Jīngāng shū kēshì 金剛疏科釋
Outline-and-Glosses to the Diamond Sūtra Commentary by 徐行善 Xú Xíngshàn (科)
About the work
A one-juan Yuán-dynasty editorial reformatting of the Tiāntái-school commentary on the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra attributed to 智顗 Zhìyǐ (the Jīngāng bānruò shū 金剛般若疏, KR6c0037), produced by the Sìmíng 四明 layman Xú Xíngshàn. Rather than a wholly new commentary, the work is a jiāng shū rù jīng 將疏入經 (“inserting the commentary into the sūtra”) edition: Xú breaks the received Zhìyǐ commentary into lemmata and interleaves them under the corresponding passages of 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s Vajracchedikā translation, supplying a fresh structural outline (kē 科) and a few short glosses where the master’s text was felt to be obscure or had suffered transmission damage. Preserved in Xùzàngjīng X24 no. 466. notBefore / notAfter = 1294 (the colophon date Zhìyuán jiǎwǔ 至元甲午, last year of Khubilai’s Zhìyuán era).
Abstract
Two paratexts open the volume. No. 466-A is a covering letter from 可明 Kěmíng, a Tiāntái master attached to the Nánhú 南湖 community at Níngbō, addressed to Xú as 大居士 (lay donor): Kěmíng surveys the textual situation of the Vajracchedikā — six translations, three commentarial traditions — and praises Zhìyǐ’s Jīngāng bānruò shū as the deepest reading, “more profound than the various other school’s writings, however well-meaning their pious circulation.” He notes that the master’s commentary had been doubted as spurious (“復還反有以為偽者”) in the Five Dynasties era, but that Zhā’ān 樝菴 (the late-Northern-Sòng Tiāntái scholar 從義 Cóngyì, 1042–1091) had vindicated its authenticity, after which it was finally received. An earlier set of woodblocks held at Nánhú had been destroyed in a city fire (“毒皷甞建講比以城居失火燎其板”), so a fresh edition was required. No. 466-B, Xú’s own colophon, then sets out his motive: 將疏入經以便看閱 — interleaving the commentary into the sūtra to facilitate reading — produced “as a virtuous-merit publication for the wide benefit of the four classes” (廣利四眾) and pious circulation. Dated 至元甲午年, 四明 徐行善 謹誌 = “Reverently inscribed by Xú Xíngshàn of Sìmíng, in the jiǎwǔ year of the Zhìyuán era” — 1294 CE. The body of the work follows the standard kē + interlinear-shù layout: outline headings in elevated position, sūtra text inset, Zhìyǐ commentary in smaller block under each passage. The work is one of two surviving by Xú; he also produced an analogous Fǎhuá jīng kēzhù 法華經科註 in 8 juan (KR6d0072).
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The covering letter’s mention of Zhā’ān Cóngyì 樝菴從義 (1042–1091) defending the authenticity of Zhìyǐ’s Jīngāng bānruò shū against Five-Dynasties / early-Sòng skepticism is a useful historiographical datum: modern scholarship continues to debate whether the Tiāntái Vajracchedikā commentary is authentically by Zhìyǐ or a later pseudepigraph. By 1294 the Tiāntái school treated the issue as settled in favor of authenticity, and Xú’s reformatted edition was the practical vehicle of that consensus.