Guānyīn jīng pǔmén pǐn chóngsòng 觀音經普門品重頌
Commentary on the Verses of the Pǔmén Chapter of the Guānyīn Sūtra by 遵式 (Zūnshì / Cíyún chànzhǔ, 述)
About the work
A single-juan commentary on the verse portion (chóngsòng 重頌, gāthā-restatement) of the Pǔmén pǐn 普門品 — chapter 25 of the Lotus Sūtra (KR6d0001, T262), the Avalokiteśvara chapter — by 遵式 Zūnshì (964–1032), the central figure of the Northern-Sòng Tiāntái-Pure Land synthesis at the Tiānzhúsì 天竺寺 in Hángzhōu. The work is preserved as X35n0646 in the Xùzàngjīng and is signed in the body Sòng Tiānzhúsì shāmén Zūnshì shù 宋天竺寺沙門 遵式 述.
Prefaces
The text in the X35n0646 recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens directly with Zūnshì’s editorial framing: ”△[The structural marker indicates] the second chóngsòng — these are [the verses] which 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta of the Suí Yángdì Dàyè era, after Zhìzhě’s [智顗 Zhìyǐ’s] death, translated and inserted into the great work [the Lotus Sūtra]; thus the [original Tiāntái] commentary lacks an explanation of them. The Línggǎn zhuàn (靈感傳) records that a heavenly being’s voice from Nánshān [道宣 Dàoxuān] said: ‘Master [鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva], an eighth-stage bodhisattva, when translating the Lotus Sūtra omitted the Avalokiteśvara verses [chóngsòng] — since this concerns the dark karmic recompense, this textual evidence is reliable.’ Today I rely on the two preceding question-and-answer sections and follow the text in brief explanation; it is firmly difficult to exhaust the principle. Lecturers should simply ensure not to lose the general outline of the upper text; there is no need to display difference.”
Abstract
The Chóngsòng commentary addresses a specific textual gap in the Tiāntái Lotus commentarial tradition: 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s translation of the Lotus omitted the verse portion of the Pǔmén chapter, which was supplied only later from 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta’s Tiānpǐn miàofǎ liánhuá jīng (KR6d0003, T264) and inserted into the standard received Lotus text. As a consequence, 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s Pǔmén commentaries (the Xuányì KR6d0046 and the Yìshū KR6d0048) — composed before this insertion was widely circulated — do not provide doctrinal exposition of the verses. Zūnshì’s Chóngsòng fills this gap, providing the standard Tiāntái doctrinal interpretation of the verse portion of the Pǔmén in 26 verses (twenty-six jié 偈, divided into one introductory verse of paired questions and twenty-five verses of paired answers).
The work is consequently of substantial textual-historical importance: it documents the late-Sòng Tiāntái awareness of the Pǔmén verse-portion’s late textual provenance and provides the doctrinally standard Tiāntái commentary on the supplemented material. Zūnshì’s editorial framing — citing the Línggǎn zhuàn (靈感傳) and the heavenly-voice tradition associated with Nánshān 道宣 Dàoxuān — also documents the Sòng Tiāntái awareness of the textual-historical complexity of the Lotus Sūtra and the willingness of the Sòng tradition to engage critically with the relation between Kumārajīva’s translation and the supplementary material.
The composition is dated to Zūnshì’s mature productive period at Tiānzhúsì in Hángzhōu, c. 996–1032.
Translations and research
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “Buddhist Practice and the Lotus Sūtra in China.” In Readings of the Lotus Sūtra, eds. Stephen F. Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone, 132–150. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Tiāntái Four Forms of Samādhi and Late North–South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T’ang Buddhist Devotionalism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987.
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
- 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.
- 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.
Other points of interest
The textual provenance issue Zūnshì addresses — 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s omission of the Pǔmén verse portion and its later supplementation from 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta — was one of the most widely discussed late-Sòng Tiāntái textual-critical problems and a model for the broader Sòng Tiāntái engagement with the textual history of the Lotus Sūtra. The Línggǎn zhuàn (靈感傳)‘s “heavenly-voice” tradition cited by Zūnshì — that Kumārajīva, an “eighth-stage bodhisattva,” omitted the verses for reasons of dark karmic recompense — is itself an important Sòng Buddhist hagiographical motif demonstrating the period’s tendency to interpret textual-philological issues through karmic-cosmological frameworks.