Zhàolùn shū 肇論疏
Sub-commentary on the Treatises of [Sēng-]Zhào (attributed to Huìdá) by 惠達 (Huìdá, 撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle sub-commentary on Sēngzhào’s Zhào lùn (KR6m0038 T1858) attributed to 惠達 Huìdá 惠達 of the Xiǎozhāotísì 小招提寺 — the same Huìdá who composed the canonical preface to T1858. X866 is one of the principal Xù zàngjīng 卍續藏經 witnesses to the Zhàolùn commentarial tradition, distinct from and earlier than the canonical KR6m0039 Zhàolùn shū T1859 by Yuánkāng. The catalog of Kanripo dates the work to the Jìn 晉 period (i.e. before the early-fifth-century editorial collection of the four treatises into a unified Zhàolùn); the dating is conventional but the surviving form of the text appears to incorporate material from later sub-commentarial layers.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not list this Xù zàngjīng witness; no structural-division block is given.
Abstract
X866 opens with a table of contents that announces the work’s structural plan: an exegesis of the Nièpán wúmíng lùn yìjì 涅槃無名論義記 (commentary on the Treatise on Unknown-Naming Nirvāṇa, the fourth and most theologically dense of the four treatises in T1858) followed by exegesis on the other treatises. Notably, the surviving text of T1858 does not include a Nièpán wúmíng lùn — the four treatises being Zōngběn yì, Wù bù qiān lùn, Bù zhēn kōng lùn, and Bōrě wúzhī lùn. The presence of the Nièpán wúmíng treatise in Huìdá’s commentarial outline is one of the principal pieces of evidence for the existence of a fifth Zhàolùn treatise that was either lost in transmission or considered apocryphal by later editors. Modern scholarship is divided on whether this fifth treatise is genuine; Liebenthal (1968) argued for its authenticity, others have argued against.
The body of the commentary works through the treatises of T1858 in order. The exegesis is doctrinally rigorous and represents a Liú-Sòng-period Mādhyamaka-school engagement with the Zhàolùn tradition that pre-dates the consolidation of the Sānlùn 三論 school under Jízàng. Some sections of X866 may represent later (Sui-Tang or Sòng) accretions to the original Liú-Sòng-period commentarial nucleus.
The work was unknown to the medieval Sino-Japanese canon-tradition; it was identified and incorporated into the late-Qing Xù zàngjīng compilation as one of the principal pre-Tang Mādhyamaka texts. It is now of significant philological interest for the reconstruction of the early Chinese reception of Sēngzhào.
Translations and research
- Liebenthal, Walter. Chao-lun: The Treatises of Sēng-chao. 2nd revised ed. Hong Kong University Press, 1968. (Substantial discussion of X866 in context of the Niè-pán wú-míng attribution problem.)
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, ed. Jōron kenkyū 肇論研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1955. (Includes detailed treatment of X866.)
- Wang Xiaoyi 王曉毅. Sēng-zhào yánjiū 僧肇研究. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2014.
Other points of interest
The reference in X866’s table of contents to a Nièpán wúmíng lùn 涅槃無名論 (“Treatise on Unknown-Naming Nirvāṇa”) as one of the Zhàolùn treatises is a major piece of evidence for the contested fifth-treatise problem in Zhàolùn studies. The standard four-treatise collection (T1858) preserves only the Zōngběn yì, Wù bù qiān lùn, Bù zhēn kōng lùn, and Bōrě wúzhī lùn; the Nièpán wúmíng lùn, addressed to Yáo Xìng 姚興 of the Hòu-Qín, is sometimes regarded as a fifth Sēngzhào essay and sometimes as a Tang-period pseudepigraph. X866 is one of the principal sources for the case in favour of authenticity.