Rénwáng jīng shū 仁王經疏
Subcommentary on the Sūtra of the Humane King (anonymous; Dūnhuáng manuscript)
About the work
A one-fascicle anonymous Dūnhuáng-only Tang-period commentary on the Rénwáng jīng (KR6c0202 = T245). Admitted to the Taishō as T2745 (Vol. 85). The Taishō head-note “[cf. No. 245]” cross-references the parent sūtra. Anonymous; one fascicle.
Prefaces
The witness is fragmentary at the head and lacks any formal preface. The opening passage discusses the evaṃ mayā śrutam problem and Ānanda’s status as the canonical recorder of the Buddha’s teachings:
- “‘Hard to hear time’ — there is no before-and-after. Excluding ‘transmitted hearing’, it completes ‘as I heard’. Hence ‘one time’. The various explanations are thus.”
- “Next, addressing problems and contradictions: first, examining facts; later, citing texts as evidence. As for examining facts: the sūtra says that Ānanda was born on the night the Buddha attained the Way. According to the Hīnayāna [tradition], the Buddha attained the Way and after six or seven days then preached sūtras; Ānanda at that time was still in his mother’s bosom and his body did not participate in the assembly. After the Buddha’s awakening twenty years later, [Ānanda] then went forth from home; thirty years after that he became the [Buddha’s] attendant. Before this time, [Ānanda] mostly did not personally hear the sūtras preached. Although he did not personally hear them…”
This opening is doctrinally substantive — addressing the apparent contradiction between Ānanda’s role as the evaṃ mayā śrutam canonical narrator and the chronological impossibility that he could have personally heard early sūtras. The discussion follows the standard Mahāyāna apologetic argument that Ānanda’s bhakti-empowered memory enabled him to recover sūtras he had not personally witnessed.
Abstract
T2745 is one of the Dūnhuáng Rénwáng jīng commentary fragments, anonymous and partially preserved. Doctrinally the work belongs to the broader Tang Buddhist commentarial tradition that addressed the evaṃ mayā śrutam hermeneutical problem in the context of the Rénwáng-jīng’s sūtra-frame.
For the wider history, T2745 is significant as: (i) one of the few Dūnhuáng Rénwáng jīng commentary witnesses; (ii) evidence of the popular Tang reception of the Rénwáng jīng commentary tradition outside the major metropolitan centres; and (iii) a small documentation of how Tang doctrinal materials circulated at the Dūnhuáng frontier monastic complex.
Composition date: no internal dating; provenance is the Dūnhuáng caves. The bracket notBefore 600 / notAfter 900 is conservative; the work most likely belongs to the Tang period.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located of T2745 specifically.
- For the Dūnhuáng Rénwáng jīng materials, see the broader Dūnhuáng catalogue literature.
- For the Rénwáng-jīng tradition, Charles D. Orzech (1998).
Other points of interest
The opening discussion of Ānanda’s chronological problem is one of the more philosophically interesting passages in the Dūnhuáng Rénwáng jīng materials, demonstrating that the popular Tang Buddhist reception included sustained engagement with the canonical hermeneutical questions surrounding sūtra-narration.