Fǎhuá jīng shū 法華經疏
Subcommentary on the Lotus Sūtra by 竺道生 (Zhú Dàoshēng / Lónguāng Dàoshēng, 撰)
About the work
A two-juan (上 / 下) commentary on 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s translation of the Lotus Sūtra (KR6d0001, T262), composed by 竺道生 Zhú Dàoshēng (355–434), one of the central figures of pre-Tang Chinese Buddhist scholastic-doctrinal thought and the earliest substantial Chinese commentary on the Lotus Sūtra to survive. The work predates Fǎyún’s Yìjì (KR6d0005, the next earliest substantially-surviving Lotus commentary) by approximately a century and provides the foundational stratum of Sinitic Lotus exegesis.
Prefaces
The text in the X27n0577 recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work proceeds directly with chapter-by-chapter commentary, opening with the Xùpǐn 序品 (Introductory chapter, ch. 1) and continuing through to the end of the Lotus Sūtra. The structural division into 上 (upper) and 下 (lower) juan groups the chapters in roughly equal proportions, with the upper juan covering chapters 1–4 (序, 方便, 譬喻, 信解) and the lower juan covering the remaining chapters.
Abstract
Dàoshēng’s Fǎhuá jīng shū is the principal pre-medieval Chinese commentary on the Lotus Sūtra and one of the most important documents of pre-Tang Sinitic Buddhist hermeneutics. Composed during Dàoshēng’s mature productive period after his return from Cháng’ān (post-413) and before his death in 434, the work represents the convergence in his thought of (1) the Madhyamaka apparatus he had received from 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva at Cháng’ān; (2) the Northern Mahāparinirvāṇa tradition of universal Buddha-nature, which he had defended in advance of textual evidence; and (3) the Southern Lúshān Pure Land tradition of 慧遠 Huìyuǎn.
The commentary articulates several positions that became foundational for the subsequent Sinitic Lotus tradition: (1) the doctrine of kāiquán xiǎnshí 開權顯實 (“opening the provisional to disclose the real”) as the Lotus’s central hermeneutic, anticipating the Tiāntái formulation by some 150 years; (2) the doctrine of yījí yībùèr 一極一不二 (“the one-supreme is one-non-dual”) as the Lotus’s doctrinal commitment, anticipating the Tiāntái yuánjiào 圓教; and (3) the doctrine that the Devadatta-prophecy of universal Buddhahood (preserved in the supplementary Devadatta chapter) applies to all sentient beings without exception including the icchantika — the position that later proved Dàoshēng’s most controversial commitment but that was eventually vindicated by the textual evidence of the longer Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra.
The work is also of substantial interest as a witness to the immediate post-Kumārajīva reception of the Lotus Sūtra in Chinese Buddhism. Dàoshēng had been one of Kumārajīva’s principal lay-translator disciples at Cháng’ān (along with 僧肇 Sēngzhào, 僧融 Sēngróng, and 僧叡 Sēngruì), and his commentary preserves the tradition of Kumārajīva’s own teaching on the Lotus filtered through Dàoshēng’s distinctive doctrinal lens.
The work was lost in the late Tang and survived only in scattered fragmentary citations in subsequent commentaries until the rediscovery of a complete manuscript in the modern period; the Manji-zoku edition is based on this manuscript recovery. The textual history of the surviving recension is consequently complex, and some modern scholars (notably Kim Young-Ho 1990) have argued that significant portions of the surviving text reflect later editorial activity rather than Dàoshēng’s original composition.
Translations and research
- Kim, Young-Ho. Tao-sheng’s Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra: A Study and Translation. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. (The standard English-language translation of Dàoshēng’s Fǎhuá jīng shū, with extensive philological and doctrinal apparatus.)
- Liebenthal, Walter. “The World Conception of Chu Tao-sheng.” Monumenta Nipponica 11 (1955–1956): 65–103, 287–300.
- Liebenthal, Walter. “A Biography of Chu Tao-sheng.” Monumenta Nipponica 11 (1955): 64–96.
- Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. Hokke gisho no kenkyū 法華義疏の研究. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1996. (Treats Dàoshēng’s commentary as the foundational stratum of pre-Tiāntái Lotus exegesis.)
- Hurvitz, Leon. Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk. Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 12. Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1962.
- Lai, Whalen. “Sinitic Mādhyamika and the Lotus Sūtra: Tao-sheng’s Theory of Sudden Enlightenment Re-examined.” In Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, ed. Peter N. Gregory, 169–200. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987.
- Tang Yongtong 湯用彤. Hàn-Wèi Liǎngjìn Nánběicháo Fójiào shǐ 漢魏兩晉南北朝佛教史. Shanghai: Shānghǎi shūdiàn, 1991 [orig. 1938]. (Foundational history of pre-Tang Chinese Buddhism, treating Dàoshēng extensively.)
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Chūgoku Hannya shisōshi kenkyū 中国般若思想史研究. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1976.
Other points of interest
The survival of Dàoshēng’s Fǎhuá jīng shū is one of the more remarkable instances of textual recovery in modern Buddhist scholarship: the work was lost in the late Tang, survived only in citations in subsequent commentaries through the medieval and early-modern periods, and was eventually recovered through the Manji-zoku canonical apparatus in the early 20th century. Its preservation is consequently of substantial importance for the modern study of pre-Tang Chinese Buddhist intellectual history, providing direct access to one of the foundational figures of Sinitic Mahāyāna at a level of detail not available for most of his contemporaries.