Sānlùn xuányì jiǎnyōu jí 三論玄義檢幽集
Collected Investigation into the Profundities of the Three-Treatise Profundity-Treatise by 澄禪 (Chōzen, 撰)
About the work
A seven-fascicle Kamakura-period Japanese sub-commentary on 吉藏 Jízàng’s 吉藏 Sānlùn xuányì 三論玄義 (T45n1852 = KR6m0026), composed at the Kohata Nan’in 木幡南院 sub-temple of Tōdaiji 東大寺 on the night of Kōan 3 / 11.21 = 15 December 1280 (Western calendar) by the Sanron 三論 master Chōzen 澄禪 (DILA records his name with the equivalent variant 證禪 Shōzen; A001909). The work is the standard Kamakura-period exegesis of Jízàng’s masterwork and is, together with KR6m0027 Sānlùn xuánshū wényì yào 三論玄疏文義要 by 珍海 Chinkai, the principal Heian/Kamakura prose-commentary on T1852. The title’s jiǎnyōu 檢幽 (“investigating the obscurities”) describes its method: a clause-by-clause excavation of Jízàng’s compressed prose with parallel reference to all then-known Tang, Korean, and Japanese Sanron literature.
Structural Division
CANWWW lists this text without an internal sub-toc block. Related texts per CANWWW: KR6m0026 Sānlùn xuányì 三論玄義 (T45n1852); KR6m0030 Sānlùn xuányì yòuméng 三論玄義誘蒙 (T70n2302).
Abstract
The author Chōzen 澄禪 (catalog meta) / Shōzen 證禪 (DILA A001909) — the same individual under two variant transcriptions of the dharma-name; the zhèng 證 vs. chéng 澄 distinction reflects an old graphic variation in Japanese Sanron sources — was a Kamakura-period Tōdaiji Sanron monk; the second character is his Buddhist ordination character (-zen 禪). He signed himself in the colophon as “中觀” Chūkan (“Middle-Vision”), his Sanron honorific style. Dates conventionally given are 1227–1307 (per Bukkyō daijiten and Honchō kōsōden).
The work opens (T70, 0379a–b) with a striking prose preface in biàntǐ 駢體 parallel style that frames the Sanron enterprise as a recovery of an inheritance threatened by neglect: “I have had the misfortune to meet an age of declining xuánfēng 玄風 (Sanron-school doctrinal wind) while yet holding the blood-vessel of Nāgārjuna’s transmission. Lamenting my disciples’ incipient abandonment of the tradition, I have investigated the texts and assembled the interpretations, propping up the hidden and dismissing the blockages” (余則不幸哉，遇玄風衰微之今，而握龍樹傳來之血脈，愍悟其門下，寧不嗨此絕墜，故檢文而扶幽，集釋而決壅). The preface is signed and dated at Kohata Nan’in Chūkan 木幡南院中觀 on 弘安三年十一月二十一日 (= 15 December 1280), and is among the more affecting witnesses to the Kamakura-period Sanron-school sense of imminent extinction.
The body of the work proceeds by quoting each phrase of Jízàng’s Sānlùn xuányì as a daimon lemma and supplying:
- glosses from Korean (慧灌 Hyegwan) and earlier Japanese (安澄 Anchō, 珍海 Chinkai) Sanron tradition,
- citations from the Cí’ēnsì 慈恩寺 Hossō literature for contrastive purposes,
- “lǐshū” 裏書 (interlinear / reverse-side notes) that preserve secondary Sanron transmissions otherwise unrecoverable,
- and substantial classical-Chinese and Buddhist-Daoist lexicographical apparatus (the Shuōwén 說文 (KR1j0018), the Guǎngyǎ 廣雅 (KR1j0008), the Shìfǎ 諡法 (諡法); the Tiāntái Wéimó shū jì 維摩疏記 (維摩疏記), 元康 Yuánkāng’s Zhàolùn shū 肇論疏 (KR6m0039), etc.) explicating the precise reference of Jízàng’s xuán 玄 (“profundity”) terminology.
T70n2300 is a substantial compendium (T70, 0379–499) and serves as the principal historiographical witness for Kamakura-period Tōdaiji Sanron classroom practice. Its lǐshū notes alone preserve dozens of citations from now-lost early-medieval Sanron sub-commentaries.
Translations and research
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Sanron-kyōgaku no kenkyū 三論教學の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1990. (Standard modern survey of the Sanron commentarial tradition, with substantive discussion of Chōzen.)
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985. (Discusses T2300 as a Kamakura reading of Jízàng.)
- Tamura Yoshirō 田村芳朗. Heian-Kamakura Bukkyō shisōshi 平安・鎌倉仏教思想史. Tōkyō: Iwanami, 1980. (Sanron-school continuity in Kamakura.)
Other points of interest
The 1280 colophon is one of the few internally dated Kamakura-period Sanron works and is therefore important as a fixed chronological anchor for the late-medieval phase of the school. The work’s distinctive feature is its lǐshū annotation layer, which behaves as an internal hyperlink system from the main lemma-and-gloss column to a much denser secondary apparatus — anticipating, in manuscript form, the layered Tokugawa Buddhist-textbook design.