Fó shuō Mùlián wǔbǎiwèn jīng lüèjiě 佛說目連五百問經略解
Concise Commentary on the Maudgalyāyana Five-Hundred Questions Sūtra by 性祇 (Xìng Qí, 述)
About the work
A two-fascicle late-Míng abridged commentary on the Mùlián wǔbǎiwèn jīng (KR6k0073) by Xìng Qí 性祇 (性祇). The commentary glosses the casuistic Vinaya questions of the parent sūtra, explaining the Buddha’s adjudications and relating them to standard Vinaya doctrine.
Prefaces
Author’s colophon: 明性祇述.
Abstract
Xìng Qí’s commentary is one of two late-Míng treatments of the Mùlián wǔbǎiwèn casuistic literature (the other being 永海 Yǒng Hǎi’s KR6k0075). The two commentaries reflect the late-Míng Vinaya revival under figures like 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 and 智旭 Ǒuyì Zhìxù 蕅益智旭 — a movement to recover practical Vinaya scholarship after the long Míng decline of monastic discipline.
Translations and research
- Yū, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship: Spiritual Ambitions, Intellectual Debates, and Epistolary Connections. Leiden: Brill, 2016.