Dàshèng zhōngguān shìlùn 大乘中觀釋論
Mahāyāna Madhyamaka Commentary by 安慧菩薩 (Ānhuì púsà / Sthiramati, 造) and 惟淨 (Wéijìng, 等譯)
About the work
An eighteen-fascicle Northern-Song translation of an Indic Mādhyamaka commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā attributed to the Yogācāra master Sthiramati 安慧 (c. 510–570). The translation was undertaken in the Northern-Song imperial Yìjīngyuàn 譯經院 by the bureau headed by 惟淨 (Wéijìng) — Imperial Court Gentleman of the Splendid Brilliance (朝散大夫試鴻臚卿光梵大師). The transmitted Chinese text is split between the Taishō (T1567, partial) and the Tripiṭaka Koreana (TK41 N1482, supplementing the Taishō); the catalog gives the source as both, reflecting that the eighteen-juǎn complete recension is recovered only by collation of the two witnesses. The colophon’s date-formula places the project in the yìjīngyuán phase of the Tiānshèng 天聖 era (1009–1023).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without a structural-division block; it follows the chapter structure of the Zhōng lùn (T1564) but with the prose commentary substantially rewritten. Related texts per CANWWW: KR6m0001 Zhōng lùn 中論 (T30n1564), KR6m0003 Shùnzhōng lùn 順中論 (T30n1565), KR6m0004 Bōrědēng lùn shì 般若燈論釋 (T30n1566).
Abstract
The attribution to Sthiramati of a Madhyamaka commentary is doctrinally striking, since Sthiramati is otherwise known as a Yogācāra master and the commentator on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā; modern scholarship (Suzuki, Lindtner, Saito, He) has accepted the attribution while noting that the commentary is doctrinally Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthetic, demonstrating the syncretist tendencies of late Indian Mādhyamaka thought of the yogācāra-madhyamaka lineage that flourished in Nālandā in the 6th–7th centuries. The Indic Vorlage is no longer extant in Sanskrit, and there is no known Tibetan parallel; T1567/TK1482 is the unique witness.
The work covers the standard 27 chapters of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā but with a markedly Yogācāra-inflected gloss: the doctrine of the two truths (世俗勝義二諦) is read in the opening as the framework within which “the bodhisattva, in order to open the cognitive door for sentient beings”, refrains from the merely doctrinal abandonment of the conventional. The translation appears to have been produced in a single push by the imperial yìjīngyuán, which under 惟淨 Wéijìng (a Bian-jīng monk who became the principal yìjīng official under emperors 真宗 Zhēnzōng and 仁宗 Rénzōng) translated some 60-plus Indic and Central Asian texts in the early eleventh century. The Yuán-period catalog Zhìyuán fǎbǎo kāntóng zǒnglù 至元法寶勘同總錄 (至元法寶勘同總錄) records the work’s incorporation into the imperial canon.
Translations and research
- He Huanhuan 何歡歡. Anhui púsà ‘Dàshèng zhōng-guān shì-lùn’ yánjiū 安慧菩薩《大乘中觀釋論》研究. Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎn-shè, 2014. (Foundational modern critical study and partial annotated translation; addresses the attribution question.)
- Lindtner, Christian. “Anhui’s Madhyamakāvatāra-Commentary.” In Earliest Buddhism and Madhyamaka, edited by D. Seyfort Ruegg and L. Schmithausen. Leiden: Brill, 1990: 89–105.
- Saito Akira 斎藤明. “Anne to Mādhyamika” 安慧と中観. Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 53.2 (2005): 825–818.
- Suzuki, K. A Study of Sthiramati’s Madhyamaka Commentary. Tokyo: Tokyo University Oriental Library, 1994.
Other points of interest
The collation problem of T1567 with TK41 N1482 is one of the more notable cases in modern Buddhist canon-philology of a single Indic work fragmented across the Taishō and Tripiṭaka Koreana editions; the reconstructed eighteen-juǎn whole is presented in CBETA’s modern reissue with composite numbering. The commentary’s Yogācāra inflection makes it a key witness for the late-Indic yogācāra-madhyamaka synthesis, paralleling Tibetan-preserved works of the same lineage.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (1000): [ 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/