Jīnguāngmíng jīng wénjù jì 金光明經文句記
Notes on the Phrase-and-Sentence Commentary on the Sūtra of Golden Light composed by 知禮 (Zhīlǐ, 述)
About the work
T1786, paired with T1784, is 知禮’s subcommentary on the wénjù leg of Zhìyǐ’s Suvarṇaprabhāsa commentarial doublet — that is, on T1785. Six fascicles in the Taishō, but several Sòng-period lists give 12 fascicles (the CANWWW catalogue records 12巻); the disparity reflects the customary East Asian division-into-halves of the longer jì, with the Taishō having absorbed the half-units back into single fascicles.
Abstract
Composed contemporaneously with T1784 in the late 1010s during 知禮’s residence at the Yánqìngsì 延慶寺 (Sìmíng), in the same polemical context against the shānwài tradition. T1786 is widely regarded as the more philologically detailed of 知禮’s Suvarṇaprabhāsa subcommentaries, since the wénjù genre demands phrase-by-phrase fidelity to the source where the xuányì leg can be programmatic.
A central concern is the treatment of the Bodhisattva Guāngmíng 光明 (Golden-Light) cycle’s Jātaka chapters — Liúshuǐ zhǎngzhězǐ pǐn (chapter 16) and Shěshēn pǐn (chapter 17) — which the shānwài tradition had read as parable-only, but which 知禮 argues function simultaneously on all four levels of the Tiāntái grid (因緣, 約教, 本迹, 觀心). The reading became canonical in subsequent Tiāntái exegesis and shaped the Tendai liturgical reception of these narratives in Heian Japan.
Related canonical texts: parent commentary KR6i0306 (金光明經文句 / T1785); paired subcommentary KR6i0305 (金光明經玄義拾遺記 / T1784).
Translations and research
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku josetsu. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975.
- Getz, Daniel. Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song Dynasty. PhD diss., Yale, 1994.
No book-length English translation located.