Èrdì yì 二諦義
The Meaning of the Two Truths by 吉藏 (Jízàng, 撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle Suí-period systematic exposition by 吉藏 吉藏 (549–623) of the doctrine of the two truths (saṃvṛti- and paramārtha-satya; conventional and ultimate truth), the principal doctrinal pivot of the Sānlùn 三論 Mādhyamaka tradition. T1854 elaborates the èrdì yì 二諦義 chapter of the larger KR6m0031 Dàshèng xuánlùn T1853 into a stand-alone treatise, and is the principal extant Sān-lùn-school dedicated treatment of the two-truths doctrine. Composed at the Suí imperial Huìrì dàochǎng in Yángzhōu, c. 597–615 (Jízàng’s main doctrinal-systematic period).
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The work itself is organised in ten doctrinal headings (the same ten-fold structure as the parent èrdì yì chapter of T1853): standard-setting, naming, establishing names, being and non-being, the èrdì-substance, the middle way, mutual entailment, gathering of dharmas, doctrinal classification, and sameness and difference.
Abstract
The text opens with a Tokugawa-period prefatory note (補刻二諦章敘) by the editor of the surviving recension, recording that the work — “the Èrdì yì zhāng in three fascicles, transmitted to our country [Japan] for nearly a thousand years” — had survived only in fragmentary form before the Edo-period reprint, and that the present text was reconstructed by collation of two manuscript witnesses. The prefatory note is one of the principal Edo-period documents on the textual transmission of Jízàng’s smaller doctrinal works.
The body of the work expounds the two-truths doctrine through Jízàng’s distinctive recursive èrdì sānzhòng 二諦三重 (“three-fold two-truths”) schema: the simple opposition of conventional and ultimate is itself only the first level; at a higher level, the very pair conventional / ultimate itself becomes the conventional half of a higher pair (whose ultimate is the negation of the simple opposition); and at a higher level yet, the recursion itself becomes the conventional. The schema generates a doctrinal architecture in which the realisation of the zhōngdào “middle way” requires the dialectical transcendence of all simple oppositions, including the two-truths opposition itself.
T1854 is one of the most refined and philosophically rigorous of Jízàng’s doctrinal works. The èrdì sānzhòng doctrine became one of the foundational categories of the East-Asian Mādhyamaka tradition and was extensively cited in Japanese Sanron-school literature (especially in the works of 珍海 Chinkai). The work’s compactness (3 juǎn) and topical focus made it pedagogically central in subsequent monastic curricula.
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.
- Swanson, Paul L. Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989. (Substantial discussion of Jí-zàng’s two-truths doctrine and T1854.)
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985.
Other points of interest
The textual transmission of T1854 — preserved primarily through Edo-period Japanese reprints, with a middle fascicle that was for centuries lost — is one of the more dramatic philological cases in the East-Asian Sānlùn corpus. The bǔkè èrdì zhāng xù 補刻二諦章敘 prefatory note records the recovery of the missing middle fascicle from a manuscript brought to the editor by “a certain bookseller” 書林某者; the recovered text was then collated against the existing two-fascicle witness to produce the standard three-fascicle version preserved in T1854.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (600): [ 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/