Yuánjué jīng jiāsòng jíjiě jiǎngyì 圓覺經夾頌集解講義
Lecture-Notes Collecting Commentaries and Embedded Verses on the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 周琪 (Zhōuqí, 述)
About the work
A 12-fascicle composite jiǎngyì 講義 (“lecture-notes”) on the Yuánjué jīng (KR6i0551) by the southern-Sòng layman Zhōuqí 周琪 (hào Juérú 覺如, fl. mid-13th century). The work weaves together (a) the canonical sūtra text, line-by-line; (b) selected glosses from 宗密 Guīfēng Zōngmì’s KR6i0555 Dàshū, KR6i0557 Dàshū chāo, KR6i0553 Lüèshū, and KR6i0559 Lüèshū chāo; (c) 孝宗帝 Sòng Xiàozōng’s KR6i0562 Yùzhù Yuánjué jīng; (d) selected commentary-verses from various Sòng Yuánjué commentaries; and (e) Zhōuqí’s own connecting jiǎngyì. The structuring conceit is that of jiāsòng 夾頌 — “verses inserted between” — in which the sūtra and commentary apparatus are punctuated by topical verses that summarise the doctrinal point at hand.
Abstract
Zhōuqí’s autograph preface, preserved at the head of the work (X10 no. 253), is dated 淳祐六秊丙午﨟月辛丑旦日丙戌 — i.e., the làyuè (12th lunar month) of Chúnyòu 6 = early 1247 CE (Sòng Lǐzōng’s reign), and is signed Juérú Zhōuqí 覺如周琪. The preface explains the author’s deep engagement with the sūtra over many years, his thorough reading of all the available commentaries, and his decision to compile the present synthesis incorporating the imperial yùzhù together with the “lecture-notes, verses, and treatises of the multitude of great knowing-ones.” It announces a deliberately conciliatory exegetical aim: to take the best of each commentator’s reading without arguing among them, in the manner of ladling water from the great ocean — every taste is cool. Zhōuqí himself was a prominent Wúxīng-area lay devotee, otherwise undocumented in the standard biographical sources, but whose connection to the southern-Sòng Buddhist printing networks is clear from the woodblock-print colophon attached to the work.
The Jiāsòng jíjiě jiǎngyì is the most substantial single Sòng-era Yuánjué lay-commentary, comparable in scope to the KR6i0561 Yuánjué jīng shūchāo suíwén yàojiě by the monastic 清遠 Qīngyuǎn (1213). Together with Qīngyuǎn’s work, it represents the high-point of southern-Sòng Yuánjué exegesis, after which the active commentary tradition shifts to Yuán and Míng monastic hands.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The opening summary of the shíèr zhāng láiyì 十二章來意 (“intent-genealogy of the twelve chapters”), placed immediately after Zhōuqí’s preface, is one of the more lucid late-Sòng synopses of the Yuánjué jīng’s twelve-bodhisattva structure and is sometimes excerpted as a freestanding pedagogical introduction to the sūtra in modern Buddhist publishing.