大日經供養次第法疏私記

Dàrì jīng gōngyǎng cìdì fǎ shū sījì 大日經供養次第法疏私記

Private Notes on the Commentary to the Sequential Offering-Ritual Method of the MahāvairocanaSūtra (Jp. Dainichikyō kuyō shidaihō sho shiki) by 宥範 (Yūhan, 撰)

About the work

An 8-fascicle late-Nanbokuchō scholastic sub-commentary on the Gōngyǎng cìdì fǎ shū — Pukesyi’i 不可思議’s two-fascicle commentary on the Sequential Offering-Ritual Method of the Mahāvairocanasūtra (KR6j0670, T39n1797) — by Yūhan 宥範 (宥範, 1270–1352) of the Onoryū 小野流 lineage. The work is Yūhan’s final commentarial accomplishment, completed in the last decade of his life after his magnum opus the 80-fascicle Miàoyìn chāo (KR6j0663).

Prefaces

The opening of fascicle 1 (lines 4–6) identifies the author and his ordination-style:

“Dàrì jīng gōngyǎng cìdì fǎ shū sījì fascicle 1. “Vajra-disciple Ajaku 阿寂 (i.e., Yūhan), records 記.”

Yūhan then opens with a threefold-topic outline of the work — first, explanation of the commentary’s title; second, exposition of the commentary-master’s preface; third, sequential exegesis of the body of the commentary — and proceeds to give a learned discussion of the parent commentary’s title, its base scripture, its location (零妙寺 Lingmiao-temple in the Silla kingdom), and its author Pukesyi’i 不可思議. He then identifies the parent commentary itself as having an authorial style by 不可思議 of the Silla Lingmiao temple, signaling his familiarity with the Tang-Silla Esoteric transmission.

The fascicle 8 colophon (lines 5540–5571 of the source text) preserves a uniquely detailed autobiographical reflection by the aged Yūhan on the genesis of the work:

“…The commentary-master [Pukesyi’i], being face-to-face with the ācārya [Śubhakarasiṃha] and receiving from him the lineage-eye, composed the two-fascicle offering-ritual commentary to enrich the latter generations. From my previous master, I [Yūhan] received the transmission of the seven-light scripture-and-rite two-commentary twenty-two fascicles. By reason of which — during the lifetime of the previous master, in accordance with his command — I recorded thirty-five chapters of notes [the Aban-Hōrakushō]. The bright master, having given his assent and rejoicing, named it the Miàoyìn chāo 妙印鈔. After the ācārya entered nirvāṇa (i.e., after Yūhan’s master’s death), during the Gentoku era (= 1329–1331), in order to repay the master’s kindness and in order to rescue the latter generations, I added a re-revision (再治), making it 80 fascicles. The original-base for that earlier work survives.

“Now, regarding the gates and apartments of the disciple-school, frequently requesting that I record the root-sources of the one-scripture rite-and-method, in order to display them to the latter generations — having made this request my-development-and-utterance through several rounds — I have, as from the 21st day of the 8th month of Ryakuō 4, year-cycle Xīnsì [暦應第四辛巳, = 21 September 1341 CE], although bearing many obscure-and-manifest hesitations, set aside any thought of trans-legal scruple and respectfully taken up the brush.

“However, by day exhausted with the construction of the pagoda I have not had leisure to compose the text; by night sunk in old-age sickness I have not been able to consider the doctrinal meaning. Snatching only the scarce-intervals of my time-and-thought, continuing the text and enduring fatigue, paring back the meaning to its essentials — this old fool has roughly completed eight fascicles. I have called them the Gōngyǎng cìdì fǎ shū sījì.

“My old eyes growing ever dimmer, I cannot undertake a re-revision. I pray that wise later-learners may, according to the meaning, fittingly…” [text-defective]

The work then closes with an eight-line dedicatory verse invoking the eight-petal heart-lotus pedestal, the Vajradhātu and Garbhadhātu maṇḍalas, the Five Wisdoms and Sixteen Wisdom-Lineage Honored-Ones, the Four-Eight Four-Embrace Concentration-Gate Queens, and the transmission-ancestors of the three countries (India, China, Japan).

The terminal colophon records the manuscript transmission: on the 6th month of Enpō 2 [延寶二年, = 1674 CE], this Sījì in 8 fascicles and 4 chapters was bestowed by the Lord Bishop of Daigo-ji Hōon-in 醍醐報恩院僧正 (a Daigo-ji descendant institution of Yūhan’s Onoryū lineage), with the original-decree appended.

Abstract

The Sījì on the Offering-Ritual Method commentary is Yūhan’s late-career exegetical engagement with the ritual-practice dimension of the Mahāvairocanasūtra tradition. Where his earlier Miàoyìn chāo (KR6j0663) had treated Yīxíng’s doctrinal commentary on the scripture — the 大日經疏 — the present work treats the ritual commentary of Pukesyi’i 不可思議, the early-Tang Silla Esoteric master who systematized the offering-sequence ritual procedures derived from the scripture’s later chapters.

The work is structured as eight fascicles of phrase-by-phrase exegesis of Pukesyi’i’s two-fascicle commentary, integrating:

• the standard medieval Japanese Esoteric ritual apparatus — the eighteen-stage ritual 十八道, the Vajradhātu-and-Garbhadhātu offering protocols, the six-vassal-five-light mudrā-sequences, the homa fire-offering procedures;
• the late-Heian Onoryū ritual transmissions that Yūhan had inherited through Genkaku 嚴覺 → seven generations down to his own master;
• the standard medieval Japanese-Shingon doctrinal apparatus to interpret the ritual procedures (the Three Mysteries, the Four Bodies, the Five Wisdoms);
• cross-references to his own Miàoyìn chāo — the work is in places explicitly identified as “as the Miàoyìn chāo widely explains, citing the Nirvāṇasūtra and others” 如妙印鈔引涅槃等廣釋之.

The work bears poignant testimony to the conditions of late-medieval Japanese scholastic production: Yūhan, in his early 70s (1341 CE; he was 71 at composition’s beginning), is by day occupied with pagoda-construction at his temple and by night enfeebled by age-and-illness, snatching only “scarce-intervals” to record what his disciples have requested. He acknowledges that his old eyes will not permit a re-revision, and entrusts the further perfection of the work to later generations. He died in 1352 at age 82, eleven years after beginning the work; the Sījì must therefore have been composed during 1341–1352, and may not have been formally completed before his death — though the surviving 8 fascicles cover the entire parent commentary.

The work circulated through the Daigo-ji Hōon-in 醍醐報恩院 Onoryū lineage in manuscript until the Edo period; the modern Taishō text descends from this Daigo-ji transmission with the manuscript dated to the Enpō 2 (= 1674) bestowal mentioned in the colophon.

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature located.

Links

• CBETA online: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2220
• 宥範 DILA
• Kanseki DB