Yuánjué jīng chāo biàn yíwù 圓覺經鈔辨疑誤
Disambiguation of Doubtful Points and Errors in the Subcommentary to the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 觀復 (Guānfù, 撰)
About the work
A 2-fascicle critical-commentary text by the southern-Sòng Huáyán scholar-monk 觀復 Guānfù 觀復 (hào Xiàoān 笑庵, active in the late twelfth century). The work is a biàn yíwù 辨疑誤 — literally a “disambiguation of doubts and errors” — directed at the Yuánjué jīng dàshū chāo 圓覺經大疏鈔 of 宗密 Guīfēng Zōngmì (KR6i0557). It is therefore not a primary commentary on the Yuánjué jīng itself (KR6i0551) but a supercommentary that takes Zōngmì’s Dàshū chāo as its working text and adjudicates apparent contradictions, philological slips, doctrinal mis-statements, and corrupt readings. As such it stands among the principal Sòng-era critical responses to the Zōngmì commentary tradition and a primary witness to the active reading of Zōngmì in southern-Sòng Huáyán circles.
Abstract
Guānfù’s authorial method is conservative-philological: where the Dàshū chāo gives a doctrinal classification or a citation that is suspicious, he typically supplies the parallel passage from the source, identifies the slip, and proposes a corrected reading. The work is therefore an indirect witness to the textual condition of the Dàshū chāo in the southern Sòng — Guānfù’s text has occasionally been used by modern editors of Zōngmì to reconstruct readings now lost from the surviving Dàshū chāo recension. The composition window of circa 1143–1180 is inferred from Guānfù’s other works (especially his Yí jiào jīng lùn jì 遺教經論記, also preserved in the Xùzàng): the biàn yíwù is generally taken to date to the same active middle period of his career, but a precise dating is not preserved. Guānfù’s birth and death dates are not securely recorded in any surviving biographical source.
Translations and research
- 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. — Treats Guānfù’s place within Sòng Huáyán reception of Zōngmì.
- Kobayashi Enshō 小林圓照. “Kanpuku no Kegongaku” 觀復の華厳学. Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 35/2 (1987).