Fǎhuá jīng xuánzàn shèshì 法華經玄贊攝釋
Comprehensive Glosses on the Profound Encomium on the Lotus Sūtra by 智周 (Zhìzhōu / Púyáng dàshī, 撰)
About the work
A four-juan condensed subcommentary on Kuījī’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xuánzàn (KR6d0026, T1723), composed by Zhìzhōu 智周 (678–733), the third patriarch of the Chinese Cí’ēn 慈恩 / Yogācāra school in succession to Xuánzàng, Kuījī, and Huìzhāo. The work follows the chapter-by-chapter division of the Lotus Sūtra and provides selective commentary on the most doctrinally significant or textually problematic passages of Kuījī’s Xuánzàn, leaving aside passages whose meaning was clear and unproblematic.
Prefaces
The text in the X34n0636 recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with the Fǎhuá jīng xuánzàn shèshì mùcì 法華經玄贊攝釋目次 (table of contents), arranged by chapter of the Lotus Sūtra following Kuījī’s Xuánzàn’s division.
Abstract
Zhìzhōu’s Shèshì — its title literally “comprehensive glosses” but functionally “condensed glosses” — is the principal Yogācāra-school subcommentary on Kuījī’s Xuánzàn outside Huìzhāo’s Yìjué tradition. Where Huìzhāo’s Yìjué (KR6d0027) focuses on the polemical defense of Kuījī’s controversial doctrinal positions, Zhìzhōu’s Shèshì provides the more conventional scholastic apparatus: clarification of obscure passages, identification of canonical citations, supplementary textual notes, and condensed re-expression of Kuījī’s most extended doctrinal expositions.
The work is consequently more valuable as a study aid than as a polemical instrument, and was widely used in the Cí’ēn scholastic curriculum as a companion text for the study of Kuījī’s Xuánzàn. Its four-juan extent makes it the shortest of the major Cí’ēn Lotus Sūtra subcommentaries, and its accessibility ensured its continued transmission through the medieval period.
Zhìzhōu was the principal southern Cí’ēn transmitter, teaching primarily at the Púyángsì 濮陽寺 in Sìzhōu 泗州 (modern Jiāngsū) — distinct from Huìzhāo’s northern centre at Zīzhōu 淄州. Through his Japanese disciples (most importantly 玄昉 Genbō, who returned to Japan in 735) Zhìzhōu’s Cí’ēn doctrinal apparatus was carried to Japan, where it became one of the foundational textual corpora of the Japanese Hossō 法相 school of Nara Buddhism.
The composition is generally dated to Zhìzhōu’s mature productive period after Huìzhāo’s mature work (c. 700–733); the work was incorporated into the Cí’ēn scholastic curriculum and transmitted continuously through the medieval period in the Japanese Hossō library tradition, from which it was eventually reprinted in the Manji-zoku 卍續 supplementary canon.
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.
- Lusthaus, Dan. Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun. London: Routledge, 2002.
- Cook, Francis H. Three Texts on Consciousness Only. BDK English Tripiṭaka 60-I, II, III. Berkeley: Numata Center, 1999.
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士. Heian shoki Bukkyō shisō no kenkyū 平安初期仏教思想の研究. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1995. (For the Japanese Hossō reception of Zhì-zhōu’s apparatus.)
Other points of interest
Zhìzhōu’s Shèshì and his other Yogācāra works — particularly the Chéngwéishí lùn yǎnmì 成唯識論演秘 (T1833, the standard Chéngwéishí lùn subcommentary) and the Yīnmíng rù zhènglǐ lùn shū qiánjì / hòujì (T1841, T1842) — were jointly the textual foundation of the Japanese Hossō school’s institutional curriculum, and their transmission to Nara through Genbō and Dōshō represents one of the principal moments in the East-Asian transmission of the Cí’ēn tradition. The Japanese Hossō school remained the principal institutional vehicle for the Cí’ēn corpus after the school’s decline in late-Táng and early-Sòng China.