Shùnzhōng lùn 順中論
Conformist Treatise on the Middle: An Introduction to the First Chapter of the Great Prajñāpāramitā (full title 《順中論義入大般若波羅蜜經初品法門》) by 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà / Nāgārjuna, kārikā), 無著菩薩 (Wúzhuó púsà / Asaṅga, 釋), and 瞿曇般若流支 (Qútán Bōrěliúzhī / Gautama Prajñāruci, 譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle Wèi-period rendering of an Indic Mādhyamaka treatise that frames Nāgārjuna’s opening kārikā of the Zhōng lùn (the dedicatory verse on the eight negations bù shēng yì bù miè 不生亦不滅 …) as the gateway to the first chapter of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra. Translated at Yè 鄴 by 瞿曇般若流支 Gautama Prajñāruci of Eastern-Wèi 東魏 / Yuán-Wèi 元魏, in the entourage of the imperial Buddhist establishment that also produced 菩提流支 Bodhiruci’s translations. The text consists of a prose commentary that the translation-record (翻譯之記) prefacing T1565 attributes to the “master of the Mahāyāna śāstras, Asaṅga” (大乘論師名阿僧佉).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without internal subdivisions. Related texts per CANWWW: KR6m0001 Zhōng lùn 中論 (T30n1564), KR6m0004 Bōrědēng lùn shì 般若燈論釋 (T30n1566), KR6m0005 Dàshèng zhōngguān shìlùn 大乘中觀釋論 (T30n1567).
Abstract
T1565 has long puzzled scholars because the attribution to Asaṅga (Wúzhuó 無著, c. 320–c. 390) — the great Yogācāra master — for a Mādhyamaka commentary is doctrinally anomalous. The fānyì zhī jì 翻譯之記 (translation-record) prefixed to the text identifies the kārikā-author as “Nāgārjuna” (transcribed nàjiāyílíchúnnà 那伽夷離淳那, glossed as “Lóngshèng” 龍勝, with a careful note that the common Chinese rendering 龍樹 is a partial assimilation), and the commentator as Asaṅga, “lifting out and clarifying what Nāgārjuna had not yet expounded” (解未解處別為此部). Modern scholarship (Lamotte, Yamaguchi, Lindtner) agrees that the underlying Indic text is unlikely to be a genuine Asaṅga work but cannot be confidently identified with any extant Sanskrit or Tibetan treatise; it appears to be a hybrid Yogācāra-leaning prosimetric commentary on Nāgārjuna’s maṅgalaśloka that presents the eight negations as the key to the prajñāpāramitā.
The translation was performed by 瞿曇般若流支 Prajñāruci (Bōrěliúzhī 般若流支), an Indian monk of the Gautama lineage who arrived at Lùoyáng 洛陽 in 516 and continued working at Yè under the patronage of 元欣 Yuán Xīn and the Eastern-Wèi shàngshūlìng 尚書令 (named explicitly in the fānyì zhī jì) c. 538–543. The text falls within the Yè-period output of Prajñāruci, which also includes a number of Yogācāra and Tantra translations, and is one of three substantial early Chinese commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s root verses (the others being KR6m0001 T1564 and KR6m0004 T1566). The work is unusual in stating its hermeneutic premise explicitly: Madhyamaka and prajñāpāramitā are mutually entailing, and the kārikā doctrine of dependent-arising-as-emptiness is to be read as the doctrinal substrate of the Great Sūtra.
Translations and research
- Cheng Hsueh-li. “Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamakaśāstra and the Shun-chung-lun.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 8 (1980): 305–316.
- Lindtner, Christian. “Adversaria Buddhica.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 26 (1982): 165–184. (Discussion of T1565’s place among the early Mādhyamaka commentaries.)
- Yamaguchi Susumu 山口益. “Junchūron ni okeru Asaṅga no Mādhyamika riron” 順中論におけるアサンガの中観理論. Bukkyō kenkyū 4 (1940): 1–24.
- Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Chū-ron-ge yakuchū 中論偈訳註. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1984.
Other points of interest
The translation-record (翻譯之記) of T1565 is a rare instance of an early Chinese Buddhist colophon that explicitly diagnoses a transcription convention as problematic: it observes that the standard Chinese form 龍樹 (“dragon-tree”) for the Indic name Nāgārjuna is piànhé yīxiāng wèishì quándāng 片合一廂未是全當 (“a partial fit on one side, not yet wholly correct”) and proposes 龍勝 (“Dragon-Conqueror”) as the more accurate rendering. The proposed correction never displaced the conventional form 龍樹.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (543): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/