Dà Pílúzhēnà jīng gòngyǎng cìdìfǎ shū 大毘盧遮那經供養次第法疏
Commentary on the Sequential Method of Oblation of the Mahāvairocanasūtra by 不可思議 (撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle (2卷) commentary on the seventh and final fascicle of the Mahāvairocanasūtra corpus — i.e. the Gòngyǎng cìdìfǎ 供養次第法 (T18 no. 850), which contains the abhiṣeka and oblation liturgy that completes the Garbhadhātu maṇḍala practice. The author is 不可思議 (Bùkěsīyì, Korean Pulgasaui), a Silla 新羅 monk of the Língmiàosì 零妙寺 who studied in Cháng’ān as a disciple of Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏 alongside 一行. The work is conventionally referred to as the Bùsīyì shū 不思議疏 (“Bùsīyì’s commentary”), to distinguish it from Yīxíng’s Dàrìjīng shū KR6j0662 which covers fascicles 1–6 of the same sūtra.
Abstract
The Bùsīyì shū and the Dàrìjīng shū together constitute the complete Tang Esoteric commentarial apparatus on the Mahāvairocanasūtra: while Yīxíng’s commentary expounds the doctrinal-meditative core of the scripture (the Zhùxīn pǐn 住心品 and the maṇḍala chapters), the Bùsīyì shū covers the operational ritual liturgy — the actual procedure of abhiṣeka, the construction of the homa hearth, the disposition of the offering implements, the sequence of mudrā and mantra in the four kinds of oblation (pūja) and the four kinds of homa (śānti, pauṣṭika, vaśīkaraṇa, abhicāra). The two works together provided the classical East Asian Esoteric tradition with both its doctrinal grammar and its ritual operational manual.
The work is conventionally dated to the late Kāiyuán era (730s) — after Yīxíng’s death (727) and during the lifetime of Bùkěsīyì in Cháng’ān. The Fóguāng dàcídiǎn gives “the late years of Kāiyuán” 開元末年 as the composition date, which would place it in the bracket 730–741. Internal evidence suggests the work was composed at Cháng’ān during Śubhakarasiṃha’s last years or shortly after his death (735), drawing both on the master’s oral teaching and on the Dàrìjīng shū itself.
The Mahāvairocanasūtra fascicle 7 that the work comments on circulates separately in the Taishō as T18n0850 (Gòngyǎng cìdìfǎ) and is the textual basis for the actual practice of the Garbhadhātu abhiṣeka ritual in both the Tang Tángmì and the Heian-Kamakura Japanese Shingon and Tendai-Taimitsu traditions. The Bùsīyì shū was carried to Japan with the rest of the Esoteric textual corpus (probably by Kūkai or by Saichō’s disciples); it was the basis for the early Heian sub-commentary KR6j0671 Dàrìjīng gòngyǎng cìdìfǎ shū sījì 大日經供養次第法疏私記 by Yūhan 宥範 (preserved only in Japanese transmission, no source directory in the KRP tree).
The CBC@ database confirms the work’s status as a single-author Tang Esoteric work and lists no significant textual variants beyond standard scribal corruptions in the Korean and Sòng witnesses.
Translations and research
- Lü Jianfu 呂建福, Zhōngguó mìjiào shǐ 中國密教史 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 1995) — discusses Bùkěsīyì and the Bùsīyì shū as part of the Tang Esoteric commentarial corpus.
- Robert E. Buswell, Jr., The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1983), introductory chapters — includes Pulgasaui in the early-Silla Esoteric milieu.
- Henrik H. Sørensen, “Esoteric Buddhism in Korea,” in Charles D. Orzech et al. (eds.), Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011), chap. 27 — discusses Pulgasaui’s place in Silla–Tang Esoteric exchange.
- No complete Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
Together with the Hwaŏm 華嚴 master Wŏnch’ŭk 圓測 / Yuáncè (613–696) and the Yogācāra–Avataṃsaka master Ŭisang 義湘 (625–702), Bùkěsīyì is one of the small handful of Silla monks whose Chinese-composed works entered the East Asian canonical tradition under their own name — a striking testimony to the integrated character of seventh- and eighth-century Cháng-ān Buddhist scholarship across the East Asian polities.