Huáyán jīng shū zhù 華嚴經疏注
Annotated Edition of the Commentary on the Huáyán Scripture (with the sūtra interlinear) by 澄觀 Chéngguān (述) and 淨源 Jìngyuán (錄疏注經)
About the work
The Huāyán jīng shū zhù in 58 fascicles is the Northern Sòng huì běn 會本 (“combined edition”) of [[KR6e0011|Chéngguān’s Huáyán jīng shū]] (T1735) and the new (80-fascicle) [[KR6e0010|Huáyán jīng]] (T0279) — the parent sūtra is here presented as the main text, with Chéngguān’s commentary inserted directly under each line of sūtra text in interlinear-annotation format. The editor was 淨源 Jìngyuán (1011–1088), abbot of the Huìyīnsì 慧因寺 in Hángzhōu and the central figure of the Northern Sòng Huáyán revival; the editorial labour, described in the work’s title-line as 錄疏注經 (“recording the commentary as annotation to the sūtra”), is one of the major literary outputs of his Hángzhōu Huáyán project.
Prefaces
The work opens with the title-line “大方廣佛華嚴經疏卷第一并序 / 清涼山沙門 澄觀 述 / 晉水沙門 (淨源) 錄疏注經” — that is, the original Shū opening and Chéngguān’s preface (“往復無際。動靜一源。含眾妙而有餘。超言思而逈出者。其唯法界歟……”) follow immediately, with no separate Sòng preface. The work is in this respect a combined-edition reissue of Chéngguān’s Shū with the sūtra placed alongside, rather than a new commentary in its own right.
Abstract
The work is dated by Jìngyuán’s editorial colophon to the period of his abbacy at the Huì-yīn-sì, c. 1067 – 1088 CE. Jìngyuán’s huì běn projects were undertaken in collaboration with Korean Goryeo Buddhist patrons — particularly the Goryeo dignitary Ŭich’ŏn 義天 (1055–1101), who visited Hángzhōu in 1085–1086 to study at the Huì-yīn-sì and made substantial donations to underwrite the canon-restoration project. The Hángzhōu Huì-yīn-sì subsequently became known in the Goryeo capital as the “Korean Master’s Monastery” (高麗師寺), and the huì běn editions of the Tang Huáyán corpus were exported to Korea in support of the Goryeo Hwaeom revival, where they helped form the basis of the second printing of the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana (re-cut in 1236–1251 after the destruction of the first canon-edition by the Mongol invasions).
The interlinear huì běn format pioneered by Jìngyuán became the standard Sòng-onwards Buddhist scholastic study-format for major canonical sūtras with their commentaries. It allowed the reader to follow the parent sūtra and the commentary line by line without flipping between two volumes; in the Buddhist jiǎngxí 講習 / lecture practice it was the standard format used in the lecture-hall.
The work was the basis of the much fuller [[KR6e0021|Qiánlóng-canon Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng shū chāo huì běn 大方廣佛華嚴經疏鈔會本]] (Q1557, 80 fasc.), which combines the sūtra (T0279), the Shū (T1735), and the Chāo (T1736) — Jìngyuán’s two-way huì běn (sūtra + Shū) in a three-way arrangement.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- 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 — extensive treatment of Jìngyuán’s editorial project.
- Mori Tomomasa 森博達. Sōdai Kegon-shū no fukkō 宋代華厳宗の復興 (papers on Jìngyuán and the Sòng Huáyán revival).
- Lin, Pei-ying. The Tang Buddhist Tradition in Goryeo Korea, articles in Pacific World and elsewhere.
- Bo Wen 卜文. “Buddhist Korea-China Relations in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: The Case of Jìnshuǐ Jìngyuán.” Journal of Korean Religions 6.1 (2015): 117–140.
Other points of interest
- The Hángzhōu Huìyīnsì 慧因寺 — Jìngyuán’s monastic base — became one of the principal hubs of Sino-Korean Buddhist exchange in the eleventh century, and several Goryeo-period Korean monks studied there in lineages descended from Jìngyuán.
- The Goryeo donations to the Huìyīnsì included paper, ink, and printing-blocks for the huì běn projects; the resulting books were exported back to Korea and became a key part of the Goryeo Hwaeom canon.