Fǎhuá jīng rùshū 法華經入疏
Inserted-Annotation Subcommentary on the Lotus Sūtra by 道威 Dàowēi (Sìmíng Wēi, 入注 — interpolating annotator)
About the work
A twelve-juan Sòng-period subcommentary on the Lotus Sūtra by Dàowēi 道威, a Sìmíng 四明 (Níngbō) Buddhist master whose biographical details are largely unrecorded. The genre — rùshū 入疏 (“inserted-into-subcommentary”) — indicates a commentary in which Dàowēi’s own annotations are interpolated directly into the text of an existing earlier subcommentary, with the goal of producing a unified text in which original commentary and supplementary annotation can be read together. The work is preserved as X30n0600 in the Xùzàngjīng.
Prefaces
The text in the X30n0600 recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with the Fǎhuá jīng rùshū mùcì 妙法蓮華經入疏目次 (table of contents), arranged by chapter of the Lotus Sūtra in the standard twenty-eight-chapter division, and proceeds with the Xùpǐn dìyī 序品第一 (“Introductory Chapter, the First”).
Abstract
The Rùshū — “inserted-subcommentary” — is a genre in which a later commentator’s annotations are interpolated directly into the text of an earlier subcommentary. The base text Dàowēi worked on is not securely identified in the surviving recension; on the basis of his Sìmíng affiliation it is most plausibly the standard shānjiā commentarial corpus on the Lotus, possibly 知禮 Zhīlǐ’s [Tiāntái Sìmíng] Pǔmén commentaries (KR6d0047, KR6d0049) extended through the Wénjù-based exegesis. The twelve-juan extent corresponds to the standard division of 吉藏 Jízàng’s Yìshū (KR6d0024); Dàowēi may have interpolated his annotations into a Tiāntái-school adaptation of Jízàng’s structural framework.
The work is consequently of interest as a Sòng-period example of the rùshū editorial genre — a Sòng innovation in commentarial production that anticipated the late-Míng combined-edition (huìběn) genre by allowing readers to access an earlier text and a later commentator’s annotations in unified form rather than in parallel separate texts. Dàowēi’s Rùshū is one of the few surviving Sòng rùshū productions on a major Mahāyāna sūtra.
The dating is uncertain. Dàowēi’s lifedates are not recorded; his productive period must postdate 知禮 Zhīlǐ’s mature work (early eleventh century) and predate the late-Sòng productive period of the shānjiā lineage. A defensible bracket of c. 1000–1200 covers his probable active period.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The rùshū editorial genre is parallel to the contemporary Confucian fùzhù 附註 (attached-annotation) genre developed in the Northern-Sòng Lǐxué 理學 commentarial tradition: in both cases, a later commentator’s annotations are interpolated into an earlier authoritative text rather than circulated as a separate parallel commentary. The Sòng tendency toward integrated commentary-and-base-text editions reflects a broader Sòng-period scholarly preference for unified rather than fragmentary access to authoritative material.