Fǎhuá jīng xuánqiān bèijiǎn 法華經玄籤備撿
Supplementary Check on the Annotations to the Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra by 有嚴 (Yǒuyán / Zhāān Yǒuyán, 注)
About the work
A four-juan glossarial subcommentary on Zhànrán’s Fǎhuá xuányì shìqiān (KR6d0007, T1717), itself the standard subcommentary on Zhìyǐ’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xuányì (KR6d0006, T1716). Composed by the Northern-Sòng Tiāntái master Yǒuyán 有嚴 (1021–1101) of Tāizhōu, the work belongs to the dense second-order commentarial apparatus that grew up around the Tiāntái sāndàbù 天台三大部 in the Sòng. It is preserved as X28n0588 in the Xùzàng-jīng 卍續藏經 (Supplementary Tripiṭaka).
Prefaces
The text opens with Yǒuyán’s own preface, the Preface to the Supplementary Check on the Profound-Annotations (《玄籤備撿序》), signed Dānqiū shāmén Yǒuyán shù 丹丘沙門 有嚴 述 (“composed by Yǒuyán, śramaṇa of Dānqiū”; Dānqiū = Tāizhōu). Yǒuyán writes: “Formerly our ancestor [Zhànrán], holding the assistance of the doctrine as his weighty charge — as one of the Tathāgata’s deputies sent to perform the Tathāgata’s work — composed the Shìqiān in ten juan. Its diction is classical, its principles penetrating; he was an apt model for the diligent learner. By means of it one understands the Profound [text]; by means of the Profound one penetrates the sūtra-section; by means of the sections one reaches the heart-essence and enters the gate of sweet-dew. … Yet for those whose study is still recent, who already trouble themselves over the obscurity and conciseness of the Shìqiān’s wording, with its hidden references and abridged citations, even though they meander among the bamboo-slips, what leisure have they to investigate other texts and broaden their hearing? I [Yǒuyán] in the Yuánfēng 元豐 years (1078–1085) had the good fortune of expounding the text; in the intervals I keenly investigated and supplied annotations to ease its difficulties and to amplify its omissions. In the text there were also scribal errors which I corrected. Not only do I prevent transgression in myself, but I assist the lovely studies of younger blossoms. I have divided it into four juan in order to make it ready-for-checking; hence I have called it Bèijiǎn [‘Supplementary-Check’].”
The colophon dates the second redaction: 元祐丙寅夏五月哉生魄再治始於樝庵序 (“Yuányòu bǐngyín [= Yuányòu 元祐 1, 1086], summer, fifth month, zàishēngpò [the 16th day after the new moon]: re-edited at the Zhāān 樝庵 [Hawthorn Hermitage]”). The text was therefore composed during the Yuánfēng era and re-redacted in 1086, during Yǒuyán’s tenure at the Chìchéng Chóngshànsì 赤城崇善寺.
Abstract
The Bèijiǎn is a glossarial cĭ-shū 詞書 to the Shìqiān, identifying obscure references, geographical terms, technical vocabulary, and bibliographical citations in Zhànrán’s text and providing supplementary explanations drawn from Sòng-period scholastic resources unavailable to a Táng-period reader. The opening glosses give a sense of the work’s method: under Júnshān 君山 (the literary epithet of Pǔménzǐ 普門子, author of Zhànrán’s preface) Yǒuyán cites the Yuèzhōu bówùzhì 岳州博物誌 and the Jīngzhōu túyǔ 荊州圖語 to identify the place; under Chújǐnnán 除饉男 he cites the Fēnbié gōngdé lùn 分別功德論 to gloss the technical Buddhist epithet (“the bhikṣu who eliminates the cravings”); under Pǔménzǐ he cites a lost preface by 蔣防 Jiǎng Fáng of Yángxiàn 陽羨 (Liáng or Táng) for biographical evidence on Pǔménzǐ.
The work is therefore an important witness both to the Sòng Tiāntái scholastic tradition’s reception of Zhànrán and to the wider intellectual culture of Northern Sòng monastic exegesis: it documents the commentarial corpus, geographical handbooks, and lost works of literati Buddhism that an accomplished Northern Sòng Tiāntái scholar could draw upon as a matter of course. Yǒuyán’s Bèijiǎn belongs together with his lost or partially-surviving works on Zhìyǐ’s Wénjù (the Wénjù jiānnán 文句箋難) and on the Móhē zhǐguān (the Zhǐguān zhùlǎn 止觀助覽) as part of a coordinated programme of mid-to-late Northern Sòng Tiāntái scholastic recovery.
The composition coincides with the broader Tiāntái revival under Sìmíng Zhīlǐ’s 四明知禮 (960–1028) lineage in the Northern Sòng — a programme to which Yǒuyán, as a third-generation dharma-heir of Zhīlǐ through Shénzhào Běnrú 神照本如, was a direct contributor.
Translations and research
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku kenkyū 唐代天台学研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975. (For the Sòng reception of Zhànrán’s Shìqiān.)
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai 天台学：根本思想とその展開. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.
- Getz, Daniel A. “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate.” In Buddhism in the Sung, eds. Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, 477–523. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999. (On the Sòng-period Tiāntái revival; provides background on Yǒu-yán’s milieu.)
- Yang Cengwen 楊曾文. Sòng-Yuán Chánzōng shǐ 宋元禅宗史. Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2006. (For the broader Sòng Buddhist scholastic context.)
Other points of interest
The Bèijiǎn is one of the few surviving works by Yǒuyán, who was primarily famous in his lifetime as a teacher and Pure Land practitioner rather than as a published exegete. It survives because it was incorporated into the Sòng Tiāntái scholastic curriculum and consequently transmitted in the Japanese Tendai library tradition, from which it was eventually reprinted in the Manji-zoku 卍續 supplementary canon at Kyoto in the early 20th century.