Yúlánpén jīng lüèshū 盂蘭盆經略疏
Abbreviated Commentary on the Yúlánpén Sūtra commentary by 元奇 (Yuánqí, 書)
About the work
X379 in one fascicle is the briefest of the Qīng-period commentaries on [[KR6i0364|the Yúlánpén jīng 盂蘭盆經]] (T685), in the lüèshū 略疏 (“abbreviated commentary”) genre — a teaching-text rather than a scholarly disquisition. Compiled by 元奇 (Yuánqí, lifedates unrecorded). The colophon verb 書 (“written by hand”) rather than 撰 / 述 / 疏 is consistent with this being a teaching transcription.
Abstract
The work is a stripped-down line-by-line gloss on the parent sūtra. The opening section discusses the sūtra-title under two heads: it cites the ancient Jìnwǔdì period attribution to Chàfǎshī 剎法師 (a folk-rendering of “Dharma-master Chà”) for the title 盂蘭盆 (with the gloss “西域之語，此云倒懸” — “a foreign-region term meaning ‘hung upside-down’”), and notes the alternate Tang Tripiṭaka rendering “盆唐三藏翻云救器” (— “the Tang Tripiṭaka [presumably 玄奘] glossed [盂蘭]盆 as ‘rescue-vessel’”). The latter “jiùqì” (“rescue-vessel”) gloss is a distinctively Sōngyuán hermeneutic move that interprets pén not as the Sanskrit pāna-vessel but as a salvific device.
The commentary then walks through the sūtra under standard kēwén 科文 divisions: title (題目); preface, main text, conclusion (序、正、流通); within the preface, the zhèngxìn xù 證信序 (the “as-I-have-heard” formula) and the fāqǐ xù 發起序 (the precipitating circumstance — Maudgalyāyana’s vision); and so forth. The work’s brevity and pedagogical orientation distinguish it from the other Qīng commentary KR6i0373 by 靈耀, which is more polemical and methodologically self-conscious.
Parent sūtra: KR6i0364 (T685). Companion commentaries: KR6i0365 (T1792), KR6i0367–KR6i0371 (Sòng), KR6i0372–KR6i0373 (Míng / Qīng).
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, 1988.
No standalone Western-language study of this commentary located.