Jùshě Lùn Sòngshū Zhèngwén 倶舍論頌疏正文
Corrigenda to the Versified Commentary on the Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya by 源信 (撰)
About the work
The Jùshě Lùn Sòngshū Zhèngwén 倶舍論頌疏正文 (Jp. Kusharon jushō shōmon; CBETA T64n2253) is a single-fascicle Heian-period (平安時代) Japanese textual-critical apparatus on the Tang commentator Yuanhui 圓暉 (圓暉)‘s Jùshě Lùn Sòngshū 倶舍論頌疏 (KR6l0036, T1823), composed in 1013 by Genshin 源信 (源信, 942–1017) of the Eshin-in 惠心院 on Hieizan. It is the earliest Japanese sub-commentary on the Kuśa-tradition transmitted in the Taishō canon, and it is, despite its modest extent, the historical anchor of Japanese Abhidharma scholarship; the Edo critic Hōdō 法幢 in his Jīgǔ (KR6l0027) cites it under the alternative name 對倶舍 (“Comparison-against-the-Kuśa”) and treats it as the sole tolerable medieval Japanese Kuśa reference. The work parent text is Yuanhui’s Sòngshū, not Vasubandhu’s Kośa itself — Genshin’s purpose is to identify and correct the typographical errors (筆誤寫錯) and to flag opaque passages in the received Yuanhui text.
Prefaces
The work opens with a short author-preface (T64 p. 467b) citing the Sīyì Brahmadeva-paripṛcchā 思益經 — “as in the kalpa-burning the rivers and springs dry up before the great sea, so when the True Dharma is exhausted the Bodhisattva-ocean is the last to dry” — to justify “studying the Lesser-Vehicle expedient (權門) in support of the Great-Vehicle real teaching (實教).” Genshin acknowledges that Yuanhui’s commentary, “neither prolix nor too brief, the doctrine clear, the references complete, has been the guide of the next generation,” but adds that “everywhere there are typographical errors and scribal misreadings; even a one-error-in-ten-thousand can mislead the student.” The colophon is precisely dated Chōwa 2 (長和二年, 1013), the 18th day of the 8th lunar month — Genshin was 72 years old.
Abstract
The work is structured as a fascicle-by-fascicle list of textual corrigenda to Yuanhui’s Sòngshū, organized by fascicle of the parent text from lùn juàn 1 through lùn juàn 29. For each passage Genshin quotes the disputed line from Yuanhui, sometimes flags the underlying difficulty in the Kuśa prose, then identifies what the correct reading should be on the basis of (i) Vasubandhu’s prose auto-commentary, (ii) Puguang 普光’s (普光) Jì 記 KR6l0034, (iii) Fabao 法寶’s (法寶) Shū 疏 KR6l0035 (cited as 寶記), and (iv) Dunlin 遁麟’s Yújiā jì 瑜伽記. The corrections are overwhelmingly philological — single-character misprints, dropped graphs, transposed lines — but Genshin also flags doctrinal points where Yuanhui has misrepresented Puguang or Fabao’s position, and indicates places where Yuanhui’s reading is independent and where it is derivative.
Genshin (Eshin Sōzu 惠心僧都, 942–1017) is the foundational figure of medieval Japanese Tendai 天台 doctrinal scholarship and the architect of the Japanese Pure Land synthesis (Ōjō yōshū 往生要集). His mastery of Vasubandhu’s Kuśa is documented through his correspondence with the Northern Song Tiantai master Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (知禮) — the Yíwèn 疑問 (preserved as part of the Tiāntái-zōng wèi-jué KR6d0220) — three questions of which on the Kuśa are appended to this work in some printings (see “Other points of interest” below).
The receipt-tradition is itself documented at the close of the printed text: the manuscript circulated for centuries in Tendai institutions, was copied at the Jōrinbō 常林房 in 1468 by the monk Seijun 清澊 (清澊, age 34, monastic seniority 20), recopied in 1507 by Sonkei 尊契 (尊契) of Miidera 三井寺, and finally block-printed in Keian 4 (1651) by Nakamura Gohyōe-no-jō 中村五兵衞尉 (中村五兵衞尉). The printed text is the basis of the Taishō edition.
Translations and research
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄, Sonoda Kōyū 薗田香融, et al. Genshin 源信. Nihon shisō taikei 6. Tōkyō: Iwanami shoten, 1970. Standard biographical and bibliographical study of Genshin.
- Stone, Jacqueline I. Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. — Genshin’s broader doctrinal corpus.
- The Zhèngwén itself has not been translated; it has been discussed in passing in Japanese Tendai-textual studies but receives no dedicated monograph.
Other points of interest
The Taishō printing appends to the Zhèngwén a short text titled Kusharon gimon 倶舍疑問 (T64 p. 475c–476a), three doctrinal questions sent by Genshin to Zhīlǐ 知禮 (= Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮, 知禮) of the Northern Song Tiantai school. These are duplicates of the relevant section of the Tiāntái-zōng wèi-jué (KR6d0220, X56n0942) and concern (i) the discrepancy between the Kuśa and Ekottara-/Madhyama-āgama accounts of the relative size of Pūrvavideha 東洲 versus Aparagodānīya 西洲; (ii) the meaning of “intermediate-aeon” (中劫) in the Avīci-hell-life-span calculation; and (iii) the paramārtha of the Kuśa’s claim that the paths of those Anāgāmins of the 64-stage gradual-path are constituted independently of their preceding non-Sage gradual-purifications. This appendix is the textual link between Genshin’s Kuśa studies and his Tiantai correspondence with Zhili.