Yīshūlújiā lùn 壹輸盧迦論
Treatise on a Single Śloka (*Eka-śloka-śāstra) by 龍樹菩薩 (Lóngshù púsà / Nāgārjuna, 造) and 瞿曇般若流支 (Qútán Bōrěliúzhī / Gautama Prajñāruci, 譯)
About the work
A short Mādhyamaka treatise in one fascicle attributed to Nāgārjuna, organised around the exposition of a single Sanskrit śloka (a stanza of two anuṣṭubh lines / four pādas) on the doctrine of intrinsic non-substantiality. Translated at the Eastern-Wèi capital Yè 鄴 by 瞿曇般若流支 Gautama Prajñāruci of Northern India, c. 538–543. The Chinese title 壹輸盧迦 transliterates the Sanskrit eka-śloka “one stanza”; the catalog of Kanripo follows the colophon’s variant orthography 瞿曇般若留支 (with 留 liú “remaining” for 流 liú “flowing”, a frequent transcription variant in the Wèi-period corpus).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The text contains no related-text cross-references in CANWWW.
Abstract
The treatise opens with the foundational verse: “The body’s own body is impermanent; / so this body is bodyless. / The body’s intrinsic nature is bodyless — / therefore it is said: empty and impermanent.” 體自體無常，如是體無體；自體性無體，故說空無常. The verse pivots on the equivalence of three Mādhyamaka doctrinal claims — anityatā, naiḥsvābhāvya, śūnyatā — collapsed into a single mnemonic stanza, with the prose commentary unpacking the claim through the standard Madhyamaka dialectical analysis of substance.
The Indic original is no longer preserved in Sanskrit, and there is no Tibetan parallel; T1573 is therefore the unique witness. The work is unusual among the Chinese-canon Mādhyamaka śāstras in being so compact (a single stanza with prose commentary) and is likely an Indic prakaraṇa-pāda-style work — i.e. a doctrinal treatise organised around a single mnemonic verse — that did not enter the major Tibetan or Indic citation traditions. The attribution to Nāgārjuna is preserved without contestation in the Chinese tradition but cannot be cross-checked against an Indic witness.
The work was largely overlooked in subsequent East-Asian Buddhist commentarial literature; no major Chinese, Korean, or Japanese sub-commentary is extant.
Translations and research
- Yamaguchi Susumu 山口益. “Ichi-shu-ro-ka-ron no kenkyū” 壹輸盧迦論の研究. Bukkyō kenkyū 5 (1941): 33–58. (Foundational Japanese study; defends the Nāgārjuna attribution.)
- Lindtner, Christian. Nāgārjuniana. Indiske Studier 4. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1982. (Discussion of T1573 in the Nāgārjuna corpus.)
- Saigusa Mitsuyoshi 三枝充悳. Ryūju no kenkyū 龍樹の研究. Tōkyō: Daisanbunmeisha, 1985.
Other points of interest
T1573 is one of the smaller Indic Mādhyamaka śāstras preserved in Chinese and the only one structured around a single mnemonic stanza. The Sanskrit reconstruction of its title as Eka-śloka-śāstra is conventional but unattested in Indic sources.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (543): [ 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/