Fǎhuá wénjù jì 法華文句記
Notes on the Phrase-by-Phrase Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra (subcommentary on T1718) by 湛然 (Zhànrán / Jīngxī Zhànrán, 述)
About the work
The standard Tiāntái subcommentary on Zhìyǐ’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng wénjù (KR6d0014, T1718), in ten juan (Taishō: thirty fascicles in 卷上 / 中 / 下 subdivisions for some juan), composed by Zhànrán 湛然 (711–782), the ninth patriarch of the Tiāntái 天台 school. Together with the Fǎhuá xuányì shìqiān (KR6d0007, T1717) and the Zhǐguān fǔxíng zhuànhóngjué 止觀輔行傳弘決 (T1912) on the Móhē zhǐguān, this work constitutes the second of Zhànrán’s three great commentaries on the Tiāntái sāndàbù, which collectively transmitted Zhìyǐ’s three foundational treatises to subsequent Tiāntái generations in textually-restored and doctrinally-amplified form.
Prefaces
The text preserves Zhànrán’s own brief opening note in lieu of a separate preface. Zhànrán’s editorial framing of the project as a textual-restoration enterprise — supplementing Lǎng of Qīngtàisì’s 清泰寺 mid-eighth-century reconstruction of Zhìyǐ’s Wénjù — is set out in Shénjiǒng’s 神逈 preface to the Wénjù itself (see KR6d0014).
Abstract
The Wénjù jì is the second of Zhànrán’s three great Tiāntái commentaries and the principal Táng-period interpretive apparatus for the running line-by-line exegesis of the Lotus Sūtra. Its method is closely parallel to the Shìqiān: phrase-by-phrase glossarial annotation of Zhìyǐ’s text, supplemented by extended doctrinal commentary at structurally important points and by polemical engagement with rival exegetical traditions (especially Huāyán and Sānlùn).
The work elaborates the Tiāntái sìzhǒng shì 四種釋 (“four kinds of explanation”: yīnyuán 因緣, yuējiào 約教, běnjì 本跡, guānxīn 觀心) hermeneutic that Zhìyǐ had introduced in the Wénjù, providing detailed doctrinal commentary on Zhìyǐ’s application of the four-fold method to each significant pericope of the Lotus. Zhànrán is particularly concerned to defend Zhìyǐ’s distinctive readings against later misinterpretations and to clarify the relation between the guānxīn (contemplating-the-mind) explanation and the broader Tiāntái meditative apparatus of the Móhē zhǐguān.
The work is also of substantial textual-historical interest: Zhànrán in many places preserves the reading of an earlier (pre-Lǎng) recension of the Wénjù, allowing modern textual scholarship to reconstruct elements of the eighth-century textual history of Zhìyǐ’s lecture-transcript that would otherwise be lost. Hirai Shun’ei’s Hokke monku no seiritsu ni kansuru kenkyū (1985) is the standard study.
The composition is generally dated, with the Shìqiān, to Zhànrán’s mature productive period c. 750–780, with substantial portions composed during the post-An-Lushan retreat at Yíxīng / Pítán. The work entered the Tiāntái scholastic curriculum immediately upon completion and remained the standard commentary on the Wénjù through the medieval period.
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 the Wén-jù jì extensively as the principal witness to the textual history of the Wén-jù.)
- Penkower, Linda L. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993.
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku kenkyū 唐代天台学研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975. (Standard study of mid-Táng Tiāntái scholasticism.)
- 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.
- Sekiguchi Shindai 関口真大. Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū 天台小止観の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1954.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T’ien-t’ai Buddhism.” In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory, 45–97. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986.
Other points of interest
A long Sòng-period subcommentary tradition developed around the Wénjù jì, most notably the Fǎhuá wénjù fǔzhèng jì of Dàoxiān 道暹 (KR6d0016, X28n0593) and the various yìzuǎn 義纘 of the Tiāntái school of Sìmíng Zhīlǐ. The text was carried to Japan with the rest of the Tiāntái triple-treatise corpus by Saichō 最澄 in 805 and remained a standard text of Tendai 天台 monastic education through the medieval period.