Zhàolùn xīnshū 肇論新疏
New Sub-commentary on the Treatises of [Sēng-]Zhào by 文才 (Wéncái, 述)
About the work
A three-fascicle Yuán-period sub-commentary on Sēngzhào’s Zhào lùn (KR6m0038 T1858) by 文才 Wéncái 文才 (1241–1302), the eminent Yuán-period Huáyán-school master who held the abbacy of the Wǔtáishān Dàwànshèng yòuguósì 五臺大萬聖祐國寺 and the Lùoyáng Báimǎsì 白馬寺. Composed at Wǔtáishān in the late 1290s or early 1300s as a fresh commentarial response to the Zhàolùn tradition, distinct from and explicitly building on KR6m0039 Zhàolùn shū T1859 by Yuánkāng and the lost commentaries by the Tang Chan masters Yúnāndá 雲庵達 and Guāngyáo 光瑤 and the Northern-Song Huáyán master Jìngyuán 淨源.
Structural Division
CANWWW gives this text without an internal subdivisions block. Related text per CANWWW: KR6m0038 Zhào lùn 肇論 (T45n1858).
Abstract
T1860 opens with a striking autobiographical preface in which Wéncái records his own intellectual relation to the Zhàolùn: “From the start I delighted in chanting this treatise, and roughly enjoyed its words; I had not yet been able to suck out the savour of its principles in my heart. Then, when I came to take residence at Fánchuān in Xìngjiàosì, I obtained the sub-commentary of the Chan master Yúnāndá. Some years later, when I was summoned to Níngxià, I further obtained two more commentaries by the Tang master Guāngyáo and the Sòng Dharma-master Jìngyuán. Going back and forth between them, examining and collating, I found their unities and discrepancies in tangled disorder, and they seemed to me not yet fully to penetrate the marvellous purport of the treatises…” 始自好誦斯論…復獲唐光瑤禪師。并有宋淨源法師二家註記。反復參訂醇疵紛錯。似有未盡乎論旨之妙夥矣。
This preface preserves the bibliography of the lost Chan and Huáyán Zhàolùn commentarial tradition (the Yúnāndá, Guāngyáo, and Jìngyuán commentaries) — an indispensable witness to the Sòng-Yuán transmission of the Zhàolùn tradition. The body of the commentary proceeds through the four constituent treatises of T1858, supplying detailed Huáyán-inflected doctrinal exegesis. T1860 is structurally and pedagogically the principal Yuán-period reference for the Zhàolùn tradition and one of the foundational sources for the East-Asian Mādhyamaka-Huáyán synthesis of the Sòng-Yuán period.
The work was widely circulated in late-imperial Chinese monastic establishments and was a frequent reference in subsequent commentaries (cf. KR6m0045 X872 by the same author, Zhàolùn xīnshū yóurèn 肇論新疏游刃, the author’s own follow-up); it remained a foundational reference throughout the Ming and into the early Qing.
Translations and research
- Liebenthal, Walter. Chao-lun: The Treatises of Sēng-chao. 2nd revised ed. Hong Kong University Press, 1968.
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, ed. Jōron kenkyū 肇論研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1955.
- Yün-Hua Jan. A Chronicle of Buddhism in China, 581–960. Santiniketan: Visvabharati Research Publication, 1966. (Notes on Wén-cái’s career and his commentarial output.)
- Hibino Takeo 日比野丈夫. “Buntsai Jōron shinjo no kenkyū” 文才『肇論新疏』の研究. Tōhō shūkyō, various years.
Other points of interest
The autobiographical preface to T1860 — naming the principal lost commentaries on the Zhàolùn (Yúnāndá, Guāngyáo, Jìngyuán) — is one of the most valuable bibliographical witnesses for the Sòng-period transmission of the Mādhyamaka-Huáyán commentarial tradition. Without this preface, the existence of these three substantial Sòng-period commentaries would barely be attested in the East-Asian Buddhist record. Wéncái’s role as the abbot of both Wǔtáishān Dàwànshèng yòuguósì (a strategic Mongol-period imperial monastery in northern Shānxī) and the Lùoyáng Báimǎsì (the historical first-Buddhist-monastery in China) made him one of the most prominent Buddhist figures of the Yuán imperial establishment.