Bōrě xīnjīng lüèshū liánzhū jì 般若心經略疏連珠記
Linked-Pearls Record on the Brief Subcommentary on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 師會 (述)
About the work
A Southern Sòng (1165) Huáyán-school sub-commentary on Fǎzàng’s Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng lüèshū 般若波羅蜜多心經略疏 (T1712 = KR6c0139), composed in two fascicles by Shīhuì 師會 (sobriquet Kětáng 可堂), the leading Huáyán scholastic of the Southern Sòng. The Taishō head-note “[cf. Nos. 251, 1712]” double-marks the chain of textual dependence: the parent sūtra (T251) and the parent commentary (T1712). Signature: 「宋玉峯沙門師會述」 — “expounded by Shīhuì, śramaṇa of Yùfēng of the Sòng”.
The title metaphor — liánzhū jì “linked pearls record” — is unfolded in Shīhuì’s own opening note: “By setting up this title I demonstrate that I have nothing of my own to say. The text of this Record in every line consists of the numinous-serpent night-gleaming, vermillion-field crimson-pool, full-and-waning bright-moon gems of the Buddha and the Patriarchs. By stringing them on vermillion thread and gold strand I have made this Record — comparable to the pearl-mound of Cāngwú 蒼梧之珠丘”. The text consequently consists of a continuous chain of explicit citations from Fǎzàng’s Lüèshū, Cháng’ān’s earlier Huáyán masters (Chéngguān 澄觀, Zōngmì 宗密 the Guīfēng Tángjiào 鎮國, the Zhēnyuán school exegete Cǎotáng 草堂), and the canonical Mahāyāna-saṃgraha / Awakening of Faith / Vimalakīrti citations supporting Huáyán doctrine.
Prefaces
Shīhuì opens by explicating the title-conventions for sūtra-commentaries (經題 vs 疏目) and the morphology of the compound Bōrě xīnjīng lüèshū (which is yǒucái 有財 — “exocentric, taking the parent text’s title as its own qualifier”; or alternatively yīzhǔ 依主 — “endocentric, with xīnjīng as head”). He then explicates “略” as yàolüè 要略 (“essential brevity”), explicitly noting that there is no separate “broad subcommentary” by Fǎzàng. The “并序” parenthetical signals that Fǎzàng’s commentary includes its own preface. He further notes the ascription “翻經” (translation-bureau monk) in Fǎzàng’s signature, citing Fǎzàng’s own colophonic note (preserved on a Jīngkǒu 京口 print) that he composed the Lüèshū in Cháng’ān-2 (= 702) at the Jīng Qīngchán Monastery 京清禪寺, in his “off-hours from translation work”, at the repeated request of the Director of the Bureau of Rites (司禮部) and Inspector of Yōngzhōu, Lord Zhèng of Yíngyáng 滎陽鄭公. This is one of the rare external testimonies to Fǎzàng’s specific year of composition for the Lüèshū.
The body of the Liánzhū jì then proceeds line-by-line through Fǎzàng’s text, glossing each phrase by quoting the source from which Fǎzàng drew it. The opening section unpacks Fǎzàng’s preface formula (“夫以真源素範…”) with citations from Chéngguān’s Vairocana-tathāgatavyūha 華嚴經疏, the Awakening of Faith (起信論), the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha (攝大乘論), and the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa. The result is in effect a conspectus of Tang-Sòng Huáyán literature, organised as a commentary on Fǎzàng’s mid-Tang frame.
Abstract
T1713 is the principal Sòng-period testimony to the Huáyán reception of the Heart Sūtra. Its scholarly importance lies less in any new doctrinal departure — Shīhuì is meticulously deferential to the FǎzàngChéngguānZōngmì line — than in its function as a cento of Huáyán doctrinal citations organised against the Heart Sūtra’s compact text. For modern philology it serves as: (i) a primary source for which earlier Huáyán texts were canonical in the Southern Sòng curriculum; (ii) a witness to the Sòng-period redaction of Fǎzàng’s Lüèshū (Shīhuì has access to a Jīngkǒu print whose colophon is no longer otherwise attested); and (iii) a major piece of evidence for the late-Sòng Huáyán-school revival in southern monastic centres after the school’s Tang heartland had been dispersed.
Composition date: Shīhuì’s colophon (preserved through the canonical bibliographies and confirmed by his short biography in the Bǔxù gāosēng zhuàn) gives 乾道元年 (= 1165 CE), at 慧因寺. The notBefore / notAfter are accordingly both 1165.
The work appears in the modern Taishō (T33) and is paralleled in the Wàn xùzàng 卍續藏 by Shīhuì’s own Bōrě xīnjīng lüèshū xiǎochāo 般若心經略疏小鈔 (X) and other related sub-commentarial materials.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located — Shīhuì’s Liánzhū jì has not received a complete English translation. Sections are summarised in studies of Tang-Sòng Huáyán scholasticism.
- Imre Hamar, ed., Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007) — multiple chapters on Huáyán doctrinal history, with reference to the Sòng-period scholastic revival.
- Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英, Kegon zen no shisō-shi-teki kenkyū 華厳禅の思想史的研究 (Tōkyō: Daitō shuppan, 1985) — fundamental study of late-Tang and Sòng Huáyán; treats Shīhuì’s place in the Yìchéng / Tóngjiào doctrinal disputes.
- Kimura Kiyotaka 木村清孝, Chūgoku Kegon shisō shi 中国華厳思想史 (Kyōto: Heirakuji shoten, 1992) — comprehensive history of Chinese Huáyán doctrinal development; covers Shīhuì.
- Chen Jinhua 陳金華, Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643–712) (Leiden: Brill, 2007) — for the relevant Tang background, including discussion of the Lüèshū’s composition context that Shīhuì preserves.
- Modern Chinese scholarship on Sòng Huáyán: Wèi Dàoyǒng 魏道儒, 《宋代華嚴宗》 and related works.
Other points of interest
The Cāngwú 蒼梧 reference in the opening title-explanation is to the legendary “pearl mound” said to be the burial-place of the Five Emperor Shùn 舜 in the southern frontier — a classical literary topos for an extraordinary collection of treasures. The metaphor positions Shīhuì’s commentary as a curated heap of precious citations rather than an original work, in keeping with the Confucian-style modesty topos shù ér bù zuò 述而不作 (“transmitting and not creating”) which he explicitly invokes in his self-designation 述.
The Liánzhū genre — in which the commentator strings together quotations from earlier authorities like pearls on a thread — has antecedents in the Lùnyǔ jí jiě 論語集解 tradition and in the Buddhist zhāngjì 章記 sub-commentarial style. Shīhuì’s application of it to the Heart Sūtra commentary represents a high point of late-Sòng Buddhist scholastic genre-consciousness.