Bōrě xīnjīng shū yímóu chāo 般若心經疏詒謀鈔
“Bequeathed-Plans Notes” — Sub-Commentary on the Heart Sūtra Subcommentary by 智圓 (撰)
About the work
A one-fascicle Northern Sòng zìzhù 自註 (self-commentary): Zhìyuán’s 智圓 (976–1022) own line-by-line subcommentary on his Bōrě xīnjīng shū 般若心經疏 (X529 = KR6c0148). Preserved in the Wàn xùzàng / Manji zoku-zō as X530. The CBETA witness is supplemented by an Edo-period (Kyōhō 4 = 1719) postface from the Japanese Tendai monk Chikū 智空 of the Reikū wajō 靈空和尚’s circle, who oversaw the printing — a useful documentation of the Japanese Tendai school’s preservation work on Sòng Tiāntái texts.
The title — Yímóu chāo 詒謀鈔 — alludes to the Shī jīng 詩經 (“Wén Wáng yǒu shēng” 文王有聲) phrase 「詒厥孫謀」 (“bequeathed his plans to his grandsons”) and signals Zhìyuán’s intention to leave his elaborated explanation as a guide for later students. One fascicle.
Prefaces
The work opens with two paratexts: (i) the Edo-period printing postface by Chikū dated Kyōhō 4 / 1719, fifth month, recording that Zhìyuán’s shū (X529) had circulated widely but the chāo (X530) had remained in scholarly limbo, until Reikūoshō took it up for collation and kunten annotation, and a craftsman named Kessei 劂生 (Zhūshēng) requested its printing; and (ii) Zhìyuán’s own short preface (“此經理幽辭要…”) explaining that, since the principle of the Heart Sūtra is profound but its words are essential, he had earlier composed the shū using the Tiāntái sānguān 三觀 (three-contemplations) framework; fearing later students might be confused by the shū’s words, he now adds the present chāo as auxiliary “wing”, named Yímóu.
The body of the chāo unfolds the autobiographical and bibliographical context that the brief X529 had to omit. The phrase 「孤山所居之處也住錢唐二湖之西北孤絕峙於水中而不與眾山連接世謂之孤山也」 (“Gūshān is the place where I reside, on the northwest of the West Lake at Qiántáng, isolated and standing in the water without connecting to other mountains, hence called the ‘Solitary Mountain’”) gives a concrete topography of his Hángzhōu residency. The autobiographical passage continues: “智圓 is my dharma-name; my courtesy-name is Wúwài 無外, of unknown origin; since I have nursed an illness on the Solitary Mountain, I have taken its name as my standing-place; my surname is Xú 徐; I designated myself Zhōngyōngzǐ 中庸子 and composed three biographical sketches of Zhōngyōngzǐ to set out my intent.”
He then notes the work’s date with precision: 「即大宋天禧元年歲次丁巳秋九月十一日也」 — “namely, the 11th day of the 9th month, autumn, in Tiānxǐ 1 (1017, dīngsì sexagenary year), of the Great Sòng.” This is a rare instance of an exact-day dating for a Buddhist Heart Sūtra commentary.
The body of the chāo then proceeds line-by-line through the shū, expanding each phrase with full doctrinal apparatus, citations from the Lotus Sūtra commentary tradition, and the elaborated yīxīn sānguān 一心三觀 / yīniàn sānqiān 一念三千 framework. Particular attention is given to defending the Shānwài-school guānxīn reading against likely Shānjiā-school criticisms.
Abstract
X530 is one of the most thoroughly documented commentaries in the entire Heart Sūtra exegetical literature, with both an exact composition date and an extended autobiographical preface from its author. It is also a primary document for the Shānwài doctrinal position within the Sòng Tiāntái Shānjiā / Shānwài controversy and for the institutional life of Sòng Tiāntái at Hángzhōu’s Gūshān monastic precinct.
The pairing of X529 (the brief shū) and X530 (the elaborated chāo) by the same hand is the late-Sòng analogue of Shǒuqiān’s pairing of X524 and X525 on Kuíjī (KR6c0144 / KR6c0145): in both cases an author produces both the compact and the extended forms, intended for different scholarly uses.
The Edo-period Japanese Tendai involvement in the work’s transmission (per the 1719 postface) is significant: by the early eighteenth century the chāo had effectively dropped out of circulation in China but was preserved through the Japanese Tendai school’s continuous study of Sòng Tiāntái commentaries. Reikū Kōken’s 靈空光謙 (1652–1739) revival of Tendai scholarship at Hieizan included this kind of textual recovery work, and the resulting Japanese editions are the immediate ancestors of the modern Wàn xùzàng witness.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- See the references for KR6c0148 (Zhìyuán’s Bōrě xīnjīng shū).
- Daniel A. Getz Jr., “T’ien-T’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate,” in Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz Jr., eds., Buddhism in the Sung (Honolulu, 1999), 477–523 — for the broader Sòng Tiāntái context including the Shānjiā/Shānwài disputes.
- Brook Ziporyn, Beyond the Wall: Mind, Wave, and Time in Chinese Buddhist Thought (forthcoming) — for the doctrinal context of Shānwài readings of yīniàn sānqiān.
Other points of interest
The Edo-period Japanese postface by Chikū 智空 (Edo-period, dated 1719, on behalf of Reikūoshō 靈空和尚 = Reikū Kōken 靈空光謙) is itself a useful piece of evidence for early-eighteenth-century Tendai textual scholarship at Mt Hiei: it records that the shū had long been in circulation but the chāo had remained marginal, until Reikū’s collation and kunten annotation made a printing feasible. The full sequence — Sòng composition (1017), Japanese transmission, Edo-period collation and printing (1719), modern reprint via the Wàn xùzàng — is a textbook case of the East Asian textual circulation of Sòng Buddhist scholarship.