Lǐqù shì zhòngshì jì 理趣釋重釋記
Notes Re-Explaining the [Amoghavajra] Adhyardhaśatikā Commentary (Jp. Rishu-shaku jūshaku-ki) (anonymous)
About the work
A one-fascicle Japanese Shingon sub-commentary on a commentary: it re-explicates, phrase by phrase, Amoghavajra’s Lǐqù shì 理趣釋 (KR6j0193, T19n1003), the great Tang Esoteric commentary on the Adhyardhaśatikā Prajñāpāramitā (the Rishu-gyō 理趣經). The work survives anonymously: neither the source text nor the Taishō editorial apparatus preserves an authorial attribution, and the catalog meta for KR6j0194 records its author only as the opaque identifier-code “938”, which has no further resolution. CANWWW likewise records no author for T61N2240.
Abstract
The Zhòngshì jì — “Notes Re-Explaining” — proceeds by quoting short passages from Amoghavajra’s Lǐqù shì in sequence and then supplying its own further commentary (繼釋 / 重釋) on the meaning of each. Where Amoghavajra had explicated the Adhyardhaśatikā passage by passage, this Japanese work explicates the explication in turn — a recursive scholastic genre characteristic of medieval Japanese Esoteric apparatus. The work treats all the major chapters of the Lǐqù shì — the opening at Paranirmitavaśavartin Heaven 他化自在天, the chapter-by-chapter exegesis of the seventeen-deity assembly, the “vajra-music” 金剛歌 and “vajra-dance” 金剛舞 chapters, the “outer Vajradhātu” 外金剛部 chapter, the “seven mother-goddesses” 七母女天 chapter, and the closing dedications — and provides, throughout, the standard medieval Shingon scholastic apparatus on Amoghavajra’s phrasing: the six great elements, the five wisdoms, the four kinds of mandala, the suchness-seven (七眞如), and the corresponding mandalic-visualization protocols.
In genre and method the work belongs unambiguously to the medieval Tō-ji Shingon scholastic tradition — specifically to the same scholarly milieu that produced KR6j0195 (理趣釋祕要鈔, by 杲寶 Gàobǎo / Gōhō with notes by 賢寶 Xiánbǎo / Kenbō, 14th century) and the parallel Lǐqù sub-commentaries of 頼瑜 Làiyú / Raiyu (1226–1304). On internal grounds — the developed scholastic apparatus deployed, and the absence of references to early-modern or Edo doctrinal positions — a defensible bracket for its composition is the late Kamakura through early Muromachi period (13th–14th century). The catalog meta’s date / dynasty fields are unfilled, consistent with the genuinely anonymous transmission.
The work bears an interesting relationship to KR6j0195 (the Mìyào chāo): CANWWW records both as mutually related-texts, suggesting that they were transmitted together as a paired apparatus on Amoghavajra’s Lǐqù shì. It is plausible that the Zhòngshì jì originated as the prose-commentary skeleton onto which the Mìyào chāo’s more elaborate doctrinal-exegetical apparatus was later grafted by 杲寶 Gàobǎo and 賢寶 Xiánbǎo.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.