Shèng mán jīng yì shū 勝鬘經義疏
Commentary on the Meaning of the Śrīmālā Sūtra (the Shōman gisho) by 聖德太子 (Shōtoku Taishi, traditionally attributed, 撰)
About the work
The Shèngmán jīng yì shū — better known by its Japanese title Shōman-gyō gisho 勝鬘経義疏 — is a 1-fascicle commentary on the [[KR6f0045|Śrīmālā-siṃha-nāda-sūtra]] (T353, in Guṇabhadra’s Liú-Sòng translation), traditionally one of the three commentaries (Sangyō gisho 三經義疏) attributed to Prince 聖德太子 Shōtoku Taishi (574–622) of early-Asuka Japan. The work explicates the Śrīmālā section by section, anchoring the ekayāna and tathāgatagarbha themes of the sūtra in a doctrinal frame indebted to the early Liáng commentarial tradition.
Prefaces
The Taishō text bears a unique headnote, set off above the body of the commentary: 「此是大倭國上宮王私集非海彼本」 — “This is the personal compilation of the Prince of the Upper Palace (i.e. Shōtoku) of Great Yamato, not a book from the other side of the sea.” The headnote is the principal piece of internal evidence for the Japanese — rather than continental — origin of the Shōman gisho and is the warrant for the traditional Shōtoku ascription.
Abstract
The traditional ascription places composition in the late Suí / early Táng overlap with Asuka, conventionally c. 611 — the date at which Shōtoku is said by the Nihon shoki to have lectured to Empress Suiko 推古 on the Śrīmālā. The date bracket adopted here (600 – 622) takes Shōtoku’s death as the terminus ad quem of the received recension and gives the Suiko-era lecture context as the terminus a quo.
Modern scholarship on the authorship is divided. Comparative-textual work by 藤枝晃 Fujieda Akira and others has shown extensive verbatim overlap between the Shōman gisho and a closely-related Dūnhuáng commentary fragment (P. 2091), prompting the argument that the Shōman gisho is essentially a redaction of a continental commentary brought to Japan rather than an original composition by Shōtoku. Other scholars (望月信亨 Mochizuki Shinkō, 王勇 Wáng Yǒng) defend the Japanese authorship and read the headnote 「私集非海彼本」 as Shōtoku’s own assertion against just such a continental ascription. The question remains unsettled; for the present catalog the work is registered under the traditional Shōtoku attribution while the dating bracket reflects the inherited recension rather than any later editorial layer.
The text is one of the Sangyō gisho 三經義疏 alongside the Hokke gisho 法華義疏 (on the Lotus) and the Yuima gisho 維摩義疏 (on the Vimalakīrti). A distinct 6-fascicle composite, in which the Shōman gisho is combined with a Táng-period private sub-commentary by 明空 Míngkōng, is preserved separately as KR6f0059 Shèngmán jīng shū yì sī chāo 勝鬘經疏義私鈔.
The Taishō text (T2185) is established on the Hōryū-ji 法隆寺 manuscript tradition.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- 藤枝晃 Fujieda Akira. 「勝鬘経義疏」(in his Bukkyō to bunken studies) — proposing continental origins.
- 望月信亨 Mochizuki Shinkō. Bukkyō daijiten and related studies of the Sangyō gisho.
- 井上光貞 Inoue Mitsusada. Nihon kodai no kokka to bukkyō — discussion of Shōtoku’s Buddhist commentaries.
- 王勇 Wáng Yǒng. Shèngdé Tàizǐ shíkōng chāoyuè zhī mí 聖德太子時空超越之謎 (1994) — defends Japanese authorship.
Other points of interest
The internal headnote 「此是大倭國上宮王私集非海彼本」 is one of the earliest extant statements of Japanese authorial self-consciousness in a Buddhist commentary and is repeatedly cited in modern debates over the formation of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist scholastic tradition.