Apocrypha are priced in single scrolls

Claim (verbatim)

Apocrypha are priced in single scrolls. The Kaiyuan shijiao lu's judgments of spuriousness and the economics of the lay merit market are the same fact seen twice: a genuine translation inherits its length from an Indic original, but an indigenously composed scripture is written INTO the merit economy, where the natural unit of commissioning, pricing, and dedication is the single juan — one scroll, one copying fee, one colophon. Chinese-composed scriptures should therefore be built to the one-scroll module: catalogue-flagged apocrypha measurably shorter than accepted translations of the same period, not because forgers were lazy but because their genre was a product format.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Take all texts classed as spurious or doubtful in the Kaiyuan shijiao lu (T 2154) with recorded juan counts, and all accepted translations catalogued in the same fascicles. Primary clause (the verdict follows it): the share of one-juan texts among the spurious/doubtful class exceeds the share among accepted translations by at least 25 percentage points. Secondary: the median juan count of the spurious class is 1; and among Dunhuang copies of catalogue-flagged apocrypha, at least 70 percent are complete single-scroll units rather than stray fascicles of multi-juan works.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: CBETA — the Kaiyuan shijiao lu (T 2154) with its per-title juan counts and spuriousness classes, plus the Taisho vol. 85 apocrypha section; IDP catalogued Dunhuang copies for the secondary clause. Resolvable against CBETA without new ingestion.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

That indigenous Chinese scriptures classed as spurious/doubtful in the catalogue tradition tend to be short single-fascicle texts is a recognized qualitative feature -- the standard examples (the Jin'gang sanmei jing, the Zhancha jing) are one-juan apocrypha, and Tokuno's foundational study of how the bibliographical catalogues evaluated indigenous scriptures maps exactly this classificatory terrain. Not located: the item's specific measured comparison -- a >=25-percentage-point excess of one-juan texts among the Kaiyuan shijiao lu's spurious/doubtful class over accepted translations of the same fascicles, with median spurious juan = 1 and >=70% of Dunhuang apocrypha copies complete single scrolls -- nor the 'merit-economy product format' mechanism that would explain it. Established datum (apocrypha run short), unrun operationalization.

• Kyoko Tokuno, 'The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues', in R. E. Buswell Jr. (ed.), Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (University of Hawaii Press, 1990), pp. 31-74 — The standard study of how the catalogues (incl. the Kaiyuan lu) classed apocrypha; the shortness of indigenous scriptures is part of the recognized picture
• CBETA Kaiyuan shijiao lu (T 2154) with per-title juan counts and spuriousness classes; Taisho vol. 85 apocrypha section — The named kill dataset for the one-juan-share comparison; resolvable against CBETA

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.