Dàshèng dàogǎn jīng suítīng shū 大乘稻芉經隨聽疏
Commentary on the Mahāyāna Śālistamba-sūtra Following the Lecture (Śālistamba-sūtra-ṭīkā) by 法成 (Fǎchéng / Chos-grub, 撰)
About the work
T2782 in one fascicle is the Tang-period commentary on the Śālistamba-sūtra by the Tibetan-Chinese bilingual translator-monk 法成 (Chos-grub, fl. 833–865 at Dūnhuáng), preserved in Taishō volume 85 (the Gǔyìbù 古逸部, the volume of texts recovered from the Dūnhuáng cave 17 manuscripts). The base text it comments on is KR6i0404 / T712 (anonymous Tang Śālistamba version), not the prestigious Amoghavajra rendering. The genre marker suítīng shū 隨聽疏 (“commentary [taken down] following [the master’s] lectures”) indicates a teaching-record genre — a record of the master’s oral exposition.
Abstract
法成 (Tib. Chos-grub) was the most important Tibetan-Chinese bilingual translator-monk active at Dūnhuáng in the early-to-mid ninth century. He produced both Tibetan-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-Tibetan translations and was author of several commentaries, of which this one — recovered from the Dūnhuáng manuscripts and assigned T2782 in the Taishō Gǔyìbù — is among the most substantial. The commentary expounds the Śālistamba sequentially (隨), pairing each line of the base sūtra with explanatory glosses on the doctrine of dependent-origination.
The Yogācāra reading is dominant: the inner-causation (內因緣) and outer-causation (外因緣) division is articulated through the trisvabhāva schema, and consciousness (識) is read in ālayavijñāna terms. The commentary draws on Indian sources known to Chos-grub through his Tibetan training — notably Kamalaśīla’s Śālistamba-ṭīkā — and the Tibetan inflection of his Yogācāra exegesis is one of the document’s most striking features. The text is a key witness to the Tibetan-Chinese cross-pollination at Dūnhuáng under the Tibetan occupation (786–848) and immediately after.
The text’s transmission was non-standard: it never entered the printed Chinese canon and survived only in Dūnhuáng manuscript form, recovered by Pelliot and Stein, and published in Taishō volume 85 in the early twentieth century. The closely associated text KR6i0406 / T2783 (Dàshèng dàogǎn jīng suítīng shū jué 大乘稻芉經隨聽疏決) is a sub-commentary or supplementary clarification on this same lecture-record.
Translations and research
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1990. The principal modern study of Chos-grub’s translation and commentarial corpus.
- Inaba Shōju 稲葉正就, “Chibetto-yaku to Kanyaku no Inenkyō ryōdō ni okeru zenpan jūnishi engi setsu no zōgo kanpuku” 西藏譯と漢譯の稻芋經兩同に於ける前半十二支緣起說の增語勘復, Bukkyō bunka kenkyū 4 (1954).
- Apple, James B. Jewels of the Middle Way: The Madhyamaka Legacy of Atiśa and His Early Tibetan Followers. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2018. (Background on the Śālistamba in Indian Madhyamaka and Tibetan reception.)