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般若波羅蜜多心經幽贊

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Text ID
KR6c0137
Date
659–682
Dynasty
唐

Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng yōuzàn 般若波羅蜜多心經幽贊

Profound Eulogy on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 窺基 (撰)

About the work

The principal Yogācāra-school commentary on the Heart Sūtra (Xuánzàng’s short-recension version, T251 = KR6c0128), composed by Kuíjī 窺基 (632–682), founding systematiser of the Chinese Fǎxiàng / Cí’ēn 法相／慈恩 school. Two fascicles. Title-and-genre marker: yōuzàn 幽贊 = “profound eulogy / discursive praise” — Kuíjī’s preferred designation for his line-by-line interpretive commentaries (compare his Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng yōuzàn 妙法蓮華經幽贊 on the Lotus Sūtra). The Taishō head-note 「[cf. No. 251]」 explicitly cross-references the Xuánzàng Heart Sūtra as the parent text — this commentary is anchored in T251’s fixed eighteen-line short Chinese text. The signature reads simply 「大乘　基撰」 — Mahāyāna [Master] Jī, composed.

Prefaces

The commentary opens with Kuíjī’s own discursive preface (“贊曰”) setting out his polemical purpose: to refute the deviations of his contemporaries who, “blinded by accumulated habits and heretical teachings”, have come to read the kong 空 (emptiness) and yǒu 有 (existence) sūtras as if their words could be taken at face value, and so generate alternating attractions to either side. He invokes the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra 解深密經 framework of the Three Turnings of the Dharma Wheel — the Four Noble Truths for the Hearers, the “hidden-meaning wheel” (隱密輪) of universal essencelessness for early Mahāyāna, and the “manifest wheel” (顯了輪) of the Yogācāra synthesis as final and definitive — and aligns the Heart Sūtra explicitly with the third turning, against any “Madhyamaka” reading. He then quotes the well-known Yogācāra middle-way verse from Maitreya’s Madhyāntavibhāga (“虛妄分別有，於此二都無，此中唯有空，於彼亦有此”) and several other doctrinal verses by Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga, constructing a hermeneutic frame in which the Heart Sūtra’s formulas of negation are to be read as Yogācāra teachings on the absence of parikalpita (遍計所執) self-nature, not as a Madhyamaka denial of all dharma-existence.

Abstract

The Yōuzàn is the foundational and most influential Yogācāra reading of the Heart Sūtra. Doctrinally it interprets each phrase of the Xuánzàng text through the trisvabhāva (三性) framework of Yogācāra: “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” (色即是空，空即是色) becomes a teaching on the absence of parikalpita nature in the paratantra (依他起) flow of dependent arising; “no eye, ear, nose, tongue…” enumerates the eighteen dhātus as empty of imputed self-nature but real as paratantra; the dhāraṇī itself is interpreted as the rapid mnemonic-power-bestowing dimension supplementing the doctrinal teaching of the sūtra body.

Kuíjī’s polemical target is the rising influence of Mādhyamika and Tiāntái-style readings of the Prajñāpāramitā literature in mid-Tang Cháng’ān; his commentary establishes a sharp Yogācāra alternative which becomes canonical in the Cí’ēn school and is transmitted via Wǒnch’ǔk 圓測 to Korea and via the Hossō pilgrimages to Japan, where it remains a foundational text of the Hossō school’s curriculum. The Japanese influence is visible in the existing CBETA witness, which preserves a Kamakura-period (Jōō 3 = 1224 CE) Japanese block-print colophon expressing dedication of the carving’s merit to the deceased priviligier of the press, the Gondaisōzu 權大僧都 (provisional senior prelate) Shigenobu 重信.

Composition date: no internal date is given. The work must postdate Kuíjī’s ordination (~648–649) and his entry into Xuánzàng’s translation team after Xuánzàng’s return from India; doctrinally it presupposes the completion of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra (Xuánzàng’s translation T676 was completed in 647) and reflects the mature Yogācāra synthesis that Kuíjī systematised in the years after Xuánzàng’s death in 664. The notBefore 659 / notAfter 682 bracket here is conservative — the work belongs to Kuíjī’s mature period, almost certainly the 670s.

The text was preserved in the Japanese Fǎxiàng / Hossō tradition through the medieval period and re-introduced into the modern Chinese canons via Japanese editions; in the Taishō it carries collations against the 大正 base and the 甲 (jiǎ) edition (a Japanese manuscript witness).

Translations and research

  • John P. Keenan, The Heart Sutra: A Yogācāra Commentary by Kuiji — full English translation of the Yōuzàn, in the BDK English Tripiṭaka series (forthcoming / partial editions in journals).
  • Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002) — the most thorough English-language treatment of Kuíjī’s Yogācāra system; includes discussion of the Heart Sūtra Yōuzàn’s doctrinal positioning.
  • Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, “Kichi Hannya shingyō yūsan no kenkyū” 基『般若心経幽賛』の研究 (in his Tonkō bukkyō no kenkyū, 1990) and related articles — Japanese philological treatment.
  • Stanley Weinstein, “The Concept of Reference (āśraya) in the Yōgācārabhūmi-śāstra,” in his various essays — relevant background on the doctrinal categories Kuíjī applies to the Heart Sūtra.
  • Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠, Chūgoku Yuishiki shisō no kenkyū 中国唯識思想の研究 (Tōkyō: Daizō shuppan, 2012) — comprehensive modern Japanese study of Chinese Yogācāra; contextualises the Yōuzàn.
  • Charles Muller (et al.), Wonhyo’s Philosophy of Mind and related work on Wǒnch’ǔk — Korean reception of Kuíjī’s Yogācāra Heart Sūtra commentary.

Other points of interest

The Kamakura-period Japanese print colophon at the end of fascicle 2 (“貞應三年（甲申）正月十五日為助先師真歸上人餘業敬彫摸畢…願主性如”) is itself a small monument of Japanese Hossō school print culture: dated Jōō 3 (1224, jiǎshēn 甲申), the print was carved in memory of the carver’s late master 真歸上人 by the patron 性如, and the merit dedicated to the soul of the Gondaisōzu Shigenobu. This makes the surviving Chinese text a re-introduction from the Japanese Hossō tradition, and explains the 甲 (Japanese MS) collation siglum in the Taishō apparatus.

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