Shí’èrmén lùn shū wénsī jì 十二門論疏聞思記
Records of Hearing-and-Reflection on the Sub-commentary on the Twelve Gates Treatise by 藏海 (Zōkai, 撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Japanese Sanron 三論 lecture-record on 吉藏 Jízàng’s 吉藏 Shí’èrmén lùn shū 十二門論疏 (T42n1825 = KR6m0009), the standard Suí-period sub-commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Shí’èrmén lùn 十二門論 (Twelve Gates Treatise, T30n1568 = KR6m0008). The title’s wénsī 聞思 (“hearing-and-reflection”) is the term of art for classroom lecture-notes — material drawn from a teacher’s oral exposition and the student’s own subsequent reflection — and marks the genre as a kikigaki 聞書 rather than a finished doctrinal monograph. The work covers only the preface (序) and a small portion of the opening of Jízàng’s commentary, and is therefore either incomplete as transmitted, or an excerpted lecture-set on the preface alone.
Structural Division
CANWWW lists this text without an internal sub-toc block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0009 Shí’èrmén lùn shū 十二門論疏 (T42n1825).
The body works through Jízàng’s preface (序疏) under six rubrics — biāo dàzōng 標大宗 (declaring the great purport), shì tímù 釋題目 (analysing the title), xù zào lùn yuánqǐ yì 叙造論縁起意 (the circumstances of composition), zàn lùn gōngnéng 讚論功能 (praising the treatise’s capacity), zàn lùn lìyì 讚論利益 (praising its benefit), and zuòzhě qiānràng 作者謙讓 (the author’s modesty) — preserving Jízàng’s argumentation in full and Zōkai’s own clarifying glosses (”○ … 云云”).
Abstract
The author Zōkai 藏海 (Japanese reading: Zōkai) is identified by the DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001887 with the alternate name Genkū Zōkai 玄空藏海. His precise dates are not securely documented; the work is conventionally placed in the early Heian Sanron-school transmission line at Daianji 大安寺 or Tōdaiji 東大寺, roughly contemporary with or shortly after 安澄 Anchō 安澄 (763–814). On the basis of the citation pattern (the text consults Jízàng’s Shí’èrmén lùn shū directly, in the recension that was current in early Heian Sanron classrooms, with no Tang-dynasty Sanron sub-commentary intermediations) and the genre (wénsī / kikigaki), the work belongs to the post-Anchō period of Japanese Sanron consolidation, c. 8th–9th century.
The exegetical method is straightforwardly didactic: each phrase of Jízàng’s preface is quoted as a daimon 題文 (the textual lemma), followed by a clarifying paraphrase (“疏云…”) that draws on the standard Sanron technical vocabulary — zhēbìng xiǎndào 斥病顯道 (rebutting illness and revealing the way), èrdì 二諦 (the two truths), bābù zhōngdào 八不中道 (the eight negations as the middle way). The work uniquely preserves the six-rubric structure of Jízàng’s preface as understood in the early Japanese Sanron classroom, and so functions as an indirect witness to the lost early-Heian kuden 口傳 oral tradition surrounding T1825.
The Taishō edition is brief (T65 fasc. 257–258, a single short fascicle) and its survival depends on Tōdaiji or Kōzanji manuscript holdings later incorporated into the modern canon.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is occasionally cited in surveys of early-Heian Sanron classroom culture (Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮, Sanron-kyōgaku no kenkyū 三論教學の研究, 1990) but has not received monographic study.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal extant Japanese commentary on Jízàng’s Shí’èrmén lùn shū and one of only a handful of kikigaki genre Sanron items to be elevated to the Taishō canon. Its preservation reflects the same Tōdaiji scholastic-archival ecology that preserved T2255 (KR6m0007) and T2256 (KR6m0002).