Yàoshī jīng shū 藥師經疏
Commentary on the Medicine Master Sūtra (anonymous Dunhuang manuscript commentary)
About the work
The Yàoshī jīng shū (T2766) is an anonymous one-fascicle commentary on the Bá chú guòzuì shēngsǐ dé dù jīng 拔除過罪生死得度經 — that is, the twelfth fascicle of the Guàndǐng jīng (KR6i0051) / the Huìjiǎn proto-Yakuṣī sūtra (KR6i0052). The Taishō header explicitly cross-references No. 1331 fascicle 12. It is preserved in the Dunhuang manuscript corpus and was edited into Taishō volume 85 (古逸 / 疑似 manuscripts and apocrypha) by the editorial team.
The text is paleographically and doctrinally a Suí–early Táng commentary, displaying both Abhidharma scholastic apparatus (eight categories of jiàndù 揵度, Vibhāṣā, Abhidharmahṛdaya, Saṃyukta-abhidharmahṛdaya) and a Mādhyamika hermeneutic framework that organizes the doctrinal classification of the sūtra around 馬鳴 (Aśvaghoṣa), 龍樹 (Nāgārjuna), and 提婆 (Āryadeva) as the patriarchs of the third (final) period.
Prefaces
The opening of the surviving text (the manuscript is fragmentary) is partially lost; the surviving text begins mid-discussion of the eight Abhidharma skandhas/jiàndù (六是五根揵度。七是定揵度。八是見揵度) and continues with a doxographical history of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma corpus: the Mahāvibhāṣā (五百羅漢 共師迦旃延造毘婆沙), the Abhidharmahṛdaya (法勝 Dharmaśrī’s 250-verse condensation), and the Saṃyukta-abhidharmahṛdaya (達摩多羅 / Dharmatrāta with 14 sections). The commentary then situates the Yàoshī jīng in a broad doctrinal panorama: 500 years for zhèngfǎ (right Dharma), 600 for xiàngfǎ (semblance Dharma), 1500 for mòfǎ (degenerate Dharma) — a Mādhyamika-inflected periodization that likely derives from sixth- to seventh-century Chinese sectarian polemics.
Abstract
This anonymous Yàoshī commentary is one of three substantial Dunhuang-preserved Yàoshī commentaries (T2766, T2767, plus fragments) that demonstrate the popularity of Bhaiṣajyaguru exegesis in the Tang frontier monastic culture of the Hexi corridor. The commentary takes the Bá chú guòzuì recension (T1331/12) as its base text — distinguishing it from the canonical commentaries of Tàixián (KR6i0053), which take Xuánzàng (T450) as the base. This is significant because it shows that the proto-Yakuṣī text continued to be the primary commentated version in Dunhuang into the eighth or even ninth century, parallel to the Xuánzàng-version’s primacy in metropolitan exegesis.
The commentary cites the Vibhāṣā and the Abhidharma-hṛdaya tradition extensively, suggesting an author trained in Sarvāstivāda scholastic learning, and locates the Yàoshī jīng within a Mādhyamika doctrinal classification scheme — a syncretism characteristic of Suí-Táng northern Chinese Buddhism. No author attribution survives in the manuscript. The text is an important window into provincial Tang Buddhist commentarial culture before the consolidation of Yogācāra hegemony in the post-Xuánzàng era.
Translations and research
- Pelliot, Paul. Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits chinois de la Bibliothèque nationale. Paris, 1908+ — for catalog of Dunhuang manuscripts.
- Yoritomi Motohiro 頼富本宏. Yakushi shinkō 薬師信仰. Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1986.
- Birnbaum, Raoul. The Healing Buddha. Shambhala, 1979.
- Galambos, Imre, ed. Dunhuang Studies: Prospects and Problems for the Coming Second Century. St. Petersburg, 2012 — context.
Other points of interest
The text was edited into Taishō volume 85 from the Dunhuang manuscript corpus. The commentary’s authorless transmission and its preservation only at Dunhuang are typical of provincial Tang Buddhist commentarial production that was lost in the metropolitan canon. Together with KR6i0055 (T2767) it forms a pair of independent Tang Yakuṣī commentaries.