Bōrě xīnjīng yìjiě 般若心經易解
“Easy Explication” of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 謝承謨 (註釋, sobriquet Bílíng jūshì 毗陵居士)
About the work
A one-fascicle late-Qīng (Guāngxù 15 = 1889) Heart Sūtra commentary by 謝承謨 Xiè Chéngmó (sobriquet Bílíng jūshì) of Bílíng (Chángzhōu) in Jiāngsū. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X572. Companion to his earlier Jīngāng jīng yìjiě 金剛經易解 (X510, also dated 1889). One fascicle.
The genre marker — yìjiě “easy explication” — programmatically signals an explicitly accessible commentary intended for ordinary lay readers, paralleling Wáng Zéshēng’s earlier jù-jiě yìzhī programme (X569 = KR6c0188).
The collator-list documented in the masthead is unusually rich: 「毗陵 謝承謨貫三氏 註釋／真州 劉紹南圓覺氏／刊上 蔣春同蘭言氏 校訂／刊上 錢松齡覺之氏」 — “annotated by Xiè Chéngmó Guànsān-shì of Bílíng; printed by 劉紹南 Liú Shàonán Yuánjué-shì of Zhēn-zhōu; collated and edited by 蔣春同 Jiǎng Chūntóng Lányán-shì of Shàngshàng; [printed by] 錢松齡 Qián Sōnglíng Juézhī-shì of Shàngshàng” — documenting the late-Qīng jūshì lay-Buddhist publication network across Jiāngsū.
Prefaces
The work opens with Xiè’s own self-preface dated 「光緒己丑春杪貫三謝承謨書於混勞處」 — “Late spring of Guāngxù jǐ-chǒu (= year 15, 1889), Guànsān Xiè Chéngmó wrote this in Hùnláo-chù”. The preface is a small piece of late-Qīng jūshì literary writing:
- “The sages established worldly dharmas to maintain the customs and education; our Buddha taught the world-leaving dharma to guide and lead the herd of the deluded. Worldly and other-worldly together return to the good. But worldly dharma does not go beyond daily-use morality and ethics; the world-leaving dharma is what enables one to transform from ordinary to sage — it is therefore the good among good. The Heart Sūtra is the essence of Prajñā and the shortcut of world-leaving — depending on this for cultivation enables one to leave suffering and attain pleasure. Is this not the wondrous dharma?”
- “Now, with my Diamond Sūtra Easy Explication completed, I have similarly listed this sūtra and together annotated it. Hopefully both will provide enrichment to assist in the world-leaving causes-and-conditions. May all who see and hear together climb the path of awakening.”
The body of the commentary then proceeds line-by-line through the Heart Sūtra in the yìjiě accessible style.
Abstract
X572 is the latest dated Heart Sūtra commentary preserved in the standard Wàn xù-zàng cluster (X539–X572) — composed in 1889, just over twenty years before the fall of the Qīng in 1911. As such it is a primary witness to the late-Qīng Buddhist revival’s jūshì component, in the period that immediately precedes the early-twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist modernist movements (楊文會 Yáng Wénhuì, 太虛 Tàixū, the Liánchí-school revival, etc.).
Doctrinally Xiè’s reading is broadly Pure-Land-influenced (the li-kǔ dé-lè “leaving suffering and attaining pleasure” frame in the preface) with the standard syncretic sānjiào héyī opening that explicitly aligns Buddhist world-leaving with Confucian daily-ethics. This is in keeping with the late-Qīng jūshì devotional culture’s broad theological liberalism.
The pairing with Xiè’s earlier Jīngāng jīng yìjiě (X510, also 1889) places him in the long Yangtze-delta tradition of paired Prajñāpāramitā short-sūtra commentaries by lay devotees — the tradition that runs from 王起隆 Wáng Qǐlóng (KR6c0180, 1679) through 仲之屏 Zhòng Zhīpíng (KR6c0183, 1675) and 王澤泩 Wáng Zéshēng (KR6c0188, c. 1700–1740) to 孫念劬 Sūn Niànqú (KR6c0185, c. 1790–1810) to 徐槐廷 Xú Huáitíng (KR6c0189, c. 1858–1865) to Xiè (1889) — over two centuries of consistent lay-devotee paired commentary production.
Composition date: 1889 (Guāngxù 15), per the dated self-preface. Both notBefore and notAfter are 1889.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For late-Qīng jūshì Buddhism and the precursors of the Buddhist modernist movement, see Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1968) — fundamental.
- Don A. Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001).
- Modern Chinese scholarship on late-Qīng Buddhism and the 楊文會 Yáng Wénhuì circle.
Other points of interest
The detailed collator-list in the masthead — four named lay devotees from three locations across Jiāngsū (Bílíng / Chángzhōu, Zhēn-zhōu, Shàng-shàng) — is documentary evidence of the late-Qīng jūshì publication network. The jūshì devotees coordinated across municipal boundaries to produce, edit, and distribute Buddhist scriptural materials, in a pattern that anticipates the early-twentieth-century jīngāng jīng and Pure Land publication societies.
X572 is the chronological terminus of the Wàn xù-zàng’s Heart Sūtra commentary cluster (X539 onward). Subsequent Republican-era and modern Heart Sūtra commentaries (楊文會 Yáng Wénhuì, 太虛 Tàixū, 弘一 Hóng-yī, 印順 Yìnshùn, etc.) are preserved through other channels and not in the canonical cluster proper.