Bōrě xīnjīng zhùshū 般若心經註疏
Annotated Subcommentary on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 仲之屏 (纂註, courtesy name Shùruò 樹若)
About the work
A one-fascicle Kāngxī-era (1675) Heart Sūtra commentary by 仲之屏 Zhòng Zhīpíng (courtesy names Shìshí 士石 and Shùruò 樹若), the Jiāxīng jūshì lay devotee. Preserved in the Wàn xùzàng / Manji zoku-zō as X564. Signature: 「清 嘉興 仲之屏樹若甫纂註／秀水 沈 浤㵎思甫校梓」 — “compiled-and-annotated by Zhòng Zhīpíng Shùruòfǔ of Jiāxīng of the Qīng; collated and printed by Shěn Hóng Sīfǔ of Xiùshuǐ”.
The genre marker — zhùshū “annotated subcommentary” — signals an integrated zhù (annotation) plus shū (subcommentary) format, typical of the late-imperial jūshì commentarial style.
Prefaces
The work opens with a preface (No. 564-A) by Jīnshì héshí tí 今釋合十題 (perhaps “Master Jīnshì of the Present Translation” — possibly Wáng Qǐlóng or another Yangtze-delta jūshì of the period; the identity is not certain). The preface is dated Kāngxī 14 (1675), winter, mid-second-decade-of-the-month. It opens with a substantive philosophical position:
- “The Buddha-and-Patriarchs came from the West, not setting up letters. How then could the Vedic-and-Brahmanic books be five thousand in abundance? Because ‘not setting up letters’ is feared by those who attach to vines and add wisteria: as soon as one seeks-out word-and-significance, one falls into entanglement-knots and obscures the xìngzōng (essential nature thesis). The five thousand Vedas are precisely the great elaboration of the xìngzōng and the cutting-asunder of the vines-and-wisteria. To be sure, the Vedas are abundant, but their ultimate aim is none other than the Heart Sūtra alone. The Heart Sūtra is truly the source-confluence of all sūtras.”
- “‘Unborn-and-unextinguished’ speaks of the past-and-future natures, which are firmly self-existing. ‘Unsoiled-and-unpurified’ speaks of the natures of madness-foolishness-and-saintly-perception, which are spontaneously self-aware. ‘Unincreasing-and-undecreasing’ speaks of the natures of long-life, short-life, blessing, and limit, which are originally suchly-suchly. But the dim-witted [worm-like 螾螾] do not understand the original ancient purport, falsely arousing all manner of ideas of birth-and-extinction, soiled-and-pure, increase-and-decrease. From this the five aggregates and six consciousnesses become inverted within — the vines-and-wisteria are already excessive, the entanglement-knots already severe.”
- “Now Master Zhòng Shùruò collects the purport of the five thousand Vedas, fully gestating it in the sūtra, and produces an annotated subcommentary. The annotation explains those vines; the subcommentary resolves those entanglements. Try reading this volume — it is the essential summary of more than five thousand fascicles, the secret-treasury of ‘not setting up letters’. Then we know: the Heart Sūtra is the ultimate aim of all sūtras, and the annotated subcommentary is in turn the ultimate aim of the Heart Sūtra. Those who possess the wisdom-illumination, judge for yourselves.”
- Dated and signed: 「康熙十四年冬仲下浣今釋合十題」 — “Kāngxī 14 (1675), winter, second [last] decade [of the second winter month], Jīnshìhéshí composed”.
The body of the commentary then proceeds line-by-line through the Heart Sūtra in the jūshì-style integrated zhùshū format.
Abstract
X564 is one of the more philosophically pointed jūshì Heart Sūtra commentaries of the early Kāngxī period. The framing thesis — that the Heart Sūtra is the source-confluence (統會之源) of all Buddhist sūtras and that the present commentary is in turn the ultimate aim of the Heart Sūtra — is a strong claim about the Heart Sūtra’s place in the canonical hierarchy.
The author Zhòng Zhīpíng comes from the same Jiāxīng jūshì circle as 王起隆 Wáng Qǐlóng (KR6c0180), and his pairing of Diamond Sūtra and Heart Sūtra commentaries (X489 + X564) parallels Wáng’s pairing (X484 + X561). The two together document the early-Kāngxī Yangtze-delta jūshì programme of producing paired Diamond Sūtra and Heart Sūtra commentaries as the foundational Prajñāpāramitā devotional infrastructure for lay study.
The collator-and-printer 沈浤 Shěn Hóng (courtesy name Sīfǔ 思甫) of Xiùshuǐ documents the network of jūshì book-production in the Jiāxīng region — Xiùshuǐ being the centre of the famous Jiāxīng Lèngyán-canon project, the late-Míng / early-Qīng Jiāxīng zàng 嘉興藏 / Lèngyánsì zàng 楞嚴寺藏 that was one of the major canonical printing projects of the period.
Composition date: 1675 (Kāngxī 14), per the dated preface. Both notBefore and notAfter are 1675.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For the Jiāxīng-canon and Yangtze-delta jūshì publication network, see Jiang Wu, The Birth of a Buddhist Canon: The Jiaxing Canon and the Material Culture of Buddhism in Late Imperial China (Oxford: OUP, 2017) — fundamental.
- For the early-Kāngxī jūshì commentary tradition, see the references for KR6c0180 (王起隆 Wáng Qǐlóng’s commentary).
Other points of interest
The ambitious framing thesis — Heart Sūtra as the source-confluence of all sūtras, and this commentary as the ultimate aim of the Heart Sūtra — is one of the more philosophically charged formulations in the late-imperial Heart Sūtra commentarial tradition. It positions the Heart Sūtra not just as one canonical sūtra among many but as the very ur-text of Buddhism, and positions the commentary as a continuation of that ur-textual programme.
The repetition of the Heart Sūtra’s opening — bù shēng bù miè / bù gòu bù jìng / bù zēng bù jiǎn — as a triple-statement about natures (past-future, mad-saintly, long-short-life) gives a characteristically late-imperial jūshì orientation: the Heart Sūtra is read as making positive doctrinal statements about the original natures of phenomena, rather than as a simple denial of phenomena. This xìngzōng (essential-nature thesis) reading is in line with Tang Huáyán doctrine but pitched in a register accessible to literate non-specialists.