‘hanging upside down’ (daoxuan). As is the custom in the Western Country (Xiguo [i.e. India]), laypeople prepare abundant offerings and donate them to the Buddhist monks on the Day of the Samṃgha's Pravāranṇa in order for their deceased ancestors to be rescued from being suspended upside down. As a non-Buddhist book there says, ‘If a deceased ancestor committed sins and if he has no descendants so that no one offers sacrifices to gods on his behalf or pleads with gods to save him, then he shall suffer the agony of being hung upside down in the realm of ghosts.’ Although Buddhists there also follow the custom by performing the offering ritual, their purpose is to teach [laypeople] to sow the merits deep in the field of the Triple Jewel. The traditional interpretation of yulanpen as ‘a vessel for the storage of food’ (zhushi zhi qi) is thus incorrect.

Clearly, Monk Xuanying considers yulanpen or wulanpona not a native Chinese word but a transliteration of an Indic word or phrase, meaning ‘hanging upside down’.