Huáyán jīng zhāng 華嚴經章
Treatise on the Huáyán Scripture (anonymous Dūnhuáng fragment)
About the work
The Huáyán jīng zhāng is an anonymous, single-fascicle Dūnhuáng fragment preserved in Taishō volume 85 — the volume devoted entirely to fragmentary and apocryphal materials recovered from the Mogao Caves (敦煌石室遺書). The text is incomplete and badly damaged, with extensive lacunae marked in the modern editions by 「□」 (each square representing one missing graph). The opening reads “Profound and wondrous, [linked] to the name […] / […] the appearance without appearance […]” (奧妙紹名□□□□ / □□之相□□□□), which already indicates the typical genre of a Tang-dynasty Huáyán doctrinal essay (zhāng 章) — short topical treatments of points from the Huáyán such as those of which Fǎzàng’s Tànxuán jì (KR6e0004) supplies many parallels.
Prefaces
No tiyao or preface in source: this is a damaged Dūnhuáng manuscript fragment without front-matter.
Abstract
The text is anonymous, undated, and survives only in fragments retrieved from the Mogao caves at the start of the twentieth century by Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot. It is conventionally bracketed within the broad period 600 – 800 CE, the floruit of Chinese Huáyán studies — Dùshùn (557–640), Zhìyǎn (602–668), Fǎzàng (643–712), and the late-eighth-century Chéngguān — but no closer dating is possible without further philological work, and the fragmentary state of the text makes attribution to a known author (e.g. Fǎzàng or one of his disciples Huìyuàn 慧苑 or Wénchāo 文超) speculative. The Pelliot and Stein collections include several smaller Huáyán-related fragments that may belong to the same lost work, but no complete textual recovery has been accomplished.
The text is included in the Taishō (T2753) as part of the Dūnhuáng yíshū 敦煌遺書 series in volume 85, edited by the Taishō team on the basis of one or more manuscripts (the apparatus does not specify provenance); a comparable but distinct fragmentary commentary, [[KR6e0007|T2754 Huāyán lüè shū juàn dì sān 華嚴略疏卷第三]], also follows in the same series.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located. For methodology on Dūnhuáng Buddhist commentary fragments see Forte, A. The Hostage An Shigao and his Offspring. Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 1995, and the surveys in Soymié, M. ed. Contributions aux études sur Touen-houang, vols. 1–4 (Geneva, 1979–1986).
- Tanaka Ryōshō 田中良昭 et al., Dunhuang Bukkyō to Zen 敦煌仏教と禅. Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1983 — Dūnhuáng commentary fragments generally.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007.
Other points of interest
- The text is one of several anonymous Tang-period Huáyán fragments whose recovery from Dūnhuáng has fundamentally enriched modern knowledge of the breadth of the Tang Huáyán intellectual scene beyond the few extant works of the school’s named patriarchs.