Zhǎngzhēn liàng dào 掌珍量噵
Discourse on the Inferences (pramāṇa) in the Karatalaratna by 秀 (Master Xiù 秀法師 / Shūhōshi, 撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Japanese hetuvidyā 因明 / Yogācāra polemic on the celebrated syllogisms (liàng 量, pramāṇa) of Bhāviveka’s KR6m0023 Dàshèng zhǎngzhēn lùn 大乘掌珍論 (Karatalaratna, T30n1578), arguing — from a Dharmapāla-Xuánzàng-Kuījī 護法・玄奘・基 Yogācāra standpoint — that Bhāviveka’s negative syllogism (“the paramārthatas of conditioned [phenomena] is empty, because it is dependently-arisen, like an illusion”: 眞性有爲空，如幻縁生故) violates the rules of pakṣa construction by committing the bhāgāsiddha-pakṣa fault (yǒufǎ yīfēn bùchéng 有法一分不成 / “the subject of the thesis is partially unestablished”). The work belongs to the liàngdào 量噵 (“inference-discourse”) sub-genre of Japanese Buddhist logic — short treatises that take a single canonical syllogism as their occasion and unpack its formal validity. The transmitted title 掌珍量噵 is variously normalized as 掌珍量道 / 掌珍量導.
Structural Division
CANWWW lists this text without an internal sub-toc block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0023 Dàshèng zhǎngzhēn lùn 大乘掌珍論 (T30n1578).
Abstract
The work is attributed in the Taishō header to 秀法師 (Xiùfǎshī / Shūhōshi, “Master Shū”); his identity has not been securely fixed and he is not the same individual as the late-Qīng Chán master also named 秀 (Chāoxiù 超秀 / 芝巖秀; cf. the same person-note file). The internal evidence of the text places its composition firmly within the early-to-mid Heian Japanese Sanron-Hossō debate environment: the work cites 玄奘’s translation of the Yújiā shīdì lùn 瑜伽師地論 (KR6n0001, juan 36 and 76), Bhāviveka’s Guǎngbǎi lùn shì 廣百論釋 (玄奘’s translation, T1571 = KR6m0015), 護法 Dharmapāla’s reading of the Chéng wéishì lùn 成唯識論 (KR6n0016, T1585), and Kuījī’s yīnmíng logic treatises (“基所傳”, “疏次文云”, “演祕中”, “義燈云”), as well as the West-Daianji 西大寺 Sanron master 玄叡 Gen’ei (d. c. 840), author of the Dàshèng Sānlùn dàyì chāo 大乘三論大義鈔 (KR6o0081, T70n2296). The latest cited author is Gen’ei; the work is therefore composed after c. 840.
The argument develops as follows. The author begins from the Yújiā lùn T36’s account of e-qǔ kōngzhě 惡取空者 (“those who badly grasp emptiness”), and reads the standard Yogācāra “good grasp of emptiness” as the doctrine that parikalpita is empty while paratantra and pariniṣpanna are existent. Against this Yogācāra reading, Bhāviveka — described as “outwardly resembling a Sāṃkhya, inwardly a son of Śākyamuni, called the Bodhisattva of Wondrous Auspice (Mañjuśrī)” (然清辨身猶同數論之儀，心處釋迦之室，時人號之爲妙吉祥菩薩) — claims that all three svabhāvas are empty in the ultimate sense. The author then sets out the celebrated Dharmapāla–Bhāviveka opposition: Dharmapāla takes the three svabhāvas as real and the three niḥsvabhāvas as conventional; Bhāviveka inverts this. The author sides with Dharmapāla, arguing that Bhāviveka’s syllogism (Zhǎngzhēn liàng 掌珍量) violates the pakṣa-construction rules by simultaneously making 眞性 the subject-qualifier and the (claimed-empty) negandum, generating an yǒufǎ yīfēn bùchéng fault.
A substantial late portion of the work (T65, 0268a–c) compares this Zhǎngzhēn liàng with the Fódǐng jīng liàng 佛頂經量 (a syllogism drawn from the Shǒuléngyán jīng / Śūraṅgama-sūtra) and with the “two inferences” of the Guǎngbǎi lùn (T1571), arguing that the Fódǐng jīng is “a forged sūtra” (僞經 — “as 空海 Kūkai’s Qiǎn-Táng envoy text records in detail”: 具如遣唐請益文中). This last note is intriguing: it appears to reference a qǐngyì wén 請益文 (“petition for clarification”) brought back from Tang China by a Japanese kentōshi envoy, suggesting the author had access to Tang Buddhist debate materials reaching Japan in the early ninth century.
The closing passage refers — uniquely — to a personal chain of Japanese Yogācāra transmission: “Xuánzàng’s transmission of Bhāviveka’s doctrine reached as far as Xuánzàng himself; Xuánzàng then transmitted it to Kuiji; from Kuiji onward, who else has reached India? All Sanron-school men of today receive [their] teaching from Kuiji-master; on what basis should one now denigrate one’s teacher?” (凡傳清辨宗已是玄奘，玄奘已授基師令立…今依誰説還誹師乎). This is one of the more poignant statements of the post-Xuánzàng Japanese sense of being at the receiving end of an Indo-Chinese transmission chain whose ultimate sources had become inaccessible.
The author 秀法師 is conventionally identified in older Japanese Buddhist reference works (e.g. Bukkyō daijiten) as a Heian-period monk; no fixed dates are given. The composition date is bracketed by the citation of Gen’ei (terminus post quem c. 840) and the work’s apparent pre-Insei character (no reference to mid-Heian Sanron debate authorities), suggesting a window c. 840–1000.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages. The work is occasionally referenced in Japanese-language surveys of Heian-period Buddhist logic and the Hossō–Sanron debate, but has not received monograph-level treatment. Modern Japanese scholarship on the Zhǎngzhēn lùn tradition (山口益 Yamaguchi Susumu, Iida Shōtarō, Eckel) does not discuss T2258 in depth.
Other points of interest
The work is significant as an unusually substantive example of Japanese hetuvidyā polemic from outside the Hossō mainstream — the author argues for the Hossō (Dharmapāla / Kuiji) position against Bhāviveka, but does so by close engagement with Sanron exegetical material (Gen’ei, the Sanron commentaries on the Guǎngbǎi lùn) rather than from a sectarian Hossō standpoint. The reference to the Shǒuléngyán as a wěijīng 僞經 is a rare ninth-or-tenth-century Japanese instance of the same critical judgement that Táng and Sòng Chinese scholars (呂澂 Lǚ Chéng et al.) only fully formulated in the twentieth century.