Zhōng lùn shū jì 中論疏記
Notes on the Sub-commentary on the Middle Treatise by 安澄 (Anchō, 撰)
About the work
The principal Japanese sub-sub-commentary on 吉藏 Jízàng’s 吉藏 Zhōngguān lùn shū 中觀論疏 (T42n1824 = KR6m0006), in eight fascicles, by the Daianji 大安寺 monk 安澄 Anchō 安澄 (763–814 CE). Its subtitle on the first folio — “Jí zhòng yìshuō bù gǎn hé huì 集衆異説不敢和會” (“collecting the various interpretations without daring to harmonise them”) — declares the work’s distinctive method: rather than presenting a single doctrinal line, Anchō painstakingly compiles and juxtaposes the biéshuō 別說 of competing Sanron lineages (Korean, Chinese, and earlier Japanese), preserving the names, citations, and arguments of dozens of seventh- and eighth-century Sanron exegetes whose own works are otherwise lost. T2255 is consequently the single most important witness for the now-vanished early-Sanron commentarial culture of seventh- and eighth-century East Asia.
Structural Division
CANWWW lists this text without an internal sub-toc block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0006 Zhōngguān lùn shū 中觀論疏 (T42n1824).
The work tracks the structure of Jízàng’s T1824, opening with a prolegomenon (序疏) under the three rubrics jiàoqǐ yīnyuán 教起因縁 (the causes for the teaching’s arising), jiěshì tímù 解釋題目 (analysis of the title), and suíwén pànshì 隨文判釋 (clause-by-clause exegesis), then proceeds chapter by chapter through Jízàng’s commentary on the 27 pǐn of the Zhōng lùn.
Abstract
安澄 Anchō (763–814), Daianji-based scholar-monk and the dominant Japanese Sanron exegete of the late Nara to early Heian period, composed T2255 during his maturity. He had studied Sanron under 勤操 Gonsō (754–827) and is the principal figure in the second generation of Daianji Sanron after 道慈 Dōji (d. 744) brought Jízàng’s commentaries from Táng Cháng’ān. The composition date of T2255 cannot be fixed with precision; the work is securely placed within Anchō’s active scholarly period, conventionally bracketed c. 780–814.
The work’s method is encyclopaedic. Anchō repeatedly cites Korean Sanron masters — most prominently the Paekche monk 慧灌 Hyegwan (early seventh century, transmitter of Sanron to Japan) and the Silla scholar 圓測 Wŏnch’ŭk (613–696) — alongside a long sequence of otherwise-lost Chinese exegetes including Bìpóshā 毘婆沙師 layer interpreters, Shùyì 述義 commentators, and his immediate Sanron predecessors 普寂 Pǔjì and 真寂 Zhēnjì. The doctrinal sections preserve, in particular, the now-lost glossary tradition of the late-seventh-century continental Sanron-school yúyī xuǎn 餘義選 (“selected supplementary interpretations”). For this reason T2255 is consulted as a primary source for early East-Asian Mādhyamika historiography rather than merely as a doctrinal study.
The text uniquely preserves the so-called “creation legend of the Three Sages” passage (T65, 0001b–c) in which 伏羲 Fúxī (寶應菩薩 Bǎoyìng púsà), 女媧 Nǚwā (吉祥菩薩 Jíxiáng púsà), 老子 Lǎozǐ (摩訶迦葉 Mahākāśyapa), and 孔子 Confucius (儒童菩薩 Rútóng púsà) are recast as Buddhist bodhisattvas dispatched to China to prepare the indigenous tradition for the reception of the Dharma — a passage which became a locus classicus for the medieval Japanese honji-suijaku 本地垂迹 theory.
The transmitted Taishō text is the modern collation; the work was widely available in Heian and Kamakura Tōdaiji Sanron classrooms (cited continually by 珍海 Chinkai, 澄禪 Chōzen, and 凝然 Gyōnen) and survived in multiple temple manuscripts before its 20th-century Taishō edition.
Translations and research
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Hokke mongu no seiritsu ni kansuru kenkyū 法華文句の成立に関する研究 and Sanron-kyōgaku no kenkyū 三論教學の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985 / 1990. (The standard modern monographic engagements with Anchō’s commentarial output.)
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. “Anchō no Sanron-kyōgaku” 安澄の三論教學. Komazawa daigaku Bukkyōgakubu kenkyū kiyō. (Anchō-specific study.)
- Kanno Hiroshi 菅野博史. Chūgoku Hokke shisōshi kenkyū 中国法華思想史研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1994. (Discussion of Anchō’s preservation of the Sanron citation tradition.)
- Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. (References T2255 as the principal witness for the lost early Sanron commentarial layer.)
Other points of interest
T2255 is among the rare Japanese-authored Sanron works elevated to the Chinese-canon Zōkuzōkyō / Taishō (here at T65) — a sign of its status as a primary research instrument for the Sanron tradition rather than as a sectarian Japanese composition. The “bù gǎn hé huì” — “I do not dare harmonise” — slogan with which Anchō opens has become emblematic in modern philology of the early-Heian preservation ethic, in deliberate contrast to the synthesising tendencies of contemporary Tendai 天台 scholarship.