Fǎhuá jīng xuánzàn shì 法華經玄贊釋
Glosses on the Profound Encomium on the Lotus Sūtra Author unknown.
About the work
A single-juan anonymous Cí’ēn 慈恩 / Yogācāra-school glossarial subcommentary on Kuījī’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xuánzàn (KR6d0026, T1723), preserved as X34n0639 in the Xùzàngjīng. The catalog meta lists no author; no author-attribution is preserved in the body of the text. The text itself opens with extensive lacunae (□□□□□□□□… in the surviving witness), suggesting that the work is preserved only in fragmentary or damaged form, possibly from a manuscript discovered at Dunhuang or from a partial Japanese Hossō library transmission.
Prefaces
The text in the X34n0639 recension carries no separate translator’s preface and the opening is partially lacunose. The body opens directly with a discussion of Buddhist sectarian history: “[The Buddha said:] ’… he caused others to enter; the Way arose because of [his] voice. This is named the true Buddha-teaching.’ Subsequently in the same second century [after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa], from the Mahāsāṃghika school there issued forth eight subschools: 1, the Eka-vyāvahārika (‘one-utterance’) school; 2, the Lokottaravāda (‘supramundane-doctrine’) school; 3, the Kaukkuṭika (‘chicken-descent’) school; 4, the Bahuśrutīya (‘much-heard’) school; 5, the Prajñaptivāda (‘designation-doctrine’) school; 6, the Caitya-śaila (‘caitya-mountain’) school; 7, the Western-Mountain-Dwellers; 8, the Northern-Mountain-Dwellers.”
Abstract
The Xuánzàn shì is a fragmentary Cí’ēn-school glossarial subcommentary on Kuī-jī’s Xuánzàn whose authorship is unknown and whose textual extent (one juan) suggests either a partial transmission of a longer work or a brief original composition. The surviving content in the canonical recension covers (1) Buddhist sectarian history, with detailed discussion of the eighteen-or-twenty Hīnayāna schools of post-parinirvāṇa Indian Buddhism; (2) the textual history of the Lotus Sūtra in the Indic context; and (3) selected glossarial comments on Kuī-jī’s Xuánzàn.
The discussion of the eighteen Hīnayāna schools draws on Xuánzàng’s translation of the Yibu-zonglun lun 異部宗輪論 (T2031, the Samayabhedoparacanacakra), Paramārtha’s parallel translation, and the Mañjuśrīparipṛcchā-sūtra 文殊問經. The text engages directly with the Mahāsāṃghika and Sthaviravāda lineage divisions and notes the variant numbering traditions in different translations: “If the explanation of the Mañjuśrīparipṛcchā-sūtra is adopted, there are twenty schools; but the translators…”
The work’s anonymity, fragmentary preservation, and topical concentration on Buddhist sectarian history (rather than on the running commentary on the Lotus that one would expect from a Xuánzàn shì) suggests that the surviving text may represent only a portion — likely an introductory or supplementary section — of an originally larger work. The dating must be bracketed loosely within the productive period of the late-Táng Cí’ēn-school commentarial activity (c. 700–900).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The lacunose state of the text’s opening — preserved with substantial lost passages indicated by □ characters in the canonical recension — is characteristic of texts whose transmission depends on a single damaged manuscript or woodblock witness. The case is parallel to several Dunhuang manuscripts of mid-Táng Buddhist commentaries that have been subsequently incorporated into the modern canonical apparatus despite their fragmentary preservation. No definitive evidence places the Xuánzàn shì among the Dunhuang Cí’ēn-school manuscripts, but the text’s textual character is consistent with such a provenance.
Links
- CBETA online text: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/X0639
- Kanseki DB