Shè dàshèng lùn shì 攝大乘論釋
Commentary on the Compendium of the Mahāyāna (Vasubandhu, Mahāyāna-saṅgraha-bhāṣya) by 世親菩薩 (Shìqīn púsà = Vasubandhu, 釋) and 真諦 (Zhēndì = Paramārtha, 譯)
About the work
真諦’s fifteen-fascicle translation of Vasubandhu’s auto-bhāṣya on Asaṅga’s Mahāyāna-saṅgraha — the standard Indian commentary on the root text translated as KR6n0059. This is the longest of the three Chinese versions of the Mahāyāna-saṅgraha-bhāṣya; the other two are KR6n0063 Shè dàshèng lùn shì lùn (T31n1596, 笈多 = Dharmagupta and 行矩, 隋, 605–610) at ten juǎn, and KR6n0064 Shè dàshèng lùn shì (T31n1597, 玄奘, 唐, 648–649) at ten juǎn. Paramārtha’s expanded fifteen-juǎn version reflects his characteristic interpretive interpolations and his school’s distinctive doctrinal positions on the amala-vijñāna and the relationship of the ālaya to tathāgatagarbha doctrine.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T31N1595) does not preserve a per-fascicle internal table. The fifteen juǎn track Vasubandhu’s bhāṣya on the ten chapters of the Mahāyāna-saṅgraha, with Paramārtha’s expansions concentrated in the doctrinally crucial chapters 1 (ālayavijñāna) and 9 (the kāya / result chapter).
Abstract
This is the most influential of Paramārtha’s Mahāyāna-saṅgraha translations: more so than the root text itself, it was Vasubandhu’s bhāṣya in this version that was studied in the Shèlùn school and that transmitted Yogācāra doctrine to its second and third generations of Chinese students. The translation is firmly dated to Tiānjiā 天嘉 4 (563) – Tiānjiā 5 (564), as recorded in the colophons preserved in the Lìdài sānbǎo jì j. 9 and the prefatory material to T1595 itself. It was completed in conjunction with the KR6n0059 root-text translation, in Paramārtha’s late period at Liángān 梁安 / Guǎngzhōu.
The bhāṣya — though attributed to Vasubandhu — has been the subject of considerable modern scholarship: Frauwallner (1951), Schmithausen, and others have argued for partial pseudepigraphic features in the surviving Chinese versions, and the relationship between the three Chinese translations of the bhāṣya (T1595, T1596, T1597) is an active research problem. The Tibetan version (D 4050) is shorter than Paramārtha’s Chinese version, suggesting that Paramārtha may have incorporated material from his disciples’ lectures or from his own glosses into the body of the translation.
The Paramārtha bhāṣya is the principal source for Shèlùn school doctrine, including the school’s distinctive position on the amala-vijñāna as a ninth consciousness — a position carefully refuted by 窺基 in KR6n0026 Chéng wéishí lùn shùjì and absent from the KR6n0064 Xuánzàng translation of the same Vasubandhu bhāṣya.
Translations and research
- Lamotte, Étienne. La somme du Grand Véhicule d’Asaṅga. 2 vols. Louvain, 1938. (Includes translation of T1595 bhāṣya.)
- Nagao Gadjin 長尾雅人. Shōdaijōron — wayaku to chūkai. 2 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1982–1987.
- Frauwallner, Erich. On the Date of the Buddhist Master of the Law Vasubandhu. Roma: IsMEO, 1951.
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Shintai sanzō kenkyū ronshū. Kyoto, 2012.
- Paul, Diana Y. Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China. Stanford, 1984.
Links
- CBETA
- 世親菩薩 Shìqīn púsà DILA
- 真諦 Zhēndì DILA
- Kanseki DB
- 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. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/