Jīnguāngmíng zuìshèngwáng jīng shū 金光明最勝王經疏
Commentary on the Sūtra of the Most Victorious King of the Golden Light composed by 慧沼 (Huìzhāo, 撰)
About the work
T1788 in six fascicles (Taishō; some witnesses give ten — CANWWW lists 10巻 reflecting the alternative division) is 慧沼’s commentary on 義淨’s [[KR6i0303|Jīnguāngmíng zuìshèngwáng jīng 金光明最勝王經]] (T665), the ten-fascicle long-form Suvarṇaprabhāsa. The work is the principal Yogācāra (Fǎxiàng / Cí’ēn 慈恩) commentary on the Suvarṇaprabhāsa in the Chinese tradition and stands in studied contrast to the Tiāntái commentarial line on T663 (T1783 / T1785).
Abstract
The Taishō opening identifies the parent text as 唐三藏法師義淨奉制譯 and the commentator as 翻經沙門慧沼撰. The dating bracket is constrained by the fact that 義淨’s T665 was completed in 703, and the commentary was certainly written during 慧沼’s late productive period at the Cí’ēnsì 慈恩寺 — typically dated 703–715. 慧沼 himself worked in 義淨’s translation bureau (a fact the colophon foregrounds with the title 翻經沙門), which gives the commentary an unusually direct relationship to the parent translation: this is exegesis from someone who had been physically present at the production of the source text.
Methodologically the commentary applies the Cí’ēn / Yogācāra apparatus — the wǔzhòng wéishí guān 五重唯識觀, the bāshí 八識 doctrine, the threefold Buddha-body (tri-kāya) — to the Suvarṇaprabhāsa, with particular attention to the chapters on the fēnbié sānshēn 分別三身 (Distinguishing the Three Bodies, T665 ch. 3) and shòuliàng 壽量, where Yogācāra has its strongest doctrinal interest. The commentary is significantly less concerned with the deity-cult and Jātaka chapters, which it generally glosses without elaborate allegorical machinery.
T1788 is the only extant Táng-period Yogācāra Suvarṇaprabhāsa commentary, and it transmitted an authoritative reading of 義淨’s text into the Heian Japanese reception — Hossō scholastic interpretation of the Saishō-ō-kyō depended heavily on it. The text’s importance in modern East Asian scholarship has accordingly been considerable.
Related canonical texts: parent sūtra KR6i0303 (金光明最勝王經 / T665).
Translations and research
- Yáng Jiànxiāo 楊劍霄. Huìzhāo yánjiū 慧沼研究. Beijing, 2018. The standard recent study of 慧沼’s corpus.
- Inoue Mitsusada 井上光貞. Nihon kodai bukkyō no tenkai 日本古代仏教の展開. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1975. Frames the Heian Hossō reception of T1788.
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku josetsu. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975. Compares T1788 with the Tiāntái commentaries.
No book-length English translation located.