Rénwáng jīng shū huìběn 仁王經疏會本
Combined-Edition of the Subcommentary on the Rénwáng-jīng spoken by 智顗 Zhìyǐ (說), recorded by 灌頂 Guàndǐng (記), combined-edition by 成蓮 Chénglián (合)
About the work
A one-fascicle late-Qīng (Guāngxù 26 = 1900) combined edition of Tiāntái Zhìyǐ-and-Guàndǐng’s Rénwáng jīng shū (T1705 = KR6c0204), edited and prefaced by the late-Qīng monk 成蓮 Chénglián. Preserved in the Wàn xùzàng / Manji zoku-zō as X514. One fascicle. Companion in genre to Dàopèi’s Rénwáng jīng héshū (X513 = KR6c0209), but produced two centuries later in the late-Qīng monastic-revival context.
The genre marker — huìběn “combined edition” — signals a textual-editorial project that brings together canonical commentary materials in a single readable edition for contemporary study use.
Prefaces
The work opens with Chénglián’s own preface (No. 514-A) titled 「會刻仁王護國般若經疏序」 — “Preface to the Combined-Engraving of the Rénwáng hùguó bōrě jīng shū”:
- “The Rénwáng hùguó bōrě jīng is the concluding sūtra of the Eight-Section Prajñā [corpus]. Now Prajñā discourse — its time long, its principle reaching — there is none that does not sweep emptiness and release stagnation, cut off thoughts and remove emotions. Indeed because sentient beings’ delusion-clinging is long-firm and the true nature is hard to manifest, the Buddha therefore did not pick out good-and-evil, soiled-and-pure, nature-and-characteristic, but altogether shouted-and-broke. Although the true nature and the wondrous function are not non-existent, he provisionally said ‘non-existent’, directly waiting for the emotion to be forgotten and the principle disappeared, with not a hair’s-breadth tolerated; only then did he draw out the questions of King Anāgāmin and high-stretch the dharma-net of the five forbearances…”
- The preface continues with a substantive history of the Rénwáng-jīng commentary tradition, with particular attention to Zhìyǐ’s foundational role and to the late-Qīng need for accessible combined editions of canonical commentaries.
The preface is dated 「光緒二十六年」 = Guāngxù 26 = 1900.
The body of the work then presents Zhìyǐ-and-Guàndǐng’s shū in a combined-edition format suitable for late-Qīng monastic study, with Chénglián’s editorial connectives.
Abstract
X514 is the latest dated Rénwáng-jīng commentary in the Wàn xùzàng cluster — composed in 1900, eleven years before the fall of the Qīng. As such it is a primary witness to the late-Qīng Buddhist scholarly revival’s interest in re-presenting canonical Tang-Sòng doctrinal commentaries in accessible combined-edition formats, paralleling 楊文會 Yáng Wénhuì’s contemporary Jīnlíng Scriptural-Press programme.
Chénglián’s preface is one of the more substantive late-Qīng statements on the Tiāntái doctrinal tradition, articulating the Eight-Section Prajñā (八部般若) framework and locating the Rénwáng-jīng as the concluding sūtra of this traditional eight-fold Prajñāpāramitā corpus organisation. This is in keeping with late-Qīng Tiāntái scholarship’s interest in re-establishing canonical Tang-Sòng doctrinal organisations.
The 1900 composition date places the work in the immediate prelude to the early-twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist modernist movements — Yáng Wénhuì died 1911; 太虛 Tàixū began his reform programme in 1912; the Republican-era Buddhist revival was about to begin. X514 is therefore one of the late-Qīng documents that prepared the ground for the modernist reception of canonical Buddhist texts.
Composition date: 1900 (Guāngxù 26), per the dated preface. Both notBefore and notAfter are 1900.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For the late-Qīng Buddhist revival context, see Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1968).
- For the Yáng Wénhuì circle and the Jīnlíng Scriptural-Press programme, see Gabriele Goldfuss, Vers un bouddhisme du XXe siècle: Yang Wenhui (1837–1911), réformateur laïque et imprimeur (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2001).
- For the Rénwáng-jīng tradition, Charles D. Orzech (1998).
Other points of interest
The reference to the Eight-Section Prajñā (八部般若) in the preface is a traditional Chinese Buddhist canonical organisation that classifies the Prajñāpāramitā corpus into eight major sūtras: the Mahāprajñāpāramitā of 600 fascicles, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā (the Bā-qiān-sòng / 八千頌), the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā (the Èrshí-wǔqiān-sòng), the Vajracchedikā (the Diamond Sūtra), the Hṛdaya (the Heart Sūtra), the Adhyardhaśatikā (the Lǐqù jīng), the Suvikrāntavikrāmi-paripṛcchā, and the Rénwáng-jīng. The placement of the Rénwáng-jīng as the concluding sūtra of this eight-fold corpus is significant for understanding the work’s traditional canonical status.