Guānyīn jīng xuányì jì huìběn 觀音經玄義記會本
Combined Edition of the Guānyīn Sūtra Profound-Meaning Subcommentary spoken by 智顗 (Zhìyǐ, 說); subcommentary by 知禮 (Zhīlǐ of Sòng, 述)
About the work
A four-juan combined-edition (huìběn 會本) interweaving Zhìyǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì (KR6d0046, T1726) with Zhīlǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì jì (KR6d0047, T1727) into a single readable text. The combination was undertaken by the late-Míng lay-disciple 王季常 Wáng Jìcháng 居士 of the Gōngbù 工部 in Chóngzhēn 崇禎 1 (1628) and printed at Jīnlíng in 1629. The work is preserved as X35n0642 in the Xùzàngjīng.
Prefaces
The text in the X35n0642 recension preserves Zhīlǐ’s original autobiographical preface from the Xuányì jì (see KR6d0047 for translation), placed at the head of the combined-edition text and bracketed with the editorial markers 【 and 】 to distinguish it from the Sui-period material. The preface concludes with Zhīlǐ’s dating: “Tiānxǐ 5, xīnyǒu year, 8th month, 1st day [= 1021], the absolute brush — therefore [it is] the preface.”
Abstract
The combined-edition (huìběn) is a late-Míng editorial product designed to make Zhīlǐ’s Sòng-period subcommentary on Zhìyǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì accessible to a non-scholarly readership by interweaving the two texts in alternating segments. The editorial method is conventional: each pericope of Zhìyǐ’s Xuányì is presented in a smaller font or distinguished typography, immediately followed by the corresponding section of Zhīlǐ’s Xuányì jì, allowing the reader to follow the original text and the Sòng commentary in parallel without having to consult two separate volumes.
The work is one of four parallel late-Míng combined-edition / outline projects on the Tiāntái Pǔmén corpus undertaken by 王季常 Wáng Jìcháng’s circle: this combined-edition of the Xuányì / Xuányì jì; the parallel huìběn of the Yìshū / Yìshū jì (whose canonical witness, if any survives separately, is not securely identified); and the four auxiliary navigational works (KR6d0050, KR6d0051, KR6d0053, KR6d0054).
The combined-edition genre — providing parallel reading of a foundational text and its standard subcommentary in a single volume — was a distinctive late-Míng productive form, particularly developed by the Jīnlíng / Jiāxīngzàng publishing tradition for both Buddhist and Confucian texts. Its educational rationale was the reduction of the bibliographical and economic barriers to scholarly study of dense Sòng-period commentarial works.
The authorship and date in the frontmatter are conventional: the huìběn itself is a late-Míng editorial production (1628–1629), but the substance of the text remains the Sui-period Xuányì of Zhìyǐ and the Sòng-period Xuányì jì of Zhīlǐ.
Translations and research
See KR6d0046 and KR6d0047 for the bibliographies on the Xuányì and Xuányì jì.
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Other points of interest
The 1628–1629 dating of the huìběn places its production at the very end of the Míng dynasty (which fell in 1644) and at the height of the late-Míng Buddhist publishing renaissance under the Jiāxīngzàng 嘉興藏 project. The collapse of the Míng and the subsequent Manchu conquest disrupted but did not terminate this publishing tradition; the huìběn and its auxiliary apparatus continued to circulate through the Qing and were eventually incorporated into the Manji-zoku canonical apparatus.