Dàshèng xuánlùn 大乘玄論
Treatise on the Profound Meaning of the Mahāyāna by 吉藏 (Jízàng, 撰)
About the work
A five-fascicle Suí-period systematic exposition of Mahāyāna doctrine by 吉藏 吉藏 (549–623), organised topic by topic rather than as a commentary on any one root-text. T1853 is one of Jízàng’s three principal doctrinal-systematic works (alongside KR6m0026 Sānlùn xuányì and KR6m0034 Èrdì yì) and the most extensive and ambitious of the three. The colophon attributes the work to “the Hú [Iranian-descended] Jízàng” 胡吉藏撰 — a reference to Jízàng’s Parthian (Sogdian) ancestral background, which the colophon-tradition occasionally records as a marker of his Indic-Iranian descent.
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The work itself is organised into ten chapters, each treating a major Mahāyāna doctrinal topic in ten-fold sub-divisions:
- Èrdì yì 二諦義 (Two truths) — ten-fold treatment
- Bābù zhōngdào yì 八不中道義 (Eight-fold negation as the middle way)
- Fóxìng yì 佛性義 (Buddha-nature)
- Yīshèng yì 一乘義 (One Vehicle)
- Nièpán yì 涅槃義 (Nirvāṇa)
- Èrzhì yì 二智義 (Two wisdoms)
- Jiàojī yì 教跡義 (Doctrinal classification)
- Lùn jì yì 論跡義 (Treatise tradition)
- Sānlùn yì 三論義 (Three Treatises)
- Tóngyì yì 同異義 (Sameness and difference)
Abstract
T1853 is Jízàng’s most fully-developed doctrinal-systematic work — a comprehensive Sān-lùn-school exposition of the principal doctrinal categories of Mahāyāna Buddhism, organised topic by topic in ten-fold expositional structures (a Sānlùn rhetorical convention apparently inherited from the Mūlamadhyamaka-vibhāṣā-style of Indic doctrinal manual). The opening — “Èr-dì yì has ten layers” 二諦義有十重 — establishes the format: each topic is presented under ten doctrinal headings, generating the dense ten-times-ten architectural plan of the whole.
The treatment of fóxìng 佛性 (Buddha-nature) in juǎn 3 is one of the principal Sān-lùn-school engagements with the tathāgatagarbha doctrine and is doctrinally important as Jízàng’s attempt to mediate between the Sānlùn negative-dialectical reading of emptiness and the tathāgatagarbha tradition’s positive characterisation of the Buddha-element in all sentient beings. The treatment of yīshèng 一乘 (One Vehicle) in juǎn 4 and nièpán 涅槃 in juǎn 5 are similarly the principal Sān-lùn-school treatments of these themes.
T1853 was a foundational reference for the East-Asian Mādhyamaka exegetical tradition and the principal Sān-lùn-school text consulted by the Korean Hwaeom and Japanese Sanron transmissions. Several of its ten doctrinal expositions — especially the two-truths and the Buddha-nature chapters — were independently extracted and reproduced as standalone treatises in the medieval Japanese Sanron tradition.
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. (Substantial chapter on T1853.)
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Liu, Ming-Wood. “The Yogācāra and Mādhyamika Interpretation of the Buddha-Nature Concept in Chinese Buddhism.” Philosophy East and West 35 (1985): 171–193. (Discusses T1853’s fó-xìng chapter.)
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985.
- Ōchō Enichi 横超慧日. Kichizō 吉藏. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1976.
Other points of interest
The colophon attribution “胡吉藏” “the Hú [Iranian] Jízàng” is one of the principal extant primary-source references to Jízàng’s non-Han ancestry. Per the Xù gāosēng zhuàn 續高僧傳 (T2060), Jízàng’s great-grandfather migrated from Ānxī 安息 (Parthia) to the Lower Yangtze region, making Jízàng a fourth-generation Chinese-domiciled descendent of an Iranian-Buddhist family. The colophon’s deliberate marking of this ancestral background is unusual in the early Sui-Tang Buddhist canon-tradition.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (600, 624): [ 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/