Yuánjué jīng lüèshū chāo 圓覺經略疏鈔
Subcommentary on the Abridged Commentary to the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 宗密 (Guīfēng Zōngmì, 於大疏略出, “extracted in summary form from the Great Commentary”)
About the work
The Yuánjué jīng lüèshū chāo in 12 fascicles is the line-by-line subcommentary by 宗密 Guīfēng Zōngmì (780–841) on his own KR6i0553 Yuánjué jīng lüèshū 圓覺經略疏. It is the working-classroom companion to the Lüèshū, just as the KR6i0557 Dàshū chāo is the companion to the KR6i0555 Dàshū. The persons-line in the catalog meta — 於大疏略出, “extracted in summary form from the Great Commentary” — gives the precise compositional history: the Lüèshū chāo is not an independent fresh subcommentary but a compressed re-arrangement of the much longer Dàshū chāo’s glosses, attached to the line-text of the Lüèshū and trimmed to fit it. The result is the most-used form of Zōngmì’s Yuánjué jīng exegesis: substantial enough to give the doctrinal apparatus, short enough to be navigable.
Abstract
The Lüèshū chāo is the de facto textbook by which the Yuánjué jīng has been read in East Asian Buddhism since the Sòng. The Korean and Japanese commentary traditions both build on it; the major Sòng Yuánjué commentaries by 觀復 (KR6i0560) and others are typically responses to, or summaries of, the Lüèshū chāo rather than independent expositions of the sūtra. Like the rest of Zōngmì’s Yuánjué commentary apparatus, the Lüèshū chāo survives only through Korean and Japanese transmission. The Xùzàng text is an Edo Ōbaku-print derived from a Korean ancestor; the standard modern edition is X09 no. 248. The work is occasionally cataloged under titles such as Yuánjué jīng shū chāo 圓覺經疏鈔 or simply Yuánjué jīng chāo, but the lüèshū chāo form is the canonical one.
Translations and research
- Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. — Treats the Lüèshū chāo alongside the Dàshū chāo.
- 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.
- Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegonzen no shisōshi-teki kenkyū 華厳禅の思想史的研究. Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1985.