Fǎhuá lùnshū 法華論疏
Subcommentary on the Lotus Sūtra Treatise by 吉藏 (Jízàng / Jiāxiáng dàshī, 撰)
About the work
A three-juan (上 / 中 / 下) Suí-period subcommentary on 世親菩薩 Vasubandhu’s Saddharma-puṇḍarīka-upadeśa (KR6d0126, T1519) by 吉藏 Jízàng (549–623), the Suí Sānlùn-school master. The work is the principal Suí-period non-Yogācāra subcommentary on Vasubandhu’s Lotus Sūtra commentary, and represents the Sānlùn-school engagement with the Indic Yogācāra Lotus apparatus that would otherwise be primarily transmitted through the Cí’ēn tradition. Preserved as T40n1818.
Prefaces
The text in the Taishō recension carries a Kè Fǎhuá lùnshū xù 刻法華論疏序 (“Engraving Preface”) by an unnamed editor, whose identity must be reconstructed from internal evidence. The preface frames the editorial project: “Fǎhuá lùnshū — this is what the Jiāxiáng Great Master composed. The original temple’s Shízàng Jù dàsēngzhèng [Shízàng of the Mountain temple, Great Sangha-Inspector] once divided-and-collated the original treatise; further added collation. He permitted me to publish-and-circulate. Lately a person responding-with-joy to its woodblock-printing, sent over the old text. According to it I [made] careful comparison-and-collation; missing characters and erroneous places, here and there. I therefore raised them on cells; alongside added Japanese language [readings]; sent [it] to the cutter. The cutting-blocks already complete, the printer-craftsman requested [me] to make this preface.”
The preface establishes that the Taishō recension is based on a Japanese editorial project that printed Jízàng’s Sānlùn subcommentary on Vasubandhu’s Lotus upadeśa — preserving the work in the East-Asian canonical apparatus through Japanese editorial intervention.
Abstract
Jízàng’s Fǎhuá lùn-shū is one of his four Lotus Sūtra works, alongside the Xuánlùn (KR6d0023), the Yìshū (KR6d0024), and the Yóuyì (KR6d0025). Where those three address the Lotus Sūtra directly through the Sānlùn doctrinal framework, the Lùnshū addresses the Indic Yogācāra commentary on the Lotus — Vasubandhu’s Saddharma-puṇḍarīka-upadeśa — and provides the Sānlùn-school engagement with the foundational Indic Mahāyāna commentary on the Lotus.
The work’s distinctive doctrinal contribution is its negotiation of the substantial doctrinal differences between Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra Lotus interpretation (with its trisvabhāva and gotra commitments) and Jízàng’s Madhyamaka Sānlùn-school reading (with its èrdì 二諦 and bābù zhōngdào 八不中道 commitments). Jízàng’s negotiation of these differences provides one of the most thoroughly documented Sui-period inter-Mahāyāna-school doctrinal exchanges and is consequently of substantial interest for the modern reconstruction of the Sui-period scholastic intellectual culture.
The composition is bracketed within Jízàng’s mature productive period c. 597–623.
Translations and research
See KR6d0023, KR6d0024, KR6d0025 for the bibliography on Jízàng’s other Lotus Sūtra works.
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Chūgoku Hannya shisōshi kenkyū: Kichizō to Sanron gakuha 中国般若思想史研究：吉藏と三論学派. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1976.
- Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. Kichizō no Hokekyō kaishaku no kenkyū 吉蔵の法華経解釈の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 2003.
Links
- CBETA online text T1818
- DDB 法華論疏
- Kanseki DB
- 吉藏 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (600): T CBETA Taishō — Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924–1932.