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法華經義記

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Text ID
KR6d0005
Date
508–529
Dynasty
梁

Fǎhuá jīng yìjì 法華經義記

Notes on the Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra by 法雲 (Fǎyún / Guāngzhái Fǎyún, 撰)

About the work

An eight-juan line-by-line commentary on Kumārajīva’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng (KR6d0001, T262), composed by Fǎyún 法雲 (467–529), the central figure of pre-Tiāntái Lotus Sūtra exegesis in southern China, founder-abbot of the Guāngzháisì 光宅寺 in Jiànkāng 建康 under the patronage of Liáng Wǔdì 梁武帝, and one of the Liáng sān dà fǎshī 梁三大法師 (“three great Dharma-masters of the Liáng”). The commentary is the most important pre-Tiāntái Sinitic interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra and the principal polemical target of Zhìyǐ’s 智顗 (538–597) Tiāntái systematisation in the Fǎhuá xuányì 法華玄義 (T1716, KR6d0006) and Fǎhuá wénjù 法華文句 (T1718).

Prefaces

The text opens (in the Taishō recension) with the Preface to the Subcommentary of the Lotus Sūtra (《法華經義疏序》) by the Edo-period Japanese scholar-monk Hōtan 鳳潭 (Mubun Hōtan 槃談鳳潭), dated Genroku 元祿 9 (1696, bǐngzǐ year), at Naniwa 浪華 (Ōsaka), which records the textual recovery and printing of the work. The preface narrates the Sinitic exegetical transmission of the Lotus from Kumārajīva’s translation through Sēngróng 僧融, Sēngruì 僧叡, Dàoshēng 道生, the Qí-period Liú Qiú 劉虬, and the Liáng-period Fǎyún himself, lamenting that “regrettably the Subcommentary Notes he composed were ill-fated in their own time and quite ceased to exist; from the Táng and Sòng down, the broadly-learned and great scholars all could not see them; only by good fortune does this remaining copy survive in this country [Japan].” It then records that Hōtan undertook to print and circulate the text “so that the men of a thousand or hundred ages hence may, by relying on it, look back to the men of a thousand or hundred ages past — as if facing them across the same hall and rubbing shoulders with them.” The text proper carries the attribution: Guāngzháisì shāmén Yún fǎshī zhuàn 光宅寺沙門　雲法師撰 (“Composed by the śramaṇa Master Yún of the Guāngzhái Monastery”).

Abstract

Fǎyún’s Yìjì is structured as a continuous exegesis on Kumārajīva’s translation, taking the text pericope by pericope and providing both detailed glosses and broader doctrinal expositions. The commentary’s distinctive contribution is its four-tier classification of the Buddha’s teaching (sìshí jiào 四時教 in the loose sense — though the term is later): (1) yǒuxiàng jiào 有相教, the teachings of marks/forms (early Āgama period); (2) wúxiàng jiào 無相教, the teachings of marklessness (the Prajñāpāramitā / Vaipulya period); (3) bāobiǎnyì jiào 褒貶抑教, the teachings of praise-and-blame (the early Mahāyāna sūtras, particularly Vimalakīrti); and (4) tóngguī jiào 同歸教, the teaching of common return (the Lotus Sūtra), with the Mahāparinirvāṇa as a fifth (or supplementary) chángzhù jiào 常住教, the teaching of permanence. This classification, together with the parallel five-tier classification of Sēngmín 僧旻 and the four-tier classification of Zhìzàng 智藏, was systematically critiqued by Zhìyǐ as part of his replacement of the southern jiàopàn 教判 (doctrinal classification) tradition with his own huàyí sìjiào 化儀四教 / huàfǎ sìjiào 化法四教 schema.

The work is also of substantial interest for the history of Chinese Buddhist hermeneutics in the period before Tiāntái: Fǎyún is the central representative of the southern Chéngshílùn 成實論 scholastic tradition, and his Lotus exegesis interprets the ekayāna (一乘) doctrine through the lens of Indian Abhidharmic and Bhāvaviveka-style Madhyamaka categories rather than through the zhǐguān 止觀 / yīniàn sānqiān 一念三千 framework of Tiāntái. Fǎyún’s interpretation of the Stūpa chapter (見寶塔品) and the Fathom of the Tathāgata’s Lifespan chapter (壽量品) was particularly influential for later Sui- and Táng-period exegesis.

The work was lost in China by the late Táng and was preserved only in Japan, transmitted through Tendai 天台 monastic scholarship; its textual rediscovery and printing by Hōtan in 1696 made it available to Edo-period and modern scholarship and is the basis for the Taishō edition. The Korean and Sòng canon editions do not contain it.

Translations and research

  • Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Hokke monku no seiritsu ni kansuru kenkyū 法華文句の成立に関する研究. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1985. (Discusses Fǎyún’s Yìjì in relation to the formation of Zhìyǐ’s Fǎ-huá wén-jù.)
  • Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Chūgoku Hannya shisōshi kenkyū: Kichizō to Sanron gakuha 中国般若思想史研究：吉藏と三論学派. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1976.
  • Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. Hokke gisho no kenkyū 法華義疏の研究. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1996. (The standard modern study of Liáng-period Lotus commentaries; treats Fǎyún’s Yìjì extensively.)
  • Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. “Fa-yün’s Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra: A Study of the Earliest Extant Chinese Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra.” In A Buddhist Kaleidoscope: Essays on the Lotus Sutra, ed. Gene Reeves, 207–222. Tokyo: Kōsei, 2002.
  • Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史 and Felbur, Rafal. “Sūtra Commentaries in Chinese Until the Táng Period.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Silk et al., 450–466. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
  • Penkower, Linda. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993. (Treats the Tiāntái critique of Fǎyún.)
  • Swanson, Paul L. Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989. (For Zhìyǐ’s polemic against Fǎyún and the southern Lotus tradition.)
  • Hurvitz, Leon. Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk. Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 12. Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1962. (Background on the Sinitic Lotus exegetical tradition and the Tiāntái synthesis.)

Other points of interest

The Yìjì is the earliest substantially surviving Chinese commentary on the Lotus Sūtra — earlier commentaries by Sēngróng 僧融, Sēngruì 僧叡, and Dàoshēng 道生 are lost or survive only in fragments, and Liú Qiú’s 劉虬 Zhù Fǎhuá 注法華 likewise does not survive. Fǎyún’s Yìjì therefore preserves uniquely the southern Sinitic Lotus exegetical tradition immediately before the Tiāntái synthesis.

The Edo-period Japanese transmission of the text — preserved through Tendai monastic libraries and printed by Hōtan at Naniwa in 1696 — is itself a noteworthy episode in the textual history of East-Asian Buddhism: a major Liáng-period commentary, lost in China after the Táng, was preserved continuously in Japan for nearly a millennium and reintroduced to Sinitic scholarship only with the printing of the modern Taishō canon.

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