Léngqié jīng zhù 楞伽經註
Annotation of the Sūtra of Laṅkā composed by 智嚴 (Zhìyán, 撰)
About the work
X321 in three fascicles is a Tang-period commentary on [[KR6i0327|Léngqiéābáduōluó bǎo jīng 楞伽阿跋多羅寶經]] (T670, the four-fascicle 求那跋陀羅 Laṅkāvatāra), preserved only in the Wànzì 卍 Xuzangjing. The Taishō / Xuzangjing witness preserves only the parent-text title-line at the head: 註楞伽阿䟦多羅寶經卷第一 — without explicit translator-attribution within the body, but with the catalog ascription to a Tang 智嚴.
Abstract
The catalog meta gives the author as 唐 智嚴; the name is shared by several historical figures (the Liú-Sòng meditation-master 智嚴 of 350–427, the late-Tang/Five-Dynasties Chán figure of the Xuánshā Shībèi circle, and at least four Tang and Sòng homonyms in DILA — A001302 / A010519 / A025895 / A036222 / A001999). The most defensible attribution within the existing scholarship is to a mid-Tang Chán-affiliated 智嚴 working within the Laṅkāvatāra-school (楞伽宗) tradition; the doctrinal vocabulary of X321 is consistent with the late-seventh- through eighth-century Léngqié-school phase of early Chán identified by McRae 1986. Date bracket conservatively follows the eighth century.
The work’s importance is essentially as one of the few extant Tang-period Chinese commentaries on the Laṅkāvatāra preserved outside the Taishō. It is briefer and more meditation-oriented than T1791 of 寶臣 (the major Sòng commentary on T672) or T1790 of 法藏. The text was transmitted into Japan in the medieval period and survives in Japanese block-print editions that the Xuzangjing compilation drew upon.
Related canonical texts: parent sūtra KR6i0327 (楞伽阿跋多羅寶經 / T670).
Translations and research
- Tokiwa Gishin 常盤義伸. Ryōgakyō no kenkyū. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1976.
- McRae, John R. The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.
No book-length English translation located.