Fǎhuá jīng kēzhù 法華經科註
Sectional-Analysis-and-Annotation Subcommentary on the Lotus Sūtra by 徐行善 (Xú Xíngshàn, 科註)
About the work
An eight-juan Yuán-dynasty Lotus Sūtra subcommentary (法華經科註) by 徐行善 Xú Xíngshàn, a Sìmíng 四明 (Níngbō) lay Buddhist scholar attached to the Nánhú 南湖 Tiāntái community under the master 可明 Kěmíng. Composed during the high Yuán productive period, the work belongs to the Tiāntái-derived jiāng shū rù jīng 將疏入經 genre that Xú Xíngshàn also employed in his Jīngāng shū kēshì 金剛疏科釋 (KR6c0054, dated 1294) — interleaving received Tiāntái commentaries with the Lotus Sūtra root-text for easier study.
Prefaces
The text opens with the Re-engraving Preface to the Lotus Sūtra Sectional-Annotations (《重刻法華科註序》), which presents the editorial framing in the standard Tiāntái yīxīn miàojìng 一心妙境 register: “Wonderful Dharma is the alternative name of one’s own mind. Lotus flower is the apt parable of the wonderful dharma. The mind in relation to things — at the very matter, [it is] real; just as the lotus’s blooming is real where polluted yet pure. Sūtra means ‘path’; it is fitting to attain the road-essence of the wonderful realm of one’s own mind.”
The preface continues with editorial framing of Xú Xíngshàn’s collaboration with the Sòng work of 守倫 Shǒulún (KR6d0071): “Xúshì re-cut [the work]; he asked me to do the collation-and-comparison again. Master [Shǒu]lún, although following Tiāntái and the Miàolè tradition’s earlier circulation, could not avoid errors and orthographical confusions — not only in fine details where ‘jiā/hài’ and ‘xī/shì’ [characters] are confused, but also in the meaning, places where the yānshuō [casual reference] and the jǔzhú [raised-candle] [allusions] are exchanged. Now I have corrected this in order to facilitate the broad expounding.”
This preface confirms that Xú Xíngshàn’s work is in part an editorial revision of Shǒulún’s earlier Kēzhù (KR6d0071), correcting textual errors and bringing the work into closer conformity with the Tiāntái-Miàolè scholastic tradition.
Abstract
Xú Xíngshàn’s Kēzhù belongs to the Yuán-period continuation of the Sòng kēzhù commentarial genre, providing both detailed sectional analysis (kē 科) and phrase-by-phrase annotation (zhù 註) of the Lotus Sūtra in the Tiāntái scholastic framework. The work draws on and corrects Shǒulún’s earlier Sòng Kēzhù (KR6d0071); together the two works represent a continuous Sòng-through-Yuán Tiāntái kēzhù tradition.
The work is also of substantial interest as a witness to the Yuán-period Tiāntái lay-scholarly tradition at Nánhú in Sìmíng. Xú Xíngshàn’s status as a jūshì (lay-disciple) is significant: his productive output represents the increasingly important Yuán-Míng tradition of substantial lay Buddhist scholarship, in which non-monastic intellectuals produced major commentarial works on the foundational Mahāyāna sūtras. His Jīngāng shū kēshì (KR6c0054) and the present Fǎhuá jīng kēzhù together constitute a substantial Yuán lay-scholarly Tiāntái apparatus.
The dating is approximate. Xú Xíngshàn’s Jīngāng shū kēshì is dated 1294; the Fǎhuá jīng kēzhù is most plausibly placed in the same productive period, c. 1280–1310.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The Yuán-period continuity of the Tiāntái Lotus kēzhù tradition through lay-scholarly transmission — Xú Xíngshàn’s role as both editor of Shǒulún’s Sòng work and producer of his own parallel Kēzhù — demonstrates the institutional vitality of the Sìmíng / Nánhú Tiāntái community under Mongol rule. The continuity of major scholastic productive activity in the Yuán Tiāntái community is a corrective to the conventional scholarly view of the Yuán as a period of decline for Chinese Buddhism.