Zhuǎn shí lùn 轉識論
Treatise on the Transformation of Consciousness by 真諦 (Zhēndì / Paramārtha, 譯)
About the work
A short single-fascicle treatise translated by 真諦 (Paramārtha, 499–569) at Guǎngzhōu in the late 550s or 560s, generally identified as Paramārtha’s rendering of (a version of) Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā-vijñaptikārikā with embedded commentary. Of the same Indic source-family as KR6n0022 Wéishí sānshí lùn sòng 唯識三十論頌 (T31n1586, Xuánzàng’s verse-only translation) and KR6n0053 Wéishí lùn 唯識論 (T31n1588, Bodhiruci-school translation), it is one of the three major pre-Xuánzàng witnesses to the Triṃśikā in Chinese, and is generally treated by modern scholarship as the most exegetically expansive and the most distinctively “Paramārthan” of the three.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T31N1587) lists KR6n0016 Chéng wéishí lùn 成唯識論 (T31n1585) and KR6n0022 Wéishí sānshí lùn sòng 唯識三十論頌 (T31n1586) as the principal related texts.
Abstract
The text is closely related to KR6n0025 Xiǎnshí lùn 顯識論 (T31n1618) — likewise a Paramārtha translation of the same period — and the two are sometimes treated as sister works on consciousness-transformation. The “zhuǎn shí” 轉識 (“transformation of consciousness”) title refers both to the technical Yogācāra doctrine that the eight consciousnesses arise as functional transformations of one another, and to the soteriological zhuǎn yī 轉依 (“transformation of the basis”) that constitutes awakening.
The work follows Paramārtha’s distinctive interpretive line — including the doctrine of an amala-vijñāna 阿摩羅識 (“immaculate consciousness”) as a ninth consciousness above the ālaya — that became the doctrinal basis of the early Shèlùnzōng 攝論宗 of Tán-qiān 曇遷 and his disciples in the late sixth century. After the Cí’ēnzōng of 玄奘 and 窺基 effectively suppressed the Shèlùnzōng in the later seventh century, T1587 was preserved largely as a curiosity rather than as a systematic resource — but it remained influential through its incorporation into the Tiāntái 天台 and Huáyán 華嚴 traditions, both of which read Paramārtha’s nine-consciousness doctrine more sympathetically than did the Cí’ēn.
Translations and research
- Paul, Diana Y. Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China: Paramārtha’s “Evolution of Consciousness”. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984. (Includes a complete English translation of T1587 and is the foundational modern monograph on Paramārtha’s Yogācāra translations.)
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹, ed. Shintai sanzō kenkyū ronshū 真諦三藏研究論集. Kyoto: Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities, 2012.
- Frauwallner, Erich. On the Date of the Buddhist Master of the Law Vasubandhu. Rome: IsMEO, 1951.
Other points of interest
Diana Paul’s argument (Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China, 1984) that T1587 represents an indigenous Chinese Yogācāra synthesis as much as a translation has been one of the more influential interpretive proposals in the field. The text is a key witness to the doctrinal divergence between the Shèlùnzōng and Cí’ēnzōng readings of Yogācāra in sixth- and seventh-century China.
Links
- CBETA online text
- Dazangthings date evidence (565): [ 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. Dazangthings source
- 真諦 Zhēndì DILA
- Kanseki DB