Bǎozàng lùn 寶藏論
Treasury Treatise attributed to 僧肇 (Sēngzhào, 著)
About the work
A single-fascicle Mādhyamaka-tinged Daoist-Buddhist syncretist treatise traditionally attributed to 僧肇 僧肇 (374–414), the principal Sān-lùn-school disciple of Kumārajīva. The catalog of the yìjīngyuán and the standard Sino-Japanese canon-tradition transmits T1857 under Sēngzhào’s name, and the colophon expressly attributes it to “the śramaṇa Sēngzhào of Cháng’ān”. Modern scholarship (Liebenthal, Robinson, Yanagida, Saitō), however, has decisively rejected the attribution: the work is a Tang-period (probably 8th–9th century) pseudepigraphic composition that draws on Daoist xuánxué 玄學 vocabulary and on early Chan-tradition formulations far more than on Sēngzhào’s authentic doctrinal idiom. The attribution preserved in the catalog is therefore noted as “attributed” in the persons frontmatter.
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. The work itself is organised in three pǐn 品: Guǎngzhào kōngyǒu pǐn 廣照空有品 (Widely illuminating emptiness and being), Líwéi tǐjìng pǐn 離微體淨品 (Departing-from-the-subtle and the pure substance), and Běnjì xuántóng pǐn 本際玄同品 (Original-limit and dark-sameness).
Abstract
T1857 opens with the most-cited and most-celebrated passage of the work: “Emptiness as which can be made-empty is not true emptiness; form as which can be formed is not true form. True form is without shape; true emptiness is without name. The nameless is the father of names; the formless is the mother of forms — making the foundation of the myriad things, becoming the supreme ancestor of heaven and earth…” 空可空非真空。色可色非真色。真色無形。真空無名。無名名之父。無色色之母。為萬物之根源。作天地之太祖。
The opening is one of the most syncretist passages in the East-Asian Buddhist canon: the formulation echoes the Dàodé jīng opening 道可道非常道 (“the Dào that can be Dào’d is not the constant Dào”) and clearly draws on the xuánxué 玄學 tradition of WèiJìn philosophy. The body of the work develops a doctrine of tǐ 體 (substance / essence) and yòng 用 (function / use) that is closer to mature Chan and Tiāntái doctrine than to the historical Sēngzhào of the early-fifth-century Cháng’ān translation circle. Liebenthal (1968) and Yanagida (1976) have shown that the work cannot have been composed before the late seventh century at the earliest.
The work was canonised under Sēngzhào’s name in the Tang and remained a foundational source of Chinese Buddhist doctrinal vocabulary throughout the medieval period; despite its pseudepigraphic status, it is therefore an important text in the East-Asian Buddhist intellectual tradition.
Translations and research
- Liebenthal, Walter. Chao-lun: The Treatises of Sēng-chao. 2nd revised ed. Hong Kong University Press, 1968. (Foundational English study; argues against the Sēng-zhào attribution.)
- Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. (Concurs with Liebenthal on the pseudepigraphic status of T1857.)
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山. Goroku no kenkyū 語錄の研究. Tōkyō: Hōzōkan, 1985. (Detailed discussion of T1857 as a pre-Chan syncretist work.)
- Sharf, Robert H. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002. (Standard modern English-language monograph on T1857; the principal recent reassessment.)
- Saitō Tomohiro 齋藤智寛. “Hōzōron seiritsushi-jō no shomondai” 寶藏論成立史上の諸問題. Tōhō shūkyō (various years).
Other points of interest
T1857 is one of the principal Tang-period pseudepigraphic śāstras canonised under an early-Chinese-Buddhist authority’s name. The attribution to Sēngzhào — combined with the work’s stylistic and doctrinal closeness to mature Chan idiom — makes it a particularly interesting case-study in the formation of the East-Asian Mahāyāna canon, and Sharf’s 2002 monograph (drawing on the work’s reception among the Northern Chan, Niútóu Chan, and Hézé Chan lineages) has established its importance for the study of pre-Sòng Chan literature.
Links
- CBETA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (410): [ 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/