Zhàolùn shū kē 肇論疏科
Structural Outline of the Sub-commentary on the Treatises of [Sēng-]Zhào arranged by 遵式 (Zūnshì, 排定)
About the work
A single-fascicle Northern-Song kēwén 科文 (structural-outline) treatment of the Zhàolùn tradition, arranged by the Tiāntái master 遵式 Zūnshì 遵式 (964–1032). The text gives a hierarchical breakdown of KR6m0038 Zhào lùn T1858 — chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph — into named structural units, organising the doctrinal content for monastic teaching purposes. The colophon identifies the paídìng 排定 (structural arrangement) work of Zūnshì alongside annotation by 曉月 Xiǎoyuè (the Lètán Chánshī) — possibly indicating a layered editorial history in which Zūnshì’s outline was annotated by Xiǎoyuè in the next generation. (Note: the catalog meta lists the author as 遵式; the Xù zàngjīng inner colophon at the head of T1858’s preface-outline names “Lètán Chánshī Xiǎoyuè 治定” — possibly because Xiǎoyuè re-edited Zūnshì’s outline for republication in the Yúnmén Chán milieu.)
Structural Division
CANWWW does not list this Xù zàngjīng witness; no structural-division block is given.
Abstract
The kēwén 科文 genre — the systematic structural breakdown of a doctrinal treatise into hierarchically-named sub-units — is a Tang-Sòng Buddhist scholastic genre developed primarily in the Tiāntái 天台 and Huáyán 華嚴 schools for monastic teaching purposes. Each major section of the source-text is broken into two, three, or four sub-sections; each sub-section is further broken into named units; and the resulting tree-structure is presented in tabular form on the page, with the source-text reduced to small inline citations.
X868 opens with a Zhàolùn xù kēwén 肇論序科文 — a structural breakdown of Huìdá’s preface to T1858 — and then proceeds through the four constituent treatises. Each treatise is broken first into its principal zhāng 章, then into named jié 節, and finally into individual sentence-level units. The text functions as an editorial-pedagogical apparatus designed to be used in conjunction with KR6m0039 Zhàolùn shū T1859 and the parent T1858.
The text reflects the Northern-Song convergence of the Tiāntái, Huáyán, and Chán doctrinal traditions on the Zhàolùn as a foundational reference; the kēwén is presented as a pan-school commentarial tool rather than as the property of any one lineage.
Translations and research
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, ed. Jōron kenkyū 肇論研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1955.
- Liebenthal, Walter. Chao-lun: The Treatises of Sēng-chao. 2nd revised ed. Hong Kong University Press, 1968.
Other points of interest
X868 is one of relatively few kēwén treatments of the Zhàolùn tradition to have entered the Xù zàngjīng compilation. The TiāntáiChán cross-school joint authorship of the surviving recension (Zūnshì + Xiǎoyuè) is itself testimony to the Zhàolùn’s status as a pan-school foundational reference in Northern-Song Buddhist scholasticism.