Fǎhuá jīng jīngjiě pínglín 法華經精解評林
Fine Interpretations and Critical Forest on the Lotus Sūtra by 焦竑 (Jiāo Hóng / Ruòhóu / Dànyuán, 纂)
About the work
A two-juan late-Míng critical-evaluative compendium on the Lotus Sūtra by 焦竑 Jiāo Hóng (1540–1620), the late-Wànlì polymath, zhuàngyuán of 1589, lay Buddhist patron of the Jiāxīngzàng publishing project, and central figure of late-Wànlì literati Buddhism. The work is the principal late-Míng literati-produced Lotus Sūtra commentary and one of the few major canonical Lotus commentaries by a non-monastic author.
Prefaces
The text in the X31n0612 recension carries Jiāo Hóng’s own framing of the pínglín 評林 (“critical-forest”) genre: a compendium that gathers and evaluates the principal commentarial interpretations of a foundational text, providing critical assessment from the editor’s perspective. The genre is parallel to the contemporary Confucian pínglín critical compendia that became a standard productive form in the late-Wànlì Lǐxué 理學 commentarial revival.
Abstract
Jiāo Hóng’s Jīngjiě pínglín combines (1) selective extraction of the principal Tiāntái, Cí’ēn, and Sānlùn commentarial interpretations of the Lotus Sūtra; (2) critical evaluation (píng 評) of the relative merits and difficulties of each; and (3) synthesis of the most defensible positions into a unified literati-Buddhist reading. The work is consequently of substantial value both as a witness to late-Wànlì literati-Buddhist intellectual culture and as evidence for the broader late-Wànlì critical-philological tradition’s engagement with the Buddhist canonical corpus.
The work belongs together with the contemporary monastic productions of 德清 Hānshān Déqīng (KR6d0076, KR6d0077), 通潤 Tōngrùn (KR6d0080), and 圓澄 Yuánchéng (KR6d0079) as the principal late-Wànlì Lotus Sūtra commentarial output. Jiāo Hóng’s Pínglín is distinctive in this group as the only major non-monastic production: it represents the late-Wànlì literati-Buddhist intellectual movement’s substantial contribution to the broader Mahāyāna scholastic tradition.
The dating is bracketed within Jiāo Hóng’s productive period after his zhuàngyuán in 1589 and before his death in 1620. His specific Buddhist productive activity intensified after his retirement from court c. 1599, suggesting a most plausible composition period of c. 1599–1620.
Translations and research
- Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1993. (Standard treatment of late-Míng literati-Buddhist intellectual culture, with substantial discussion of Jiāo Hóng.)
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Edward T. Ch’ien. Chiao Hung and the Restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the Late Ming. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. (Standard intellectual biography of Jiāo Hóng.)
- de Bary, Wm. Theodore, and Lufrano, Richard. Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 through the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Other points of interest
Jiāo Hóng’s Jīngjiě pínglín is one of the few canonical Buddhist works in the Manji-zoku canon by an author who held the zhuàngyuán civil-examination distinction — the highest scholarly honour available in Míng China. Its preservation in the canonical apparatus reflects the late-Wànlì literati-Buddhist intellectual movement’s substantial institutional vitality and the willingness of the late-Míng monastic publishing tradition to incorporate non-monastic production into the canonical corpus.