Shè dàshèng lùn shì lüèshū 攝大乘論釋略疏
Abridged Commentary on the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha-bhāṣya by 普寂 (Fujaku, 撰)
About the work
A five-fascicle Edo-period Japanese commentary on Paramārtha 真諦’s Chinese translation of Vasubandhu’s Bhāṣya on Asaṅga’s Mahāyāna-saṃgraha — KR6n0061 Shè dàshèng lùn shì 攝大乘論釋 (T31n1595) — composed by 普寂 (Fujaku, 1707–1781) of the Chōsen-in 長泉院 (i.e. Chōsen Ritsu-in 長泉律院) in Edo. Preserved as T2269 (Taishō vol. 68). The colophon signs the work 日域東都長泉院苾芻普寂疏 — “commented on by the bhikṣu Fujaku of the Chōsen-in in the Eastern Capital [Edo] of the realm of Japan.”
The work explicitly takes the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha-bhāṣya (天親釋 — Vasubandhu’s commentary) as its base, distinguishing it from the alternative bhāṣya by Asvabhāva (KR6n0065 Shè dàshèng lùn shì T1598, in Xuánzàng’s translation). Fujaku’s introduction explains the choice: the Vasubandhu commentary is presented as foundational, with Asvabhāva treated as supplementary.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T68N2269) lists KR6n0061 Shè dàshèng lùn shì 攝大乘論釋 (T31n1595, Paramārtha translation of Vasubandhu) as the related text. The 5 kan track the ten shēngxiàng 勝相 (excellent characteristics) of the master treatise, from the foundation (yīzhǐ 依止) to the fruit of wisdom (zhìguǒ 智果), structured as in the Bhāṣya itself.
The opening xuántán is a ten-gate prolegomenon paralleling that of Fujaku’s pendant work KR6n0021 Jōyuishikiron ryakusho (T2267):
- 敎興所因 — Reasons for the rise of the doctrine (with three sub-gates: rise of the Buddha-dharma, rise of the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, rise of the Bhāṣya);
- 藏敎所攝 — Subsumption under piṭaka and teaching;
- 所詮宗趣 — Doctrinal aim;
- 能詮敎體 — Substance of the teaching;
- 敎所被機 — Faculties addressed;
- 依止差別 — Differentiation of foundation;
- 遣除情計 — Removal of speculative theories;
- 矯救時弊 — Correction of the abuses of the age;
- 傳譯不同 — Differences in transmission and translation;
- 隨文解釋 — Lemma-by-lemma exposition.
Abstract
The Shōdaijōronshaku ryakusho is the pendant companion to Fujaku’s KR6n0021 Jōyuishikiron ryakusho (T2267) and together with it constitutes the Edo-period rebuilding of Yogācāra study around the Indian Yogācāra commentarial tradition rather than the medieval Hossō kikigaki / mondō tradition. Where the Jōyuishikiron ryakusho approaches the Triṃśikā family via Kuījī’s KR6n0026 shùjì, the Shōdaijōron-shaku ryakusho returns to Paramārtha’s older translation of the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha-bhāṣya — a deliberate choice that aligns Fujaku with the Old Yogācāra (古唯識) tradition of Paramārtha and the Shèlùn school, in preference to the New Yogācāra (新唯識) of Xuánzàng’s Cí’ēnzōng. This is one of the doctrinally distinctive features of the Tokugawa Yogācāra revival.
The eighth gate, jiǎojiù shí bì 矯救時弊 (“correction of the abuses of the age”), is unusual in the East-Asian commentarial tradition and signals Fujaku’s polemical engagement with eighteenth-century Japanese doctrinal disputes, particularly the daijō hibussetsu-ron 大乗非仏説論 (the proposition that Mahāyāna is not the Buddha’s word) and the Pure Land sectarian controversies of his time.
The date-bracket adopted here (1740–1781) covers Fujaku’s mature productive period from age 33 through his death. The work is the principal Edo-period commentary on Paramārtha’s Mahāyāna-saṃgraha-bhāṣya and one of the very few extended late-traditional treatments of Old Yogācāra preserved in the Taishō.
Translations and research
- Niwa Kiichirō 丹羽喜一郎. “Fujaku no Daijō-kan 普寂の大乗観 — Living the Classification of the Doctrines: Fujaku’s Theory of Mahāyāna.” CiNii Research crid 1390001205950527104.
- Treated in general surveys of Tokugawa Buddhist scholasticism and the Edo-period Yogācāra revival.
Other points of interest
The work’s deliberate alignment with Paramārtha’s Old Yogācāra (as against Xuánzàng’s New Yogācāra dominant in Kōfuku-ji Hossō) makes it a useful indicator of the Tokugawa scholastic willingness to reach behind the Cí’ēnzōng synthesis to recover earlier Yogācāra commentarial traditions — a parallel to contemporaneous philological work on the Lùnyǔ and other classical Chinese texts in the Sorai school.