Zhōngguān lùn shū 中觀論疏
Sub-commentary on the Madhyamaka Treatise by 吉藏 (Jízàng, 撰)
About the work
The principal Chinese exegetical commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Zhōng lùn / Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (T1564 = KR6m0001), in ten fascicles, by 吉藏 吉藏 (549–623), the great Suí-period consolidator of the Sānlùn 三論 (Three-Treatise / Mādhyamika) school. It works through the Piṅgala-layer prose of T1564 chapter by chapter, supplying philological glosses, philosophical exegesis, and prosopographical information about the early Mādhyamaka transmission in China. T1824 is the most extensive single Mādhyamaka work in the Chinese tradition and the foundational reference for all subsequent East-Asian Sānlùn scholarship, including Korean (元曉 Wonhyo, 義寂 Uijok) and Japanese (永超 Eichō, 安澄 Anchō) sub-commentaries.
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0001 Zhōng lùn 中論 (T30n1564).
Abstract
T1824 opens with a substantial zhōnglùn xù shū 中論序疏 (sub-commentary on 僧叡 Sēngruì’s preface to T1564), which preserves an important stratum of Sēngruì biography otherwise not securely attested: Sēngruì’s native place (Wèijùn Chánglè 魏郡長樂), his early monastic training under 僧賢 Sēngxián, his polemical engagement with 僧朗 Sēnglǎng of Zhōngshān, his recognition by 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva as one of “the Eight Inner-Chamber Disciples” (門徒三千入室唯八), and the testimony of 姚興 Yáo Xìng himself praising him as “the pine and cedar of the yèwèi” (業衛之松柏). This biographical material is not preserved with this density anywhere else in the Sēngruì-related sources and is one of the principal arguments for the prosopographical importance of T1824.
The body of the commentary is structured to track the prose of T1564 chapter by chapter, but it is deeply philosophical in character, working out Jízàng’s èrdì 二諦 (two-truths) doctrine, the bābù zhōngdào 八不中道 (eight-fold negation as the middle way) interpretation of the maṅgalaśloka, and the categorisation of opponents into “Indian tīrthikas, Lesser Vehicle abhidharmic Buddhists, and provisionally established Mahāyānists” (外道、毘曇、成實、攝論 and so on). The commentary is also Jízàng’s principal vehicle for stating the so-called értì sānzhòng 二諦三重 (“three-fold two-truths”) doctrine: each pair of truths can itself be taken as the conventional half of a higher pair, generating a recursive series.
The composition date is uncertain in detail; Jízàng was active at the Jiāxiángsì 嘉祥寺 in Kuàijī from c. 590 onward and at the Suí imperial dàochǎng 道場 from c. 605 — most modern scholarship (Liu, Hirai, Itō) places the composition of T1824 in his late Kuàijī to early Cháng’ān phase, c. 605–615. The work was a key exegetical authority for the Korean Hwaom and Japanese Sanron transmissions.
Translations and research
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994. (Substantial discussion of T1824 and Jí-zàng’s Mādhyamika systematics.)
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Chūgoku hannya shisōshi kenkyū: Kichizō to Sanronkyō no kenkyū 中国般若思想史研究―吉藏と三論教の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1976. (Foundational Japanese monograph on the Sān-lùn lineage and Jí-zàng’s commentaries; principal modern study of T1824.)
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985.
- Kim, Young-Ho. Tao-sheng’s Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. (Discussion of T1824 in context of Sān-lùn doctrine.)
- Saitō Tomohiro 齋藤智寛. “Kichizō Chūganron-sho ni okeru Sōei no shōden” 吉蔵『中觀論疏』における僧叡の小傳. Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū.
Other points of interest
The opening Sēngruì biography in T1824 is perhaps the principal reason the text remained continually consulted in the East Asian tradition: the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (KR6r0052) and Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (KR6s0084) witness streams for Sēngruì are partially divergent from each other, and Jízàng appears to have had access to a third independent line of testimony that he wove into his preface-commentary. The work also preserves rare references to early-fifth-century Mādhyamaka oral teaching that did not enter the standard Gāosēng zhuàn tradition.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (600): [ 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/