Bǎifǎ míngmén lùn zhuìyán 百法明門論贅言
Supplementary Words on the Hundred-Dharmas Treatise by 明昱 (Gāoyuán Míngyù, 贅言)
About the work
A single-fascicle late-Míng Cí’ēn-school commentary on Vasubandhu’s KR6n0096 Dàshèng bǎifǎ míngmén lùn 大乘百法明門論 by 明昱 Gāoyuán Míngyù, the central figure of the Wàn-lì-era Yogācāra revival. Preserved in the Manji Xuzangjing 卍續藏 at X48n0804. The catalog meta erroneously lists the dynasty as 唐 — this is a confusion introduced by parsing the zì “高原” as a dynasty marker; the actual person is firmly Míng (cf. the 明昱 person note for discussion).
Prefaces
The text opens with a layered authorship statement: “Tiānqīn púsà 天親菩薩 (Vasubandhu) 造; Táng sānzàng fǎshī Xuánzàng 唐三藏法師玄奘 fèngzhào 譯 (translated by imperial command); Cí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī Kuījī 慈恩寺三藏法師窺基 解 (explicated); Míng Shǔfǔcí shāmén Míngyù 明蜀輔慈沙門明昱 贅言 (Míngyù, monk of Shǔfǔcí 蜀輔慈, supplementary words).” The zhuìyán 贅言 (“redundant / supplementary words”) is a self-deprecating title by which Míngyù marks his work as a series of additional glosses attached to Kuījī’s lost-and-recovered base commentary, rather than as a fresh standalone exposition. There is no separate free-standing preface; the work moves directly into running commentary.
Abstract
The Zhuìyán is structurally an interleaved gloss: each segment of the root lùn is given first, then a passage of (purportedly) Kuījī’s commentary marked by 註 (the zhù), then Míngyù’s own additional clarifications marked by 贅 (the zhuì). The relation to Kuījī is the principal scholarly puzzle: the late-Míng Yogācāra revival depended on partial recovery of the Cí’ēn-school commentary corpus from Korean / Japanese transmissions and from quotations preserved in later commentaries; the Kuījī jiě embedded in the Zhuìyán is one of the principal Wàn-lì-era reconstructions of Kuījī’s lost commentary on the Bǎifǎ míngmén lùn, presented within Míngyù’s framing. Whether the embedded text faithfully transmits Kuījī’s seventh-century commentary or represents a Míng reconstruction ex post from Cí’ēn quotations remains debated; in either case the Zhuìyán is one of the principal vehicles by which Kuījī’s Bǎifǎ exegesis was re-established in late-Míng Chinese practice.
The dating window adopted (c. 1590–1620) brackets Míngyù’s Wàn-lì-era productive period as the principal Yogācāra revivalist; he was a senior contemporary of 智旭 (1599–1655), and his Cí’ēn commentaries — including this one — are the platform on which Zhìxù’s later KR6n0106 Zhíjiě and the Hānshān-disciple 廣益’s KR6n0104 Zuǎn were built.
Translations and research
- Shèng-yán 聖嚴, Míng-mò Fó-jiào yán-jiū 明末佛教研究. Taipei: Dōngchū chūbǎnshè, 1987.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠, Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū 中国唯識思想史研究. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.