Huáyán jīng wèn dá 華嚴經問答
Questions and Answers on the Huáyán Scripture by 法藏 (Fǎzàng, 述)
About the work
The Huáyán jīng wèn dá in 2 fascicles is 法藏 Fǎzàng’s question-and-answer compendium on the Avataṃsaka. Like [[KR6e0083|Zhìyǎn’s Wǔshí yào wèn dá]] (T1869) — Fǎzàng’s master’s earlier work in the same genre — and [[KR6e0086|Fǎzàng’s own Cè lín]] (T1872), the Wèn dá serves as a pedagogical aid presenting doctrinally important cruxes in question-and-answer format. The work treats a wide range of doctrinal topics: the Five Teachings, the Daśabhūmika, the Six Characteristics, the Avataṃsaka’s relation to other Mahāyāna scriptures, and so on.
Prefaces
No formal preface.
Abstract
The work is conventionally datable to 法藏 Fǎzàng’s mature period, c. 670 – 712 CE. The bracket adopted here reflects this window. As with the Wèn dá genre generally, the work was widely used in subsequent East Asian Buddhist monastic teaching, and was preserved in both Korean and Japanese transmission.
(Note: modern scholarship — particularly Yoshizu Yoshihide 1985 — has raised questions about whether the entire Wèn dá as transmitted is genuinely Fǎzàng’s, or whether at least some passages were added by later editors; the consensus is that the core of the work is genuine but that some interpolations may exist. The traditional attribution is followed here.)
The Taishō text (T1873) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegon zen no shisōshi-teki kenkyū (1985) — discusses the attribution.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
Other points of interest
- The Wèn dá format, common to Zhìyǎn’s T1869, the present text, and Chéngguān’s later T1737, constitutes a continuous Tang Huáyán pedagogical genre tradition spanning more than two centuries.