Chéng wéishí lùn zhèngyì 成唯識論證義
Verified Meaning of the Demonstration of Consciousness-Only by 王肯堂 (Wáng Kěntáng, 證義)
About the work
A ten-fascicle commentary on KR6n0016 Chéng wéishí lùn by the late-Míng scholar-official-physician 王肯堂 (Wáng Kěntáng, 1549–1613), unusual in that the author is a layman rather than a monk. Wáng Kěntáng is famous for his medical encyclopedia KR3e0078 Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng; the zhèngyì shows the same careful scholarly method applied to Yogācāra doctrine. The “zhèngyì” 證義 (“verifying the meaning”) title indicates a commentary that proceeds by checking each doctrinal claim against the textual evidence — Wáng’s characteristic philological-evidential style. Preserved in the Xuzangjing (X50n0822).
Structural Division
CANWWW does not assign internal structure for X50n0822.
Abstract
The work is one of the principal late-Míng Yogācāra commentaries on T1585 alongside KR6n0043 súquán by 明昱 and KR6n0044 jíjiě by 通潤. Wáng Kěntáng was an active lay Buddhist (his Buddhist sobriquet Niànxī jūshì 念西居士 indicates Pure Land devotional sympathies) and brought to the project the considerable philological apparatus he had developed in his medical work.
The dating bracket adopted (1597–1613) covers Wáng Kěntáng’s mature period, from the completion of the first parts of his medical encyclopedia (Zázhèng zhǔnshéng, 1597–1598) through to his death. Internal evidence places the zhèngyì in the later part of this period, after the medical encyclopedia had been substantially completed.
The work belongs to a distinctive late-Míng phenomenon — the active engagement of literati lay scholars with technical Yogācāra doctrine — and is one of the most substantial monuments of that tradition. Among Wáng Kěntáng’s lay-Buddhist contemporaries who produced Yogācāra commentaries, his is generally regarded as the most rigorously scholarly.
Translations and research
- Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國. Kongxing yu xiandai xing. Taipei: Lìxù wénhuà, 1999.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠. Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship: Spiritual Ambitions, Intellectual Debates, and Epistolary Connections. Leiden: Brill, 2016. (Includes important context for Wáng Kěntáng’s lay-Buddhist circle.)
Other points of interest
The zhèngyì is the only major late-Míng Chéng wéishí lùn commentary by a layman — all the others (明昱, 通潤, 大惠, 智旭) are monastic productions. This fact reflects the broader late-Míng phenomenon of literati lay engagement with technical Buddhist doctrine, of which Wáng Kěntáng’s circle (which included 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng) was a principal locus.