Dàshèng bǎifǎ míngmén lùn kāizōng yìjì xùshì 大乘百法明門論開宗義記序釋
Explication of the Preface of the Notes on the Founding Doctrine of the Mahāyāna Hundred-Dharmas Treatise (anonymous)
About the work
A single-fascicle Dūnhuáng-recovered sub-commentary on the literary preface (xù) of KR6n0107 Dàshèng bǎifǎ míngmén lùn kāizōng yìjì 大乘百法明門論開宗義記 by 曇曠 Tánkuàng. The Kanripo catalog meta records no author and no dynasty; the work survives only in the Dūnhuáng manuscript tradition, preserved in the Taishō supplement at vol. 85, no. 2811.
Structural Division
CANWWW preserves the related-text relation T85N2811 ↔ KR6n0107 (T85N2810), confirming that this work is the xùshì (preface-explanation) sub-commentary on Tánkuàng’s Yìjì. The text proceeds line by line through the literary preface, glossing each stock literary phrase: the opening fū 夫 (“now…”) is unpacked as a fāyǔ zhī duānxù 發語之端緒 (the silk-thread-from-the-cocoon image of Chinese stylistics); biànzhī 遍知 (universal knowing) is glossed as the cognitive perfection of the Buddha alone, surpassing the partial knowledge of èrshèng (Hīnayāna) and dìshàng púsà (post-bhūmi bodhisattvas); wěizhào 委照 (“subtle illumination”) is glossed as fine-grained discriminative wisdom; and so on.
Prefaces
The text has no preface of its own. It opens directly with a citation of the first line of Tánkuàng’s xù — Fū biànzhī wěizhào hún zhēnsú yú xīnyuán; shēncí pǔqià yǎn bànmǎn yú yánpài 夫遍知委照渾真俗於心源，深慈普洽演半滿於言派 — followed by yún yún 云云 (et cetera) and then the running gloss.
Abstract
The Xùshì is one of the rare surviving sub-commentaries on a sub-commentary in the Dūnhuáng Yogācāra cache: a witness to the active scholastic life of Chángān–Dūnhuáng Cí’ēn study circles in the late eighth and ninth centuries. Its purpose is purely pedagogical — to make Tánkuàng’s literary preface accessible to students whose Chinese literary preparation was insufficient to parse the dense allusive style of the original. The work is anonymous; it likely emerged within the Chángān or Héxī corridor Cí’ēn-school study network in the immediate post-Tán-kuàng generation.
The dating window 770–850 brackets the post-Tán-kuàng era during which the Dūnhuáng Cí’ēn lineage remained doctrinally active, before the Tibetan and then Tangut occupation disrupted the Héxī monastic networks. The text was lost from Chinese transmission and survives only through the Dūnhuáng cache.
Translations and research
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō Bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1990 — extensive treatment of the Dūnhuáng Cí’ēn material including this text.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠, Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū 中国唯識思想史研究. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.