Lǜzōng wèndá 律宗問答
Vinaya-School Questions and Answers by 俊芿 Shunjō (問); answered by 了然 Liǎorán (答), 智瑞 Zhìruì (答), and 妙音 Miàoyīn (答)
About the work
A two-fascicle (上下) Sino-Japanese Vinaya disputation of Jiādìng 嘉定 2 (1209), assembled from the questions submitted by the Japanese pilgrim Shunjō 俊芿 (俊芿, 1166–1227) — at that point in his twelve-year sojourn in Sòng China and shortly to return to Japan to found Sennyū-ji 泉涌寺 — together with the line-by-line answers separately supplied by three Sòng Vinaya masters: Línānfǔ Bùkōng jiàoyuàn 臨安府不空教院 了然 Zhìyǒng Liǎorán (1077–1141 — but see note below), Huìjī jùn Yáojiāng Jílèzuòzhǔ 會稽郡姚江極樂座主 智瑞 Zhìruì, and Zhīyán Jìnghuái Jìngfàn 芝嵓淨懷淨梵 妙音 Miàoyīn. The catalog meta gives the principal author’s name as Jùnnǎi 俊艿; the source signatures and DILA A000811 alike give 俊芿 (modern Japanese Shunjō).
Abstract
The Lǜzōng wèndá preserves the most substantial early-thirteenth-century Sino-Japanese exchange on Vinaya doctrine: thirty questions across two fascicles, treating the foundational doctrinal frame of the Nánshān Vinaya tradition. The questions are organized around discrete 疑 (yí, “doubts” / topics of inquiry); the surviving topic-headings include: Sānguān shǐchū yí 三觀始出疑 (the Nánshān threefold-contemplation programme: its origin and inheritance from the Chán master 道整 Dàozhěng); Sānguānjiāo míngyì yí 三觀名義疑 (terminology of the three contemplations); Sānguān shōujiào yí 三觀收教疑 (which doctrinal-classification scheme the three contemplations subsume); Nánshān lìzōng wéishī yí 南山立宗違師疑 (the apparent contradiction whereby 道宣 Dàoxuān, who inherited from 智首 Zhìshǒu a “cause-and-effect” zōng 因果為宗, established a “precept-as-zōng” 戒為宗 of his own); and Chāo shímén shèshǔ zhūpiān yí 鈔十門攝屬諸篇疑 (how the ten-gate scheme of the Shìchāo relates to its other chapters).
The respondents are arranged in three parallel columns: each yí receives an answer from each of the three Sòng masters. The variation between answers is itself the source’s principal scholarly value — providing a three-way controlled comparison of late-Sòng Vinaya pedagogy:
- Liǎorán answers from a Tiāntái–Vinaya integrative perspective, with frequent reference to his own Tōngzhēn jì (KR6k0253).
- Zhìruì answers in a more strictly Nánshān-traditional vein, conservative on procedural matters but doctrinally engaged.
- Miàoyīn, of the Língzhī line, gives the post-Yuánzhào reading.
The opening answer to Sānguān shǐchū yí — Liǎorán’s — points the reader directly to his Tōngzhēn jì for the standard exposition; Zhìruì’s letter-preface (15th day of the 8th month of Jiādìng 2 = September 15, 1209), preserved entire, frames the entire exchange as a Sino-Japanese intellectual courtesy (“so that the schools of the two countries might together see to the bottom of the Vinaya sea”). The colophon to juàn xià terminates the work without an editorial postface; it is unclear whether Shunjō or one of his Japanese disciples edited the three response-sets into the surviving combined two-fascicle form.
Note on Liǎorán’s lifedates
DILA A000035 records Zhìyǒng Liǎorán (1077–1141), and the present work is dated 1209 — which is incompatible with that Liǎorán’s death in 1141. The respondent of Lǜzōng wèndá must therefore either be a later Vinaya master also named Liǎorán (homonym), or the existing person note’s death-date is incorrect. The Sennyū-ji records of Shunjō’s Sòng-China study list a Liǎorán of Línānfǔ Bùkōngjiàoyuàn among Shunjō’s preceptors during his second decade in China (1199–1211), suggesting the two are distinct individuals; the Wèndá’s respondent is more likely a different, otherwise-undocumented Liǎorán active in the early thirteenth century. The single person note for 了然 is retained for both, with this discrepancy flagged.
Translations and research
- Jingakuin Shunjō zenshū 浄学院俊芿全集 (Tokyo: Sanshōsha, 1968) — edition of Shunjō’s collected works including the Lǜzōng wèndá materials.
- Daikobō Sennyū-ji henshū 大菩坊泉涌寺編輯, Sennyū-ji-shi 泉涌寺史 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1984) — the principal Japanese-language history of Shunjō’s foundation, with substantial discussion of the Vinaya curriculum he brought back from Sòng China.
- For the broader Kamakura-period Hokkyō-ritsu / Nankyō-ritsu division, see Paul Groner, Saicho: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000) and the more recent Buddhism and Medieval Society literature.
Other points of interest
- Shunjō’s pilgrimage and the Lǜzōng wèndá form the textual foundation for the Northern Vinaya (Hokkyō-ritsu 北京律) reform movement in early-Kamakura Japan, contemporary with — and theologically distinct from — 叡尊 Eison (1201–1290) and his Saidai-ji-based Nankyō-ritsu 南京律 line.
- The work is one of the few surviving full records of a Japanese pilgrim’s doctrinal questioning of contemporary Sòng Buddhist authorities; comparable in genre to 榮西 Eisai’s Kōzen gokoku-ron but more narrowly Vinaya-focussed.
- The catalog meta variant Jùnnǎi 俊艿 reflects a graphic confusion of 芿 (rare) with 艿; the source itself preserves 芿.