Jīngāng jīng bēi 金剛經鎞
The Diamond Sūtra Comb by 廣伸 Guǎngshēn (述)
About the work
A two-juan late-Wànlì Vajracchedikā commentary by Guǎngshēn (sobriquet Sìkōng 似空, also 雲棲似空), principal disciple of 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng (1535–1615). The title-character bēi 鎞 (“comb” / “ear-pin”; an instrument for parting hair, by extension for unraveling something tangled) figures the work’s task: to comb through the dense Indian śāstra apparatus on the Vajracchedikā and present a unified late-Míng reading. Preserved in Xùzàngjīng X25 no. 475. notBefore set conservatively to 1610 (Yúnqī’s late period during which the project was undertaken under his direction); notAfter = 1618, the date of the prefatory matter (萬曆戊午秋日 by 虎林洪瞻祖廣揞 of Húlín = Hángzhōu). Catalog dynasty 明.
Abstract
The opening preface (No. 475-A) by 洪瞻祖 Hóng Zhānzǔ (sobriquet Guǎng’ǎn 廣揞, of Húlín) places the work in a programmatic Buddhist-Confucian parallel: as Yáo could not do without Shùn, and Wénwáng without Confucius, so Buddha Śākyamuni cannot do without Maitreya (迦文不能無彌勒) — meaning that the Vajracchedikā must be read through Maitreya’s verses (the Vasubandhu / Asaṅga vyākhyā tradition) rather than through later Chinese essayists’ free interpretations. The preface positions Yúnqī as the lóngxiàng 龍象 (dragon-elephant) of the dharma-gate who alone among late-Míng masters had grasped Maitreya’s secret transmission, and identifies Guǎngshēn as the disciple whom Yúnqī commissioned to write up the commentary on the basis of his master’s own oral notes (the Mōxiàng yījì 摸象一記, “the elephant-feeling note” — Yúnqī’s modest title for his draft). Guǎngshēn’s task was to gōu xuán zuǎn yào, què yī shān fán, jí zhū jiā zhī dà chéng, bǔ Mōxiàng zhī wèibèi 鈎玄纂要，搉一刪繁，集諸家之大成，補摸象之未備 (“hook the profound, gather the essential, weigh and prune the profuse, compendize the schools, supplement what the Mōxiàng had not completed”).
The body of the commentary, attributed Gǔháng Yúnqī dìzǐ Guǎngshēn shù 古杭雲棲弟子廣伸述 (“expounded by Guǎngshēn, disciple of Yúnqī of ancient Hángzhōu”), divides the work into a tímù (title-gloss), yìrén (translator notice), and běnwén (sūtra-text-with-commentary) — the standard three-part scholastic frame. The opening title-gloss runs to several pages and incorporates the eighteen abodes schema of Asaṅga and the twenty-seven doubts schema of Vasubandhu, harmonized through Yúnqī’s signature Pure-Land-Chán synthesis.
Translations and research
- For Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s broader project see Chün-fang Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis (Columbia UP, 1981).
- The disciple-commentary genre — by which Yúnqī’s pedagogy reached print after his death through the labors of Guǎngshēn and others — is treated in Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (Oxford UP, 2008).
Other points of interest
The text is the principal extant work of Guǎngshēn and one of the few late-Míng Vajracchedikā commentaries to take the Maitreya-Vasubandhu śāstra tradition as its working frame, in deliberate contrast to the more Chán-centric readings of 真可 Zǐbǎi (KR6c0061) and 德清 Hānshān (KR6c0062). The 1618 publication date — three years after Yúnqī’s death — situates it among the immediate posthumous Yúnqī editorial productions of the Sìfēnlǜ Bǐqiūjiè biographical apparatus.