Dàfāngguǎng yuánjué xiūduōluó liǎoyì jīng (xuǎnlù “fùwén: jīngāng lǐ yī běn”) 大方廣圓覺修多羅了義經（選錄「附文：金剛禮一本」）
Selection from the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment, with Appended “Vajra-Adoration in One Roll” by 通理大師 (Tōnglǐ Dàshī, 集)
About the work
Despite its catalog title, the actual content of this very short Fángshān stone-sūtra item (F12 no. 546) is not the Yuánjué jīng itself but a brief Vajra-rite liturgy — Jīngāng lǐ yī běn 金剛禮一本 — compiled (集) by the Liáo-dynasty monk Tōnglǐ Dàshī 通理大師 (Liáo Tōnglǐ, 1049–1098, named Héngcè 恒策, the principal patron and editor of the late phase of the Fángshān stone canon). The text is a thirty-two-section worshipful chant that sets the chapter-titles of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra 金剛經 in metrical fours (志心㱕命礼 … “with sincere mind I take refuge and bow to …”), followed by repentance verses (志心懺悔), the standard chǔ shìjiè 處世界 stanza, and a Samantabhadra dedication (pǔxián xíng yuàn 普賢殊勝行). The colophon and the Fángshān-stone provenance establish the work as a Liáo-period devotional product associated with the Fángshān engraving project that Tōnglǐ supervised in the late eleventh century.
Abstract
This entry is one of a small number of Fángshān-canon devotional pieces preserved as appendices to longer scriptures and incorporated into the Liáo-era stone-sūtra collection at the Yúnjū sì 雲居寺 caves on Fángshān 房山 (south-west of Beijing). The text was assigned the catalog number F12 no. 546 in the modern Fángshān shíjīng 房山石經 edition (Beijing 1956 ff.) under the head-title of the Yuánjué jīng (matching the broader canon-section in which the original Liáo engravers placed the verse) but is in fact an independent liturgical anthology. The compiler Tōnglǐ Dàshī Héngcè (1049–1098), styled zì Yìnghǎi 應海, was a senior monk of the Yúnjū-sì engraving project under 耶律洪基 Liáo Dàozōng 道宗 (r. 1055–1101); his lifedates and biography are recorded in stone inscriptions excavated at Fángshān, especially the Liáo Yúnjū-sì xù mìzàng shíjīng tǎjì 遼雲居寺續祕藏石經塔記. He is to be carefully distinguished from the Qīng-dynasty Huáyán scholar 通理 (Dátiān Tōnglǐ, 1701–1782), who appears below as the author of KR6i0574 Yuánjué jīng xīyì shū. The text shares its general devotional template (chapter-by-chapter veneration of a sūtra) with other Liáo Vajra liturgies, of which several specimens survive at Fángshān.
Translations and research
- Fángshān shíjīng tíjì huìbiān 房山石經題記彙編. Beijing: Shūmù wénxiàn chūbǎnshè, 1987. — Inscriptional record of the Fángshān stone-sūtra colophons; locus for Tōnglǐ Héngcè’s project.
- Lin Wei-cheng 林韋誠. “Liáo dài Fángshān shíjīng yǔ Tōnglǐ Dàshī” 遼代房山石經與通理大師. Pǔmén xuébào 普門學報 27 (2005). — Modern study of Tōnglǐ’s role in the Liáo phase of Fángshān engraving.
- Chen Jinhua. “Notes on the Liao Buddhist Canon.” Asia Major, third series, 24/2 (2011). — On Liáo-era canonical projects and Tōnglǐ Héngcè’s curatorial work.
Other points of interest
The piece exemplifies a Liáo-era genre of “sūtra-adoration” liturgies (lǐbài wén 禮拜文) in which the chapter-titles of a major prajñāpāramitā or related Mahāyāna scripture are recast as a prostration sequence. The Fángshān stone-canon preserves several such texts that have not made it into the printed Tripiṭaka, of which this is one.