Rénwáng hùguó bōrě bōluómì jīng shū shénbǎo jì 仁王護國般若波羅蜜經疏神寶記
“Numinous-Treasure Record” Subcommentary on the Rénwáng-jīng Subcommentary by 善月 Shànyuè (述, sobriquet Bóting 柏庭)
About the work
A four-fascicle Southern-Sòng Tiāntái-school sub-commentary on Zhìyǐ-and-Guàndǐng’s Rénwáng-jīng shū (T1705 = KR6c0204), composed by Bóting 善月 Shànyuè (1149–1241), the leading Tiāntái master of Hángzhōu’s Shàng-tiānzhú-sì in the late Southern Sòng. Preserved in the Taishō as T1706. Four fascicles.
The genre marker — shénbǎo jì “numinous-treasure record” — alludes to the Rénwáng-jīng’s own characteristic register of state-protective ritual instruments and dhāraṇī lore as shénbǎo (numinous treasures). The title positions the work as a record of the Hṛdaya-like essential treasures of Zhìyǐ’s commentarial inheritance.
Prefaces
The Taishō witness opens with the standard Tiāntái-style apparatus: structural-outline notes, then line-by-line gloss of Zhìyǐ-and-Guàndǐng’s shū (T1705). Each phrase of the parent commentary is glossed with substantial doctrinal apparatus, drawing on the full Tang-and-Sòng Tiāntái tradition.
Abstract
T1706 is the principal Southern-Sòng Tiāntái sub-commentary on the Rénwáng-jīng and a major document of the late-Sòng Tiāntái school’s continuing engagement with the Rénwáng-jīng state-protective tradition. Doctrinally Shànyuè operates within the Sòng Shānjiā / Shānwài doctrinal tradition (post-Sì-míng 知禮 Zhīlǐ / Gūshān 智圓 Zhìyuán), with substantive engagement with the broader Tiāntái-school doctrinal apparatus.
The pairing of T1705 (Zhìyǐ-Guàndǐng shū) and T1706 (Shànyuè jì) exemplifies the standard Sòng scholastic practice of providing the Tang doctrinal source-text together with the Sòng elaborated subcommentary as paired study materials.
For the wider history, T1706 is a primary witness to the late-Southern-Sòng Tiāntái school’s continuing institutional life at Hángzhōu’s Shàng-tiānzhú-sì and its commitment to maintaining the school’s commentarial tradition through the troubled late-Sòng period.
Composition date: no internal dating in the work itself. Shànyuè’s mature commentarial career runs from his abbacy of Dōnghú Biànlì-sì (1180) through his death in 1241. The bracket notBefore 1180 / notAfter 1241 is conservative; the work likely belongs to his middle scholarly period, perhaps c. 1200–1230.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located of T1706 specifically.
- For Shànyuè and the late-Southern-Sòng Tiāntái, see 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 Rénwáng-jīng tradition, Charles D. Orzech, Politics and Transcendent Wisdom (1998).
- Modern Chinese-language Tiāntái scholarship: 釋慧岳《天台教學史》, 潘桂明《天台宗史》.
- Hángzhōu Shàng-tiānzhú jiǎngsì zhì 杭州上天竺講寺志 — the institutional gazetteer of Shànyuè’s principal residence, with substantial biographical material.
Other points of interest
The continued Southern-Sòng Tiāntái-school engagement with the Rénwáng-jīng documented in T1706 testifies to the persistence of state-protective Buddhist ritual interest into the late-Sòng period — even as the Southern Sòng court was facing existential threat from the Mongol Yuan. The doctrinal-scholastic continuity of Tiāntái Heart Sūtra-and-related commentaries through the late-Sòng-Yuán-Míng transition is one of the more remarkable institutional histories in late-imperial Chinese Buddhism.
Shànyuè’s sustained commentarial output across a long life (active period c. 1180–1240) and his abbacy at the imperial-status Shàng-tiānzhú-sì from 1213 onwards make him one of the most institutionally significant Tiāntái figures of the late-Sòng. T1706 is one of his enduring contributions.