Fǎhuá jīng yǎnyì 法華經演義
Expounded-Meaning Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra lectured by 一松 Yīsōng (dàshī, 講錄); edited by 廣和 Guǎnghé (編定)
About the work
A seven-juan late-Míng / early-Qīng Lotus Sūtra commentary based on the lecture-records (jiǎnglù 講錄) of 一松 Yīsōng dàshī 一松大師, edited and finalised (biāndìng 編定) by his disciple-editor 廣和 Guǎnghé 廣和. The work is preserved as X33n0625 in the Xùzàngjīng. Together with the parallel Yǎnyì kē (KR6d0090, X33n0624), the Yǎnyì constitutes a complete two-text apparatus on the Lotus Sūtra.
Prefaces
The text opens with the Xīnkè Fǎhuá yǎnyì xù 新刻法華演義序 by 曉柔 Xiǎoróu, the principal documentary source on Yīsōng’s biographical obscurity. Xiǎoróu writes: “The Fǎhuá yǎnyì is the lecture-record of Yīsōng dàshī. The Master is not known of what country he was, nor is his era clearly understood.” This biographical lacuna, despite the work’s substantial scholastic ambition, is one of the more striking instances of late-imperial Buddhist productive anonymity.
Abstract
Yīsōng’s Yǎnyì applies the yǎnyì 演義 (“expounded-meaning”) genre to the Lotus Sūtra: a relatively accessible interpretive exposition that draws on multiple commentarial traditions without committing strictly to any one school’s apparatus. The genre is parallel to the Yuán-Míng Sānguó yǎnyì 三國演義 (KR4k0063) and other vernacular literary genres in its accessible-narrative orientation, suggesting an intended readership broader than the specialist monastic-scholastic audience.
Yīsōng’s other surviving work — the Lèngyán jīng mìlù 楞嚴經秘錄 (KR6j0691, X13n0283, 10 juan) — confirms his substantial scholastic engagement with the principal Mahāyāna sūtras of late-imperial Chinese Buddhism. The biographical obscurity (his country of origin and era of activity were already unrecorded by the time of Xiǎoróu’s preface) is consistent with productive activity in the unsettled late-Míng / early-Qīng transitional period (c. 1620–1660), during which substantial monastic intellectual output was produced under conditions of political and institutional disruption that complicated subsequent biographical record-keeping.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The yǎnyì genre is one of the more literarily accessible Lotus Sūtra commentary genres. Its adoption by Yīsōng — a figure otherwise lost to the historical record — and its preservation through the editorial work of Guǎnghé in the early-Qīng period demonstrates the late-imperial Chinese Buddhist publishing tradition’s capacity to preserve substantial commentarial productions even when their original authors had passed beyond the bounds of recoverable biography.