Zhào lùn 肇論
Treatises of [Sēng-]Zhào by 僧肇 (Sēngzhào, 作)
About the work
The collected major doctrinal essays of 僧肇 僧肇 (374–414), the principal disciple of Kumārajīva and the most consequential Chinese Buddhist philosopher of the early-fifth century. T1858 transmits four major treatises by Sēngzhào under a single covering title, with a preface by 惠達 Huìdá 惠達 of the Xiǎozhāotísì 小招提寺 supplying the editorial frame: Zōngběn yì 宗本義 (“The Foundational Meaning of the School”), Wù bù qiān lùn 物不遷論 (“Things Do Not Shift”), Bù zhēn kōng lùn 不真空論 (“The Non-True Emptiness”), and Bōrě wúzhī lùn 般若無知論 (“The Non-Knowing of Prajñā”). T1858 is the principal locus classicus of Chinese Mādhyamaka philosophy in its pre-Sān-lùn-school formulation and one of the most consequential texts in the entire Chinese Buddhist intellectual tradition.
Structural Division
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The four treatises forming T1858:
- Zōngběn yì 宗本義 — Foundational Meaning of the School (often regarded as a prefatory introduction)
- Wù bù qiān lùn 物不遷論 — Things Do Not Shift (on time and change)
- Bù zhēn kōng lùn 不真空論 — The Non-True Emptiness (on emptiness as the rejection of substantialism)
- Bōrě wúzhī lùn 般若無知論 — The Non-Knowing of Prajñā (on the cognitive structure of awakening)
(The covering title 肇論 is editorial, applied to the collection by Huìdá. The four constituent treatises were originally composed independently and circulated separately during Sēngzhào’s lifetime and shortly after.)
Abstract
T1858 is the foundational text of pre-Sān-lùn Chinese Mādhyamaka philosophy. Sēngzhào — a junior member of Kumārajīva’s translation circle at Cháng’ān — composed each of the four treatises as a free-standing philosophical essay, and the four together constitute the principal early-Chinese-Buddhist working-out of the Mādhyamaka doctrine of emptiness in a literary-philosophical idiom drawing as much on the Chinese xuánxué 玄學 (Lao-Zhuang philosophy) tradition as on the Indic Mādhyamaka prakaraṇa tradition itself.
The four constituent treatises:
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Wù bù qiān lùn 物不遷論 (“Things Do Not Shift”) argues that time is not a continuous flowing medium in which substantial things move; instead, what we call “motion” is the punctual succession of distinct dharmic moments, none of which is identical with any other. The essay is the principal early-Chinese-Buddhist treatment of time and a key witness to the Mādhyamaka doctrine of anityatā in Chinese-philosophical idiom.
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Bù zhēn kōng lùn 不真空論 (“The Non-True Emptiness”) refutes three contemporary Chinese-Buddhist mis-readings of śūnyatā (the běnwú 本無 reading, the jísè 即色 reading, and the xīnwú 心無 reading) and argues for a fourth reading — emptiness as the absence of intrinsic nature, neither pure non-being nor pure being.
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Bōrě wúzhī lùn 般若無知論 (“The Non-Knowing of Prajñā”) argues that prajñā-cognition is not a mental act with an object but rather a non-discriminating awareness whose very lack of content is its perfection.
T1858 was the principal source for Chinese Buddhist philosophical vocabulary throughout the medieval period and the foundational reference for the later Sānlùn school. The work generated an immense commentarial tradition: see KR6m0039–KR6m0046 for the Tang-Yuán Chinese commentaries and KR6m0041–KR6m0049 for the Xù zàngjīng witnesses.
Translations and research
- Liebenthal, Walter. Chao-lun: The Treatises of Sēng-chao. 2nd revised ed. Hong Kong University Press, 1968. (Foundational English critical edition and annotated translation; the standard modern reference for T1858.)
- Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. (Substantial chapter on Sēng-zhào and T1858.)
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, ed. Jōron kenkyū 肇論研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1955. (Foundational Japanese collaborative volume on T1858; standard modern Japanese reference.)
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Hurvitz, Leon. “The First Systematizations of Buddhist Thought in China.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2 (1975): 361–387. (Discussion of T1858 in context of early-Chinese Buddhist doctrinal development.)
- Wang Xiaoyi 王曉毅. Sēng-zhào yánjiū 僧肇研究. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2014.
Other points of interest
The four treatises of T1858 are widely regarded as the foundational works of Chinese Buddhist philosophy in the strict sense — the moment at which Mādhyamaka doctrine becomes a Chinese philosophical idiom in its own right rather than a translation of an Indic doctrinal system. Sēngzhào’s stylistic mastery of Chinese literary prose (especially the dense parallel-couplet idiom of Six-Dynasties biànwén 駢文) is the principal vehicle of this domestication.
Links
- CBETA
- Wikipedia
- 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/