Yuánjué jīng yìwén 圓覺經佚文
Lost Text of the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 松本文識 (Matsumoto Bunshiki, 記)
About the work
A very brief Japanese-compiled supplement of one hundred-and-thirteen characters preserved in Wànzì xùzàngjīng 卍續藏經 vol. 1 no. 1 (X01n0001), opening the entire collection. The note was prepared in Meiji xīnhài 明治辛亥 (= December 1911) by the Japanese editor Matsumoto Bunshiki 松本文識, who had obtained an old Northern-Sòng print of the Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經 (KR6i0551) — a single sheet at twenty lines per page, twelve characters per line, with the printer’s colophon 左藏庫西潘閬巷內李三二郎印行 — that included a short verse passage of one-hundred-and-thirteen characters concluding the dialogue between the Buddha and the Bodhisattva Xiánshànshǒu 賢善首 (the twelfth interlocutor). This passage is missing from all surviving canonical recensions of the sūtra, all of which (Korean Tripiṭaka, Sòng, Yuán, Míng, Gōng) preserve only the long-form prose at this final juncture without the verse summary that the rest of the sūtra’s twelve-bodhisattva dialogues consistently carry. Matsumoto’s antiquarian observation supplied the missing gāthā and was deemed sufficiently important by the Wànzì xùzàngjīng editors that it was promoted to the very first item in the collection.
Abstract
The note has both philological and editorial significance. Philologically: it confirms the original symmetric chapter-structure of the Yuánjué jīng, in which each of the twelve bodhisattvas’ inquiries was answered first in long-form prose and then in summarising verse — a structure that the surviving recensions break only in the final chapter, where the verse has dropped out. The 113-character gāthā preserved by Matsumoto restores the original symmetry. Editorially: it stands as the prototype of the Xùzàng “lost-text” (yìwén 佚文) genre, in which Edo-and-Meiji-era Japanese bibliophiles supplied the Xùzàng with material gathered from old printings, manuscripts, and continental antiquarian collections that had not made it into earlier canonical editions. Matsumoto Bunshiki, the recorded compiler, is otherwise undocumented in standard Buddhological reference works; he is best understood as one of the Meiji-era zàngjīng 藏經 editorial staff associated with the Kyōto-area canon-publishing project that produced the Xùzàng.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The recovered verse opens 賢善首當知 / 是經諸佛說 / 如來等護持 / 十二部眼目 (“Worthy-Excellent-Head, you must know: this sūtra is expounded by the Buddhas; the Tathāgata himself protects and upholds it; it is the eye of the twelve divisions of teaching”) and concludes with the standard injunction to protect and propagate the sūtra in the latter age. The phrasing is consonant with the rest of the sūtra and with eighth-century Mahāyāna verse-summary conventions; the passage was almost certainly part of the original recension and was lost early in the canonical transmission.