Bǎilùn shū 百論疏
Sub-commentary on the Hundred-Verse Treatise by 吉藏 (Jízàng, 撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle Suí-period sub-commentary by 吉藏 吉藏 (549–623) on the Bǎi lùn 百論 (KR6m0012 T1569). Like Jízàng’s KR6m0009 Shí’èrmén lùn shū T1825, this commentary opens by dating itself: “Dàyè 4th year, 10th month — composed during the lecture-cycle, an opportune occasion not formally requested” 大業四年十月因講次直疏出不事訪也, i.e. autumn 608 CE, presumably part of the same lecture-series at the Suí yángzhōu huìrì dàochǎng 揚州慧日道場 that produced T1825.
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0012 Bǎi lùn 百論 (T30n1569).
Abstract
T1827 opens with a substantial xùshū 序疏 (sub-commentary on Sēngzhào’s preface to T1569) that supplies one of the principal early-Chinese biographies of 僧肇 Sēngzhào (374–414): a native of Jīngzhào 京兆, of poor family who supported himself as a copyist (傭書), eventually becoming literate in the Lao-Zhuang corpus before turning to Buddhism after reading the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa; his entry into Kumārajīva’s translation circle at Cháng’ān; and Kumārajīva’s celebrated assessment “in the matter of understanding emptiness, Sēngzhào is the foremost among the Qín people” (秦人解空第一者僧肇其人也). The biographical material in T1827 is independent of and partially divergent from the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (KR6r0052) notice on Sēngzhào and is one of the principal sources for the prosopographical reconstruction of the early Mādhyamaka Sānlùn lineage.
The body of the commentary works through the Bǎi lùn doctrinally section by section, supplying refutations of tīrthika opponents in a Sānlùn-school philosophical idiom. T1827 covers the work’s polemical core (dialogues with Sāṃkhya, Vaiśeṣika, brahmanical, and Lesser-Vehicle Buddhist opponents) and integrates the Bǎi lùn into Jízàng’s larger Sānlùn architecture, treating it specifically as the polemical pillar of the three-pillar system (philosophy in KR6m0001 T1564, polemic in KR6m0012 T1569, schema in KR6m0008 T1568).
The work is preserved in three fascicles in T1827 but the original was probably longer; the Dōngyù chuándēng mùlù 東域傳燈目錄 (KR6s0131) (compiled by 永超 Eichō, 1094) and the Sānlùn lùn shū catalog tradition cite a “five-fascicle” recension that is no longer extant.
Translations and research
- 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 study of Jí-zàng’s Sān-lùn commentaries, including T1827.)
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985.
- Saitō Tomohiro 齋藤智寛. “Kichizō Hyaku-ron sho ni okeru Sōzhao no shōden” 吉蔵『百論疏』における僧肇の小傳. Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū.
Other points of interest
The opening Sēngzhào biography in T1827 — like the parallel Sēngruì biography in KR6m0006 T1824 — preserves a stratum of Sānlùn-school prosopography that supplements the standard hagiographic tradition. Jízàng evidently had access to in-house Sānlùn-lineage testimony that other early Chinese-Buddhist sources did not preserve, and these biographical openings are among the principal philological reasons that his Sānlùn commentaries are continuously consulted by later East-Asian Buddhist historians.
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/