Lèngyán jīng rúshuō 楞嚴經如說
The Śūraṃgamasūtra As-Spoken by 鍾惺 (撰)
About the work
A ten-fascicle (10卷) literati commentary on the Śūraṃgamasūtra (KR6j0118) by Zhōng Xīng 鍾惺 鍾惺 (1574 – 1624), one of the two principal founders of the Jìnglíng school (Jìnglíng pài 竟陵派) of late-Míng poetry. The title Rúshuō 如說 (“As-Spoken”, “Speaking-As-It-Is”) echoes the canonical formula rúshì wǒwén 如是我聞 (“Thus have I heard”) and signals a deliberately direct, gloss-and-paraphrase reading of the sūtra rather than scholastic-doctrinal exegesis. Preserved as X13 no. 286 in the Xùzàngjīng.
Prefaces
The work opens directly with the sūtra’s title and Zhōng Xīng’s commentarial format — an interlinear prose paraphrase in which each phrase of the sūtra is followed by a gloss in square brackets:
“Dàfódǐng rúlái mìyīn xiūzhèng liǎoyì zhū púsà wànxíng shǒulèngyán jīng / Tiānzhú śramaṇa Pramiti, translator. // [Tiānzhú: the general name of the Western Region’s countries. Śramaṇa: this means ‘diligent-quieting’ — diligently practicing good dharmas, ceasing evil practices. Pramiti: this means jíliàng (extreme measure) — the translator’s name. The translator: one who turns Sanskrit characters into Chinese characters. The Five-Indian shìzhǔ (world-rulers) most prized this sūtra and kept it secret, not transmitting. Pramiti wished to transmit it to Zhèndàn (China); he secretly stored it and brought it. In the end he was caught and forced to return. Afterwards, by means of fine xìdié 細㲲 [Bengali muslin], he wrote it out, broke open his arm, hid it inside his skin, and crossed the sea, reaching Guǎngzhōu. At the time it was Tang Zhōngzōng’s Shénlóng yuánnián (705 CE); the chief minister Fáng Róng, then in Guǎng[-zhōu], requested that it be translated at the Zhìzhǐsì and brought it forth.]” (大佛頂如來密因修證了義諸菩薩萬行首楞嚴經 / 天竺沙門般剌密諦譯 // 【天竺。西域國之總名。沙門。此云勤息。勤行善法。止息惡行。般剌密諦。此云極量。譯師名也。譯者。翻梵字而成華字。五天世主最寶此經。祕而不傳。般剌密諦欲傳震旦。密藏而來。竟被獲回。後以微妙細㲲書之。破臂藏於皮中。航海而達廣州。時唐中宗神龍元年。宰相房融在廣。請就制止寺譯出。】).
Abstract
The Rúshuō is a distinctive product of late-Wànlì literati Buddhism — a jūshì jiāngjīng 居士講經 (“lay sermononthesūtra”) project — applying Zhōng Xīng’s characteristic Jìnglíng close-reading technique to the Lèngyán text. The format combines (a) the bracketed-gloss commentary form (cf. the Jiāngnán literati gloss-tradition for the Zhuāngzǐ and Lǎozǐ) with (b) the running-paraphrase exposition of the sūtra-text. As a literati-Buddhist artifact it represents the late-Wànlì lay-Buddhist literary public sphere in which sūtras were read and discussed across the jiāngnán literati circles in conversation with monastic-doctrinal commentary.
The dating bracket is set to 1610 – 1624: 1610 is Zhōng’s jìnshì year (after which his Buddhist study intensified, taking the Wǎnzhī jūshì 晚知居士 sobriquet), 1624 is his death year.
Translations and research
- For Zhōng Xīng’s literary career: Chih-p’ing Chou, Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge UP, 1988); Daria Berg, Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (Brill, 2002), discussions of the Jìnglíng school.
- For late-Wànlì literati Buddhism: Timothy Brook, Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (Harvard University Asia Center, 1993).
- No complete Western-language translation of the Rúshuō located.