Sānlùn lüèzhāng 三論略章
Brief Doctrinal Chapters of the Three Treatises (full title Dàshèng sānlùn lüèzhāng 大乘三論略章) by 吉藏 (Jízàng, 撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Suí-period brief doctrinal manual by 吉藏 Jízàng (549–623), preserved only in the Xù zàngjīng (X876) and otherwise lost from the canonical Taishō tradition. The colophon attributes the work to “the Hú [Iranian-descended] Jiāxiáng Dharma-master, the dàoyì zhī yào (essentials of the doctrinal-instructive intent)” 胡嘉祥法師導義之要 — the same self-designation as in KR6m0031 T1853 (胡吉藏撰), confirming Jízàng’s authorship and his characteristic ancestral self-marker.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not list this Xù zàngjīng witness; the work itself is structured as nine doctrinal chapters:
- Èrdì yì 二諦義 (Two truths)
- Èrzhì yì 二智義 (Two wisdoms)
- Bōrě yì 般若義 (Prajñā)
- Zhēnyìng yì 真應義 (True body and response body of the Buddha)
- Nièpán yì 涅槃義 (Nirvāṇa)
- Fóxìng yì 佛性義 (Buddha-nature)
- Èrhé yì 二河義 (Two rivers — i.e. the two paths of self-power and other-power)
- Èrzhǒng cìdì yì 二種次第義 (The two kinds of stages of the bodhisattva path)
- Zhèngxiàng yì 正像義 (The orthodox-Dharma and image-Dharma ages of the sad-dharma)
Abstract
X876 is the most compact of Jízàng’s doctrinal-systematic works — a single-fascicle distillation of the major Sānlùn doctrinal categories, organised as nine brief chapters each treating one major doctrinal theme. The work is essentially a study-manual condensation of the much longer KR6m0031 Dàshèng xuánlùn T1853, presenting the same doctrinal-architectural plan but in compressed form suitable for monastic teaching purposes.
The chapters cover the standard Sānlùn doctrinal vocabulary: the two truths, the two wisdoms (prajñā-wisdom and upāya-wisdom), the prajñā doctrine itself, the doctrine of the Buddha’s true and response bodies, nirvāṇa, Buddha-nature, the two rivers (the zìlì 自力 and tālì 他力 paths), the bodhisattva bhūmi-stages, and the doctrine of the orthodox and image ages of the Dharma. The treatment is deliberately compact: each chapter typically gives a brief definition, a citation of the relevant root-text(s), and the principal doctrinal-classificatory schema.
The work is not preserved in the standard Taishō, suggesting that it circulated as a study-manual rather than as an authoritative doctrinal-systematic work; it survived through the Japanese Sanron-school monastic transmission and was incorporated into the late-Qing Xù zàngjīng compilation. The composition date is conventionally placed in Jízàng’s main doctrinal-systematic period (late Suí, c. 597–615).
Translations and research
- Hirai Shun’ei 平井俊榮. Chūgoku hannya shisōshi kenkyū: Kichizō to Sanronkyō no kenkyū 中国般若思想史研究―吉藏と三論教の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1976. (Discussion of X876 in the Jízàng corpus.)
- Liu, Ming-Wood. Madhyamaka Thought in China. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
- Itō Takatoshi 伊藤隆寿. Kichizō no kenkyū 吉藏の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1985.
Other points of interest
X876’s chapter 7 — Èrhé yì 二河義 “Two Rivers” — is one of the earliest Sānlùn-school treatments of the zìlì / tālì doctrinal pair (self-power vs. other-power) that became central in the later Pure Land tradition through 善導 Shàndǎo’s Èrhé báidào yú 二河白道喻 (“white-road between two rivers” parable). The two-river formulation appears here in Jízàng’s compact form decades before its Pure-Land canonisation, and X876 is therefore an important early witness to the doctrinal vocabulary of the zìlì–tālì pair.