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中論

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Text ID
KR6m0001
Date
409–409
Dynasty
姚秦

Zhōng lùn 中論

Madhyamakaśāstra (Treatise on the Middle Way) by 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà / Nāgārjuna, 造), 梵志青目 (Fànzhì Qīngmù / *Piṅgala, 釋), and 鳩摩羅什 (Jiūmóluóshí / Kumārajīva, 譯)

About the work

The cornerstone Mādhyamaka treatise of East-Asian Buddhism: 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva’s four-fascicle Chinese rendering of 龍樹菩薩 Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (中論本頌, “Root Verses on the Middle Way”) together with the prose commentary of Piṅgala (梵志青目 Fànzhì Qīngmù). Translated at Cháng’ān in Hóngshǐ 弘始 11 (409 CE) under the patronage of 姚興 Yáo Xìng of the Hòu-Qín 後秦. The text contains 27 pǐn 品 (“chapters of investigation”), each opening “Examination of …” (觀…品), structured as a sustained negative dialectic against substantial views of causation, motion, the senses, the aggregates, time, the self, the Tathāgata, and nirvāṇa. Together with the Bǎi lùn 百論 (T1569 = KR6m0012) and the Shí’èrmén lùn 十二門論 (T1568 = KR6m0008), it forms the canonical “Three Treatises” (三論) which became the textual foundation of the Sānlùn 三論 school.

Structural Division

The 27 pǐn of the Zhōng lùn:

  1. Guān yīnyuán pǐn 觀因緣品 — Examination of conditions
  2. Guān qùlái pǐn 觀去來品 — Examination of going and coming
  3. Guān liùqíng pǐn 觀六情品 — Examination of the six sense-faculties
  4. Guān wǔyīn pǐn 觀五陰品 — Examination of the five aggregates
  5. Guān liùzhǒng pǐn 觀六種品 — Examination of the six elements
  6. Guān rǎnrǎnzhě pǐn 觀染染者品 — Examination of the defilement and the defiled
  7. Guān sānxiàng pǐn 觀三相品 — Examination of the three marks (arising, abiding, ceasing)
  8. Guān zuòzuòzhě pǐn 觀作作者品 — Examination of the act and the agent
  9. Guān běnzhù pǐn 觀本住品 — Examination of a prior abider
  10. Guān ránkěrán pǐn 觀燃可燃品 — Examination of fire and fuel
  11. Guān běnjì pǐn 觀本際品 — Examination of an initial limit
  12. Guān kǔ pǐn 觀苦品 — Examination of suffering
  13. Guān shàng pǐn 觀上品 — Examination of formations (saṃskāra)
  14. Guān hé pǐn 觀合品 — Examination of contact / conjunction
  15. Guān yǒuwú pǐn 觀有無品 — Examination of being and non-being
  16. Guān fújiě pǐn 觀縛解品 — Examination of bondage and liberation
  17. Guān yè pǐn 觀業品 — Examination of action (karman)
  18. Guān fǎ pǐn 觀法品 — Examination of dharmas / self
  19. Yòngshí pǐn 用時品 — Examination of time
  20. Guān yīnguǒ pǐn 觀因果品 — Examination of cause and effect
  21. Guān chénghuài pǐn 觀成壞品 — Examination of arising and ceasing
  22. Guān rúlái pǐn 觀如來品 — Examination of the Tathāgata
  23. Guān diāndào pǐn 觀顛倒品 — Examination of error
  24. Guān sìdì pǐn 觀四諦品 — Examination of the Four Noble Truths
  25. Guān nièpán pǐn 觀涅槃品 — Examination of nirvāṇa
  26. Guān shí’èryīnyuán pǐn 觀十二因緣品 — Examination of the twelve links of conditioned co-origination
  27. Guān xiéjiàn pǐn 觀邪見品 — Examination of wrong views

CANWWW lists as related texts: KR6m0003 Shùnzhōng lùn 順中論 (T30n1565), KR6m0004 Bōrědēng lùn shì 般若燈論釋 (T30n1566), KR6m0005 Dàshèng zhōngguān shìlùn 大乘中觀釋論 (T30n1567), KR6m0006 Zhōngguān lùn shū 中觀論疏 (T42n1824), and Zhōngguān lùn èrshíqī pǐn biéshì 中觀論二十七品別釋 (T65n2256).

Abstract

T1564 presents the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā in 446 verses (Tibetan and Sanskrit witnesses count 449), embedded in the vṛtti of an Indic master rendered in Chinese as Qīngmù 青目 — universally identified as Piṅgala or Piṅgalakṣa (the precise Sanskrit form remains uncertain; Piṅgala “tawny-eyed” is the most economical reconstruction). The Indic original of the prose commentary is no longer extant in Sanskrit; T1564 is therefore the principal witness for this particular layer of the early Mūlamadhyamaka-commentary tradition, alongside Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā (preserved only in Sanskrit and Tibetan, never translated into Chinese), Buddhapālita’s Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti (Tibetan only), and Bhāviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa (translated by Prabhākaramitra in the seventh century as KR6m0004, T30n1566). The Piṅgala commentary is exegetically unsystematic by Indic standards but theologically central to the East-Asian reception of Madhyamaka.

The text is prefaced in T1564 by 僧叡 Sēngruì’s Zhōng lùn xù 中論序, which supplies the principal early-fifth-century attestation of the work’s circulation: Sēngruì frames the text as the antidote to “deluded views and one-sided awakenings” and reads it as the doctrinal complement to the Bǎi lùn and the Shí’èrmén lùn. The grouping of these three texts as the Sānlùn 三論 became the basis of the eponymous Chinese exegetical lineage that runs from 僧肇 and 僧叡 Sēngruì down through 僧朗 Sēnglǎng, 僧詮 Sēngquán, 法朗 Fǎlǎng, and culminates in 吉藏 (549–623), whose monumental Zhōngguān lùn shū 中觀論疏 (T42n1824 = KR6m0006) remains the principal Chinese exegetical commentary on T1564.

The Tibetan tradition preserves the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā under the title dBu ma rtsa ba shes rab (Tōh. 3824) together with several commentaries — Buddhapālita’s, Bhāviveka’s, Candrakīrti’s, and Tsongkhapa’s rTsa shes ṭik chen — but none of them quite match the Piṅgala layer in T1564, making the Chinese version philologically irreducible.

Translations and research

  • Lamotte, Étienne. “Madhyamaka.” In Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna. Louvain, 1944–1980. (Comparative apparatus on Madhyamaka treatises in Chinese.)
  • Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. (The foundational English study of T1564 and its place in the Sānlùn lineage.)
  • Bocking, Brian, trans. Nāgārjuna in China: A Translation of the Middle Treatise. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995. (Complete English translation of T1564.)
  • Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Chū-ron-ge yakuchū 中論偈訳註. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1984. (Standard modern Japanese annotated translation; collates the Piṅgala layer with the Indic commentaries.)
  • Walleser, Max. Die mittlere Lehre des Nāgārjuna nach der chinesischen Version übertragen. Heidelberg, 1912. (First Western translation of T1564, from the Chinese.)
  • Garfield, Jay L. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. (Standard English translation of the kārikās alone, from the Tibetan.)
  • Siderits, Mark, and Shōryū Katsura, trans. Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Boston: Wisdom, 2013. (Standard contemporary English translation from the Sanskrit.)
  • Ye Shaoyong 葉少勇. Zhōnglùnsòng: Fán-Cáng-Hàn héjiào, dǎodú, yìzhù 中論頌：梵藏漢合校、導讀、譯註. Shanghai: Zhōngxī shūjú, 2011. (Critical comparative edition of the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Kumārajīva versions, with annotated Chinese translation.)

Other points of interest

The 27th-chapter colophon of T1564 (the “ending verses” 不可得空) attributes the four-fascicle structure to Kumārajīva’s editorial hand: the underlying Indic kārikās are transmitted as a single block of 27 prakaraṇas, but Kumārajīva, like all his major translators, treated the text as adaptable for Chinese liturgical and exegetical use, dividing it into four juǎn with chapter-break markers that became canonical for the East Asian tradition. The Zhōng lùn is also the locus classicus for the so-called sāndì jì 三諦偈 (“verse of the three truths”) at 24.18 — yīnyuán suǒ shēng fǎ, wǒ shuō jí shì kōng, yì wéi shì jiǎmíng, yì shì zhōngdào yì 因緣所生法，我說即是空，亦為是假名，亦是中道義 — which became the textual foundation of Tiāntái 天台 doctrine through 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s reading.

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