Lèngyán jīng jiān 楞嚴經箋
Annotated Marginalia on the Śūraṃgamasūtra by 惟慤 (科), 可度 (箋)
About the work
A ten-fascicle (10卷) hybrid Tang-Sòng-Yuán commentary on the Śūraṃgamasūtra (KR6j0118) preserved as X11 no. 271 in the Xùzàngjīng. The work has a complex authorship structure recorded in the catalog meta and in the work’s own colophons: the sectional outline (kē 科) is by the mid-Tang 崇福寺 崇福寺 monk Wéikè 惟慤 惟慤 (mid-Tang, productive c. 766), while the annotated marginalia (jiān 箋) are by the late-Sòng / Yuán-transition Tiāntái master Wújí Kěd 無極可度 可度 (sobriquet Shǒulèng dàshī 首楞大師, “Great Master Śūraṃgama” — a sobriquet earned precisely from his Lèngyán labors).
Prefaces
The work opens with a second preface, ascribed in its title-string to a Sòng-period Tūichéng bǎodé gōngchén tèjìn xíng xíngbù shàngshū shǒu sīshì jīnèi hétí quànnóngshǐ jí guó jiǔjiāngjùn kāiguógōng shíyì wǔqiān sānbǎi 推誠保德功臣特進行刑部尚守司事畿內河提勸農使及國九江郡開國公食邑五千三百 (the personal name is partially illegible in the transcription, with several lacunae 「□□□□□□」 marked in the text). The preface itself is heavily damaged in the source transcription: “He who is good at speaking of the Buddha … Could not Dao itself be likened? Without form, the spirit’s goodness, without place, zhànjì serene, perfect-and-everywhere; greeting it one does not see its head, following it one does not see its back. Birth-after-birth and not born; transformation-after-transformation and not transformed; encompassing all-existence; embodying-and-emitting in the ten directions …” (夫善言佛者。□□□□□□□□□況之道乎。無方善□□之神乎。湛寂精常。圓滿平等。迎之不見其首。隨之不見其後。生生而不生。化化而不化。包褁萬有。含吐十方。資始眾緣。具足萬行。光明密照而非色。虗通潛運而非空。世界遷變而不移。山岳旋偃而常靜).
Abstract
The earliest layer of the work is Wéikè’s three-fascicle Tang commentary on the Śūraṃgama, completed in Dàlì 1, bǐngwǔ = 766 CE, traditionally written at the residence of the former chief minister Fáng Róng 房融. According to the Sòng Gāosēngzhuàn 宋高僧傳 hagiography of Wéikè (T50n2061_p0738b14ff.), Wéikè had a vision in which Mañjuśrī riding the lion entered through his mouth, and from that point his pen “flowed as if the Buddha himself were teaching the Prajñāpāramitā to Subhūti.” Wéikè’s commentary is the earliest extant exegesis of the Lèngyán, predating Chángshuǐ Zǐxuán’s Yìshū by some 250 years — a remarkable fact, since the Lèngyán’s own dating to the Tang translation (Shénlóng 1 = 705) places Wéikè’s commentary only some 60 years after the sūtra’s appearance.
Wéikè’s three-fascicle text was expanded to ten fascicles by Wújí Kědù in the late Sòng / early Yuán by the addition of extensive interlinear marginalia (jiān) drawing on the full Sòng Lèngyán commentarial corpus available to him (Zǐxuán’s Yìshū, Huáiyuǎn’s Shìyào chāo, Jièhuán’s Yàojiě). The work as transmitted is therefore a stratified Tang-Sòng composite text, with Wéikè’s structural and exegetical core preserved through Kědù’s editorial expansion.
The dating bracket is set to 1250 – 1320 for the received recension — corresponding to Kědù’s productive period as a late-Southern-Sòng / Yuán-transition Tiāntái master. Wéikè’s underlying Tang text was composed in 766; the jiān compilation is the principal late-Sòng/Yuán contribution.
The catalog meta classifies the dynasty as 宋, which is correct for the jiān compilation but obscures the work’s Tang origin; this hybrid authorship is the work’s principal philological-historical interest.
Translations and research
- For the Tang origin of Wéikè’s commentary, see Sòng Gāosēngzhuàn fasc. 5 (T50n2061_p0738b14ff.) and the discussion in Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨, Bukkyō kyōten seiritsushi-ron 仏教経典成立史論 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1946), pp. 484ff., which treats Wéikè’s commentary as evidence in the dating of the Śūraṃgamasūtra itself.
- Ronald Epstein, “The Shurangama-Sutra (T. 945): A Reappraisal of its Authenticity,” paper presented at the AAS annual meeting (1976), discusses the textual-historical position of Wéikè’s commentary.
- No complete Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The damaged preface is a significant prosopographic puzzle: the title-string preserved (Tūichéng bǎodé gōngchén — jiǔjiāngjùn kāiguógōng — shíyì wǔqiān sānbǎi) is consistent with one of several major Northern-Sòng official patrons (the jiǔjiāngjùn 九江郡 enfeoffment is associated, e.g., with Wáng Qīnruò 王欽若 in the Tiānxǐ era), but the lacunae in the personal-name field forbid confident identification. A philological reconstruction would be a useful contribution.