Sìfēnlǜ shí píní yìchāo fǔyào jì 四分律拾毗尼義鈔輔要記
Records Supplementing the Essentials of the Sìfēnlǜ Compendium of Vinaya Meanings by 允堪 (Yǔn Kān, 述)
About the work
A six-fascicle Northern Sòng jì 記 sub-commentary on Dàoxuān’s (道宣) Sìfēnlǜ shí píní yìchāo 四分律拾毗尼義鈔 (KR6k0176) by Yǔn Kān 允堪 (允堪, 1005–1061), the senior Northern Sòng Nánshānlǜ commentator at Hángzhōu’s Línghuāsì 靈花寺. Fǔyào 輔要 (“supplementing the essentials”) indicates Yǔn Kān’s intent of supplying the practical-pedagogical apparatus for an otherwise difficult Vinaya digest.
Prefaces
The Manji edition opens with Yǔn Kān’s xù (under the heading qǐ chāo wén zǒngtí zhōng zhuànyè biàngēn 起鈔文總題終轉業變根, “from the heading-line of the chāo to the conclusion of the zhuànyè biàngēn”), recording the textual history of the work: Dàoxuān’s Yìchāo was originally composed at the Dà píní zàng (the great Vinaya-piṭaka) “encompassing its pivot and essence.” A Korean (Xīnluó 新羅) student “secretly took it back to his country, and for two hundred years no copy survived in this land [China].” In Huìchāng 5 (845), through the imperial inspector Lǐ Yuánzuǒ 李元佐 and the Korean envoy Jīn shèrén 金舍人, Yǔn Kān’s predecessors approached the king of Korea and obtained a copy from the Wángchéng Huìmíngsì 王城慧明寺 (in the Korean royal capital), where shì Zìxiāng 釋自相 of Dōngquánsì 東泉寺 shì Xuánlíng 釋玄靈 collated and despatched it. The repatriated text reached China on the eighth day of the second month of Dàzhōng 4 = 850 CE — a precious documentary record of Sino-Korean Vinaya transmission.
Abstract
The Fǔyào jì is the principal Sòng-period sub-commentary on Dàoxuān’s Yìchāo and forms part of Yǔn Kān’s foundational eleventh-century Línghuāsì programme of Nánshānlǜ sub-commentary (alongside his jì on the Hánzhù jièběn shū, KR6k0144, and on the Suíjī jiémó shū, KR6k0156). The text is documentarily critical for two reasons: it preserves the principal Sòng commentary on Dàoxuān’s neglected Yìchāo, and Yǔn Kān’s preface preserves the unique record of the work’s loss in China and its 850-CE repatriation from Korea — a key episode in the history of Sino-Korean Buddhist exchange. Composition belongs to Yǔn Kān’s mature scholarly years.
Translations and research
- Funayama Toru 船山徹. Studies on Sòng Vinaya scholarship.
- Sōrenstein, Daniel. Studies on the Korean Buddhist textual tradition.
Other points of interest
The preface’s record of the 850-CE repatriation of Dàoxuān’s Yìchāo from the Silla royal capital to Tang China is one of the most precise documentary witnesses to the medieval Sino-Korean Buddhist text-exchange. The named transmitters — Lǐ Yuánzuǒ, Jīn shèrén, Zìxiāng of Dōngquánsì, Xuánlíng of Huìmíngsì — give the route and personnel in unusual detail.