Yúlánpén jīng shū xiàohéng chāo kē 盂蘭盆經疏孝衡鈔科
Outline of the “Filial-Piety Balance” Sub-Commentary on the Commentary on the Yúlánpén Sūtra outline edited by 遇榮 (Yùróng, 集定)
About the work
X374 in one fascicle is the kēwén 科文 (hierarchical structural outline) of 遇榮’s [[KR6i0370|Xiàohéng chāo 孝衡鈔]] (X375) — itself a sub-commentary on [[KR6i0365|宗密’s Yúlánpén jīng shū]]. The witness is signed “集定” (“compiled and finalized”) by 遇榮 (honorific Guǎngyǎn dàshī 廣演大師, fl. Northern Sòng). The text is a structural outline (one of the very common Sòng-Buddhist kēwén genres) preserved separately so that students could see the Xiàohéng chāo’s organization at a glance. The introductory paragraph rehearses the Yúlánpén narrative and the sūtra’s filial-piety doctrine before giving the outline.
Abstract
The Xiàohéng chāo kē introduces the parent commentary’s argument as follows: “盂蘭盆經者。乃大目犍連。解母青提夫人倒懸之苦。張孝道之宗本” (“The Yúlánpén jīng records how MahāMaudgalyāyana relieved his mother Lady Qīngtí of her suffering of being hung upside-down; it sets forth the foundational principle of the way of filial piety”). The mother’s name “青提夫人” (Qīngtí Fūrén) is a Chinese-folkloric elaboration not found in T685 itself but that became standard in Tang-Sòng popular reception of the Maudgalyāyana legend. The outline distinguishes worldly filial piety (shìjiān zhī xiào 世間之孝 — bodily care, social honour, not disgracing one’s name) from supra-worldly filial piety (chūshì zhī xiào 出世之孝 — taking up the Dharma to liberate one’s parents from transmigration). 遇榮’s contribution to the Yúlánpén sub-commentary tradition is the systematic kēwén division of 宗密’s commentary, of which this is the schedule and X375 the discursive expansion.
Composition window: 遇榮’s active period under the Northern Sòng imperial honorific system (980–1100).
Parent texts: KR6i0364 (T685) → KR6i0365 (T1792) → KR6i0370 (X375 Xiàohéng chāo) ← this Kē (X374). Companion sub-commentaries: KR6i0367 (X372), KR6i0368 (X373), KR6i0371 (X376).
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, 1988.
No standalone Western-language translation located.