Lǜzōng xīnxué míngjù 律宗新學名句
Vinaya-School Phrases for New Students by 懷顯 Huáixiǎn (編)
About the work
A three-fascicle Vinaya-school student dictionary by Huáixiǎn 懷顯 (懷顯, hào Chíjìng dàshī 持淨大師) of the Fǎhuá lánruò 法華蘭若 in Qiántáng 錢塘 (Hángzhōu, modern Zhèjiāng), self-prefaced Shàoshèng 紹聖 gǎiyuán 改元 (= 紹聖 1 jiǎxū 甲戌, 1094) on the day before the summer-retreat. The catalog meta gives the author’s name as Wéixiǎn 惟顯; the source signature itself, however, reads Huáixiǎn 懷顯 throughout, and the DILA Buddhist Person Authority (A001078) takes 懷顯 as canonical with 惟顯 as an alternate form — followed here.
Abstract
The Lǜzōng xīnxué míngjù is a numerically-organized terminological dictionary for Sòng Vinaya students, designed to overcome two pedagogical limitations the author flags in his preface: (a) the Vinaya texts list their own 增一 (incremental-numerical) headings only piecemeal, never integrating them across the various Vinaya-school recensions; and (b) the broader Mahāyāna numerical-glossary tradition records terms in great breadth but is not organized around the Vinaya school’s own preoccupations. Huáixiǎn accordingly compiles a dictionary that (i) covers the full numerical sequence (entries from yī 一 onward through compound-numerical headings), (ii) draws across the various Vinaya-school recensions (Sìfēn 四分, Wǔfēn 五分, Sēngqí 僧祇, Sàpóduō 薩婆多, etc.) plus the Mahāyāna scriptural and abhidharma corpus to give a single one-stop reference, and (iii) — the principal didactic feature — supplies under each headword a short, often single-line citation of the most-quoted passage that fixes the term, e.g. under yīlǜ 一律 the line “the Sìfēn lǜ alone is Mahāyāna in essence” (Sìfēn yīlǜ zōng shì dàshèng 事鈔四分一律宗是大乘) from 道宣 Dàoxuān’s Shìchāo 事鈔 (KR6k0128).
The work is thus structurally similar to the great number-organized Buddhist references of the early Sòng (e.g. the Fānyì míngyì jí 翻譯名義集 (KR6s0019) of 法雲 Fǎyún) but specifically Vinaya-school-focused. The closing section of juàn xià contains a particularly valuable historiographic table: a comparative list of the patriarchal lineages (lìzǔ 立祖) of the Vinaya tradition as enumerated by four major Sòng Vinaya scholars — Nánshān 道宣 Dàoxuān (the canonical “ten patriarchs”); Qiántáng 守仁 Shǒurén (seven patriarchs ending with Zēnghuī jìzhǔ 增輝記主); Tiāntái 允堪 Yǔnkān (seven patriarchs ending with Nánshān); Yúháng 元照 Yuánzhào (nine patriarchs); and the present author’s own (five patriarchs: 法正 Fǎzhèng → 法聰 Fǎcōng → 道覆 Dàofù → 智首 Zhìshǒu → Nánshān) — a primary source for the Sòng-period recasting of Vinaya-school self-genealogy.
The pedagogical addressee is named in the preface: xīnxué bèi 新學輩 (“new-student class”), i.e. monks beginning Vinaya training, for whom the work serves as both a lookup-tool and a memorization-aid. The compact line-per-headword format makes the work especially suited to oral-recitative learning.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. The work is briefly noticed in the entries on Sòng-period Vinaya pedagogy in Cao Shibang 曹仕邦, Zhōngguó fójiào jièlǜ yǔ shèhuì 中國佛教戒律與社會 (Taipei: Fǎgǔ wénhuà, 2016).
Other points of interest
- The closing patriarchate-comparison table in juàn xià is the principal source for reconstructing the diversity of Vinaya-school self-genealogies in the Northern Sòng. It is cited in modern Sòng-Vinaya scholarship more often than any other passage of the work.
- The author’s biéhào Chíjìng dàshī 持淨大師 (“Master who Upholds the Pure [Discipline]”) fits the work’s didactic focus; per DILA, he was also author of the now-lost Qiántáng shèngjì jì 錢塘勝跡記 (5 juàn) — a Hángzhōu Buddhist gazetteer.
- The “Wéixiǎn 惟顯” form in the catalog meta likely arose by graphic confusion of 懷 and 惟 in cursive transmission; the source itself preserves 懷顯.