Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng suí shū yǎn yì chāo 大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔
Notes on the Sub-commentary Expounding the Meaning of the Great, Vast Buddha-Flower-Garland Scripture by 澄觀 Chéngguān (述)
About the work
The Suí shū yǎn yì chāo — universally cited in East Asian Buddhist scholarship as the Yǎn yì chāo 演義鈔 or simply the Chāo — is the great sub-commentary of 澄觀 Chéngguān (738–839) on his own [[KR6e0011|Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng shū 大方廣佛華嚴經疏]] (T1735, 60 fasc.). At 90 fascicles, this is the largest single commentarial work in the East Asian Buddhist tradition: a vast pañjikā that takes up Chéngguān’s earlier Shū line by line, expanding citations, glossing technical terms, drawing in additional scriptural authorities, and elaborating doctrinal cruxes that the Shū had treated more concisely. Together, the Shū (60 fasc.) and the Chāo (90 fasc.) constitute a 150-fascicle scholastic edifice — the doctrinal and exegetical apex of the Tang Huáyán school’s intellectual achievement.
Prefaces
The work is preceded by Chéngguān’s preface, which establishes the rhetorical context for the sub-commentary. Chéngguān modestly presents himself as having ventured to write the Shū and now, in response to the entreaties of “more than a hundred lecturers” (講者盈百) who, working through his earlier commentary, found themselves unequal to the doctrinal density of the original sūtra and asked the master himself to provide further guidance, returns to amplify his earlier work. The preface frames the relation between the Avataṃsaka and its commentaries: “The Jìn translation [Buddhabhadra’s 60-fascicle text] is profound and recondite; Xiánshǒu gained access to its gate. The Tang version [Śikṣānanda’s 80-fascicle text] is a numinous register; later worthies have not yet penetrated its depths. I, Chéngguān, not measuring my own [shallow] understanding, ventured to expound its profundity.” The author acknowledges the wide circulation his earlier Shū has enjoyed (偶溢九州。遐飛四海), and provides the rationale for the Chāo in pedagogical terms.
Abstract
Composition of the Chāo dates to the period immediately following the completion of the Shū: c. 787 – 791 CE per the Sòng gāosēng zhuàn and Chéngguān’s own preface, when he was in his fiftieth decade and resident at the Dà Huáyán-sì 大華嚴寺 on Mt. Wǔtái. The work is a sub-commentary in the strictest sense: it is keyed line by line to the Shū, with each lemma in the Shū given full philological, historical, and doctrinal expansion. The total apparatus draws on more than 100 distinct Mahāyāna sūtras, several dozen Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka śāstras, the entire pre-Tang and Tang Chinese Huáyán corpus, the Tiāntái commentarial tradition (Zhànrán’s writings in particular), the major Chán records (especially of the Hé-zé lineage, of which Chéngguān was an initiate), and a wide range of Confucian and Daoist texts that Chéngguān treats comparatively. The result is, in effect, a doctrinal encyclopaedia of late-eighth-century Chinese Buddhism organised around the Avataṃsaka.
The Chāo is conventionally taught alongside the Shū as a single work; the standard Sòng-Yuan-Ming East Asian Buddhist study-format combined the [[KR6e0021|sūtra (T0279) + Shū (T1735) + Chāo (T1736)]] into a huì běn 會本 (“combined edition”) in 80–100 fascicles, which is the format preserved in the Qiánlóng-canon edition of [[KR6e0021|Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng shū chāo huì běn]] (Q1557). Through Chéngguān’s principal disciple 宗密 Zōngmì (780–841) and his sub-disciples, the Shū and Chāo became the unitary doctrinal foundation of the entire mature Huáyán / Hwaeom / Kegon scholastic tradition. They were studied at Tōdai-ji and Kōzen-ji 高山寺 in Japan, at the Hwaeom centres of the Korean Goryeo, and throughout the Sòng, Yuán, Míng, and Qīng monastic Buddhist curricula in China.
The Taishō text is established on the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana (高麗藏 / 麗) collated against the jiǎ 甲 (Japanese alternate), yǐ 乙 (Japanese alternate), an unidentified third Japanese witness (“unknown” in the Taishō apparatus), and the Jiā-xīng 嘉興 print edition. The textual tradition is exceptionally rich and well-documented.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Hamar, Imre. A Religious Leader in the Tang: Chengguan’s Biography. Tokyo: IIBS, 2002 — frequent reference and partial translation.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007.
- Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegon zen no shisōshi-teki kenkyū 華厳禅の思想史的研究. Daitō shuppansha, 1985 — substantial treatment of the Chāo’s relation to the broader Tang Buddhist intellectual scene.
- Kimura Kiyotaka 木村清孝. Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi 中国華厳思想史. Heirakuji shoten, 1992.
- Sakamoto Yukio 坂本幸男. Kegon kyōgaku no kenkyū 華厳教学の研究. Heirakuji shoten, 1956.
- Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Princeton University Press, 1991. — Indispensable for tracking the legacy of Chéngguān’s Chāo through Zōngmì.
- Zhāng Wényǎng 張文良. Chéngguān Huáyán sīxiǎng yánjiū 澄觀華嚴思想研究. Religious Culture Press, 2008.
Other points of interest
- The 90-fascicle length of the Chāo makes it the longest work attributed to a single Chinese Buddhist author of the Tang period; only certain encyclopaedic Daoist works of the late Sòng (the Yúnjí qī qiān 雲笈七籤) and the imperial-canon huì běn compilations are comparable.
- Chéngguān’s incorporation of the Lánkāvatāra, the Awakening of Faith (Qǐ xìn lùn 起信論), the Yuán jué jīng 圓覺經, and the Hé-zé Chán tradition into his Avataṃsaka commentary is the principal channel through which these texts entered the Huáyán doctrinal mainstream.
- Several anonymous Sòng-period sub-sub-commentaries (sì ji 私記 by Hwaeom masters) survive that take the Chāo itself as their object; the most consequential is Jìngyuán’s 淨源 (1011–1088) Huá yán jīng shū chāo xuán tán huì běn 華嚴經疏鈔玄談會本 / KR6e0019 (Q232), which formalised the huì běn study-format.