Zhù Wúliàngyì jīng 註無量義經
Commentary on the Sūtra of Innumerable Meanings (J. Chū Muryōgikyō) by 最澄 (Zuìchéng / Saichō, 撰)
About the work
A three-juan commentary on the Wúliàngyì jīng 無量義經 (KR6d0118, T276) — the Sūtra of Innumerable Meanings, the canonical kāijīng 開經 (“opening sūtra”) of the Lotus traditional triad (Kāijīng + Lotus + Closing-sūtra / Pǔxián guānjīng KR6d0120). The commentary is attributed to Saichō 最澄 (767–822), the founder of the Japanese Tendai school, and is preserved in the Taishō at T56n2193. As one of Saichō’s principal preserved doctrinal works, it represents the foundational Japanese-Tendai doctrinal exegesis of the Lotus kāijīng and a key witness to Saichō’s program of establishing the Lotus-triad as the canonical scriptural foundation of Japanese Tendai.
Prefaces
The Taishō recension carries a brief opening framing-statement identifying the work as Eizan Saichō chū 叡山最澄註 (“annotated by Saichō of Mount Hiei”). The work proceeds chapter-by-chapter through the Muryōgikyō’s three chapters (déxíng pǐn 德行品 — virtue-conduct chapter; shuōfǎ pǐn 說法品 — preaching-the-dharma chapter; shígōngdé pǐn 十功德品 — ten-merits chapter), providing for each a kēpàn 科判 (textual-divisional) analysis followed by phrase-by-phrase glossing.
Abstract
The Chū Muryōgikyō is one of Saichō’s principal preserved doctrinal works (alongside the Shōgon jikkyō 守護國界章, the Hokke shūku 法華秀句, and the polemical Hokke kowa 法華講話) and represents the foundational Japanese-Tendai exegesis of the Lotus kāijīng. The work establishes the doctrinal status of the Wúliàngyì jīng within the Tendai system: as the kāijīng of the Lotus, the Wúliàngyì is the doctrinal preface to the Lotus’s ekayāna revelation — the sūtra in which the Buddha sets up the doctrinal-scenario in which the ekayāna will subsequently be revealed.
The principal doctrinal innovation of the Wúliàngyì — the doctrine of wúliàng yì 無量義 (“innumerable meanings”) emerging from the single dharma (yī fǎ 一法) — is read by Saichō as a doctrinal-prefatory statement of the Tiāntái-school doctrine of yīniàn sānqiān 一念三千 (“a single moment of mind contains the three-thousand realms”): the Buddha’s preaching of innumerable doctrines from a single ultimate-truth foundation prefigures the Tendai doctrinal-meditative claim that the entire cosmos is contained in a single moment of mind.
The work’s textual basis is the standard Liú-Sòng (劉宋) translation of the Wúliàngyì jīng attributed to 曇摩伽陀耶舍 Tánmójiātuóyéshè (Dharmajātayaśas, fl. 481), which Saichō received in its standard Tang-Chinese form during his 804–805 Tang study mission. The traditional attribution of the Wúliàngyì jīng itself is contested in modern scholarship (some scholars regard it as a Chinese composition rather than a translation from Sanskrit), but Saichō and the medieval Japanese Tendai tradition treated it as an authentic Indian Mahāyāna scripture.
The dating of Saichō’s commentary is conventionally placed in the period after his 805 return from Tang and before his death in 822. Some scholars place it more specifically in the period of his polemical exchanges with the Hossō master 德一 Tokuitsu (broadly 817–822) — the famous Sanichi gonjitsu ronsō 三一權實論諍 (“debate over the provisional / real status of the three vehicles and one vehicle”) that consolidated the Japanese-Tendai doctrinal position on the Lotus ekayāna; on this dating the Chū Muryōgikyō would be a doctrinal preparation for the Lotus-related polemical exchanges.
Translations and research
- Groner, Paul. Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1984; reprinted 2000. — The standard Western-language monograph on Saichō; includes detailed treatment of the doctrinal context of the Chū Muryōgikyō.
- Dengyō Daishi zenshū 傳教大師全集. (Standard Japanese-language collected edition of Saichō’s writings.)
- Kuo Li-ying 郭麗英. Confession et contrition dans le bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe siècle. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1994. — Contains discussion of the Muryōgikyō tradition and its relation to the Lotus.
- Tamura Yoshirō 田村芳朗. Tendai hongaku ron 天台本覚論. Iwanami, 1982. — Standard treatment of the doctrinal-philosophical Tendai tradition initiated by Saichō.
Other points of interest
The Chū Muryōgikyō is one of the most important pre-Genshin Japanese-Tendai scholarly works and represents Saichō’s program of establishing the Lotus-triad (Wúliàngyì jīng / Lotus / Pǔxián guānjīng) as the canonical scriptural foundation of Japanese Tendai. The Tang-Chinese Tiantai tradition had recognised the Lotus-triad in formal terms but had not produced a separate sustained Faxiang-format commentary on the kāijīng; Saichō’s commentary therefore fills a gap in the pre-existing Tang-Tiantai commentarial corpus and was widely transmitted within the medieval Japanese Tendai tradition as an authoritative doctrinal reference.