Yuánjué jīng dàshū chāo kē 圓覺經大疏鈔科
Outline (kē) for the Subcommentary on the Great Commentary to the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 宗密 (Guīfēng Zōngmì, 製)
About the work
A short outline-text in 2 fascicles by 宗密 Guīfēng Zōngmì (780–841), giving the topic-tree (科 kē; the ramified outline-by-which-Chinese-Buddhist-commentaries-are-organized) of his own Yuánjué jīng dàshū chāo 圓覺經大疏鈔 (KR6i0557). It is a working tool for readers of the longer commentary: a printed expansion of the marginal kēmù 科目 outline-headings that Zōngmì had embedded in the Dàshū chāo itself, here laid out as a navigable tree-map without the discursive content. In Chinese exegetical practice the kē is a key didactic apparatus — students would memorise the outline of a major commentary first, then fill in the zhèngwén 正文 by close-reading. Kē texts are accordingly numerous in the Chinese Buddhist canon and form a recognised genre of their own.
Abstract
The Dàshū chāo kē presents the full hierarchical outline of the 13-fascicle Dàshū chāo, organised by Zōngmì’s standard threefold-and-fourfold scholastic divisions: by jiào 教 (the threefold doctrinal classification), by xíng 行 (the threefold guān of śamatha / samāpatti / chán), and by jīngwén 經文 (the textual sequence of the twelve bodhisattva-dialogue chapters). The outline runs to several hundred entries, descending in some branches to four or five sub-levels. Like the rest of Zōngmì’s Yuánjué jīng commentary apparatus, the kē survives only through Korean and Japanese transmission and reaches the modern reader through the Wànzì xùzàngjīng. It is a complement, not a substitute, for the Dàshū chāo; it has no value as a freestanding doctrinal exposition and was never circulated independently in mainland Chinese editions.
Translations and research
- Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄. Shūmitsu kyōgaku no shisō shi-teki kenkyū 宗密教学の思想史的研究. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1975. — On the structure of Zōngmì’s exegetical apparatus.
- Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.