大毘盧遮那成佛經疏

Dà Pílúzhēnà chéngfó jīng shū 大毘盧遮那成佛經疏

Commentary on the Sūtra of Mahāvairocana’s Attainment of Buddhahood by 一行 (記)

About the work

The Dà Pílúzhēnà chéngfó jīng shū 大毘盧遮那成佛經疏, commonly known as the Dàrìjīng shū 大日經疏, is a twenty-fascicle (20卷) commentary on fascicles 1–6 of the Mahāvairocanasūtra (KR6j0001, T18 no. 848) — the foundational scripture of East Asian Esoteric Buddhism. It was set down by Yīxíng 一行 (683–727) on the basis of the oral teachings (kǒushòu 口授) of his master Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏 善無畏 (637–735) shortly after the latter’s translation of the sūtra was completed in 724. The work is the single most important commentarial monument of the Tángmì 唐密 (Tang Esoteric) tradition: it transmits the lecture-room exegesis of Śubhakarasiṃha to the entire later East Asian Esoteric tradition (Tángmì, Korean Milgyo, Shingon, Tendai-Taimitsu) and supplies the doctrinal-ritual key that made the cryptic Mahāvairocanasūtra readable as a coherent system of dharmakāya exposition (chéngfó 成佛, “becoming buddha”), maṇḍala ritual, and trikāya doctrine.

The opening of the first fascicle exhibits the work’s characteristic synthetic style: it parses the seven-character title 大毘盧遮那成佛神變加持 word by word, glosses Vairocana etymologically as the “sun” (divākara) but then carefully distinguishes the dharmakāya sun from the worldly sun (“the worldly sun has spatial directions; if it shines outside it cannot reach within … but the wisdom-sun of the Tathāgata is not so — it pervades everywhere and makes great illumination”, 世間日則有方分。若照其外不能及內 … 如來智慧日光則不如是。遍一切處作大照明), then expounds chéngfó and shénbiàn jiāchí (adhiṣṭhāna) as the doctrinal principle that the buddha’s self-illumination (svayamprakāśa) cannot be apprehended by sentient beings without the simultaneous deployment of “spiritual transformation and consecrating support” (神變加持) — a foundational Esoteric doctrinal move.

A parallel recension of the same lectures circulates as the Dà Pílúzhēnà jīng yìshì 大毘盧遮那經義釋 (X23 no. 438) in fourteen fascicles, traditionally edited by Yīxíng’s disciple Zhìyán 智嚴 and Wēngǔ 溫古 with a different sectional structure but largely the same content. The relationship between the shū and yìshì recensions has been debated since the Sòng; the consensus position (Tang Yongtong, Lü Jianfu, Lehnert, Eastman) is that both descend from a common Cháng-ān stenographic record of Śubhakarasiṃha’s 724–725 lectures, with the shū representing the recension privileged in Japanese Shingon (via Kūkai’s import) and the yìshì the recension preserved in the Korean and later Sòng-Yuán Chinese textual streams.

Prefaces

The Mandoku transcription preserves an important post-text colophon at the end of fascicle 20 dated Jiābǎo 2 = 1095 (嘉保二年二月廿日於金剛峯寺奧院東菴室觀音院大僧都奉受了 — “Received at Kanshōin (Guānyīnyuàn) Dasōzu Hermitage, Eastern Hut, Inner Cloister of Kongōbu-ji, on the 20th day of the 2nd month of Jiābǎo 2”), with a further note tracing the Kōya-san Shingon transmission lineage from Kuanyi Dasōzu 觀音院大僧都寬意 (a fùfǎ dharma-heir of Dai-ō-shitsu Shōshin 大御室性信), through to the Hirosawa (廣澤) sub-school down to the recorder. A reckoning at the end notes “from Jiābǎo 2 [1095] to Kan’ei 6 [1629] is 535 years” — placing the manuscript exemplar in early Edo. This colophon-chain is precious external evidence for the Heian-Edo Japanese transmission of the Dàrìjīng shū through the Mt. Kōya Hirosawa lineage.

Abstract

The work is conventionally dated to the period of 724–727, between the completion of Śubhakarasiṃha’s translation of the sūtra (Kāiyuán 12 = 724) and Yīxíng’s death (Kāiyuán 15, 10th month, 8th day = 727). The composition was in fact unfinished at Yīxíng’s premature death at age 45; the final fascicles bear traces of editorial completion by his fellow-disciples. Internal evidence (e.g., the closing problem-and-answer dialogue on the maṇḍala configuration of the Pao-zhuang 寶幢, Huākāifū 花開敷, Amitāyus, and Gǔyīn 鼓音 buddhas in the eastern court of the Garbhadhātu maṇḍala, with an explicit correction of the sūtra’s apparent reading of Akṣobhya in the north as “the sūtra is mistaken; this should be Gǔyīn fó”, 又前云北方阿閦者。經誤也) demonstrates the work’s status as the authoritative source for resolving textual difficulties in the sūtra itself — it is, in effect, the editorial as well as exegetical key to the Mahāvairocanasūtra.

The work entered Japanese Shingon definitively through Kūkai 空海 (774–835), who carried back from his 804–806 study in Cháng’ān a Chinese manuscript copy that became one of the foundational texts of Heian Shingon scholarship. Within the Shingon tradition the Dàrìjīng shū is the single most-commented-upon Chinese Buddhist text: the great medieval Japanese sub-commentaries — Yūhan’s KR6j0663 Miàoyìn chāo 妙印鈔, Saisen’s Sījì 私記, Gōhō’s KR6j0666 Yǎnào chāo 演奧鈔, Raiyu’s Zhǐxīn chāo 指心鈔, Yūkai’s Shūchāo 鈔, and others (catalog ids KR6j0663–0669, all preserved only in Japanese transmission and not in the KRP source tree) — collectively constitute the largest single sub-commentarial corpus on any Chinese-language Buddhist text.

Standard catalogue references: Sòng Gāosēngzhuàn 宋高僧傳 fasc. 5 (T50n2061_p0732c–0734b) for Yīxíng’s biography and the genesis of the shū; the Nanjio number for the work is N1483.

Translations and research

• Tang Yongtong 湯用彤, Sui-Tang fojiao shi-gao 隋唐佛教史稿 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982), chap. 4 §3 — foundational modern survey of the work’s historical context.
• Lü Jianfu 呂建福, Zhōngguó mìjiào shǐ 中國密教史 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 1995) — chapter on Tángmì textual production with extensive treatment of T1796.
• Martin Lehnert, “Tantric Threads between India and China”, in Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, Richard K. Payne (eds.), Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011), pp. 247–265.
• Charles D. Orzech, “On the Subject of Abhiṣeka,” Pacific World 3rd ser. 13 (2011): 113–128 — uses T1796 extensively.
• Robert Sharf, “Visualization and Maṇḍala in Shingon Buddhism” (in Living Images, Stanford UP, 2001) — discusses the doctrinal status of T1796 in the Japanese Shingon visualization tradition.
• Yamamoto Chikyō 山本智教, Kōchū Dainichikyō shoshū 校註大日經疏鈔 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1980s reprint of the Taishō edition with Japanese punctuation and notes) — standard Japanese critical-apparatus edition.
• No complete Western-language translation has been published; partial translations of selected passages appear in Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), and in Stephen Hodge, The Mahāvairocana-Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra with Buddhaguhya’s Commentary (Routledge, 2003) for comparative purposes.

Other points of interest

The work occupies the same Taishō number (T39n1796) that the SòngHuáyán scholar Zǐxuán 子璿 子璿 is credited with in the DILA Person Authority entry — that entry contains a conflation error: the Yuánjué jīng dàshū chāo 圓覺經大疏鈔 traditionally ascribed to Zōngmì 宗密 (with Zǐxuán’s editorial recension) is preserved as X9 no. 245, not T39n1796. The Mandoku KR6j0662 record (T39n1796 = Yīxíng’s Dàrìjīng shū) is correct.

Links

• CBETA
• DILA author authority (Yīxíng)
• Wikidata Q11097562 (大日經疏)
• Kanseki DB