Zhǎngzhēn lùn shū 掌珍論疏
Sub-commentary on the Jewel-in-the-Hand Treatise (anonymous Tang fragment) [anonymous]
About the work
A single-fascicle anonymous Táng-period sub-commentary on Bhāviveka’s Karatalaratna / Dàshèng zhǎngzhēn lùn (KR6m0023 T1578), preserved only in the Xù zàngjīng 卍續藏經 (Manji Zokuzōkyō) volume 46, number 788. The Taishō does not preserve a sub-commentary on T1578; X788 is the only such commentary that has come down to us. Both the catalog meta and the source file leave the author field blank, and the Xù zàngjīng compilers do not supply an attribution; this reflects the manuscript-state of the work as it entered the late-Qīng reprint tradition.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not list this Xù zàngjīng witness; no structural-division block is given. Related text (commentated): KR6m0023 Dàshèng zhǎngzhēn lùn 大乘掌珍論 (T30n1578).
Abstract
X788 preserves only the xià juǎn 卷下 (lower fascicle) of what was originally a multi-fascicle work; the body of the text picks up mid-discussion of the doctrinal pairing of bǐliáng 比量 (inferential cognition) and xiūxí 脩習 (cultivation) as the two paths into the realisation of intrinsic emptiness. The fragment supplies the kind of fine-grained Yogācāra-Madhyamaka technical exegesis (with explicit references to the bhūmi-system of the bodhisattva path) that suggests a Táng-period Cí’ēn 慈恩-school author trained in both Mādhyamaka and Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda — i.e. an author of the same scholarly profile as 文軌 Wénguǐ (KR6m0016) or his immediate successors.
The fragment’s textual condition is poor; multiple lacunae (marked □ in the Xù zàngjīng edition) reflect manuscript-damage in the late-imperial source from which the Xù zàngjīng was compiled. Despite the poor preservation, X788 is the only extant Táng-period exegesis of Bhāviveka’s Karatalaratna in Chinese and is therefore an important if fragmentary witness to the Táng Mādhyamaka commentarial tradition.
The composition date is uncertain; the fragment cites the Yogācāra technical apparatus that would situate it in the second half of the seventh century or the eighth century, after the dissemination of Xuánzàng’s translations.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The text has been very lightly studied in modern scholarship. A passing mention occurs in the surveys of Liu (1994) and Hirai (1976), but no monograph or critical edition has been produced.
Other points of interest
X788 is one of relatively few Táng-period Mādhyamaka sub-commentaries to have survived only via the Xù zàngjīng tradition (rather than entering the standard Sino-Japanese canon-tradition). The Xù zàngjīng compilers in the late-Qīng / early-Republic period systematically gathered such fragments from temple-libraries in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Kyoto, and the work’s preservation is owed to that compilatory project.