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解捲論

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Text ID
KR6n0118
Date
557–569
Dynasty
陳

Jiějuǎn lùn 解捲論

Treatise on the Releasing of the Fist (Hastavāla-prakaraṇa) by 陳那菩薩 (Dignāga, 造), translated by 真諦 (Paramārtha, 譯)

About the work

A single-fascicle verse treatise attributed to 陳那菩薩 Dignāga (c. 480–540), translated by 真諦 Paramārtha in the Liáng-Chén period (between 557 and 569). Preserved in the Taishō at T31n1620. The work is the earlier of two extant Chinese translations of the same Sanskrit work; the second is KR6n0119 Zhǎngzhōng lùn 掌中論 (T31n1621), translated by 義淨 Yìjìng. The Sanskrit Hastavāla-prakaraṇa (also titled Hastābhavaprakaraṇa) is preserved as a Tibetan and partly as a Sanskrit witness; modern scholarship has reattributed it to Āryadeva rather than Dignāga, but the Chinese tradition uniformly preserves the Dignāga attribution. The catalog meta retains the traditional Dignāga ascription.

Structural Division

CANWWW does not record sub-parts or related-text cross-references for T31N1620. The Indian Sanskrit / Tibetan tradition treats Hastavāla-prakaraṇa and Zhǎngzhōng lùn as a single work in two parallel Chinese translations.

Prefaces

The text opens directly with a brief prose introduction: “The three realms (sānjiè 三界) take only verbal designation (yánmíng 言名) as their essence; through forced discrimination (qiáng fēnbié 強分別) [things appear that are] not real existents — therefore [the realms] do not attain reality. By the gate of investigative discrimination (jiǎnzé mén 簡擇門), [we expose] the self-nature of dharmas, in order to give rise to non-inverted knowledge (bù diāndǎo zhì 不顛倒智); for this reason this treatise is composed.” Immediately following is the canonical opening verse: “When one sees a snake on what is [actually] a rope, then knowing that it is a rope, [one realises] there is no [actual snake-]object” — the standard Indian Buddhist rajju-sarpa-bhrama “rope-and-snake” illusion that frames the work’s analysis of conventional designation.

Abstract

The Jiějuǎn lùn / Hastavāla-prakaraṇa is a short verse-and-prose treatise demonstrating that conventional objects (saṃvṛti-sat) — like the snake-on-the-rope, like the cloth on the loom — are mere designations imposed by mind on what are at base only nominal aggregations. The title metaphor — “releasing the fist” (hastavāla in the closed-fist / open-palm sense, here glossed as “the fist that releases its grip on objects”) — is the frame for a doctrine close to the prajñāpāramitā analysis of the conventional. The work is thus a Yogācāra-flavoured restatement of the Madhyamaka analysis of conventional truth, fitting the contested attribution between Dignāga and Āryadeva.

真諦 Paramārtha’s translation, like the parallel KR6n0111 Wúxiāng sīchén lùn, dates from his productive late Chén period at Zhìzhǐsì in Guǎngzhōu (557–569). It is one of his more compact translation projects and forms part of the early Chinese reception of the Dignāga (or Āryadeva) corpus that fed into the late-sixth-century Shèlùn 攝論-school synthesis.

Translations and research

  • F. W. Thomas and Hakuju Ui, “The Hand Treatise: A Work of Āryadeva,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1918), 267–310 — principal Western edition and translation, with the Āryadeva attribution.
  • Frauwallner, Erich. “Dignāga und sein Schule.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens 5 (1961), 125–148 — discusses the attribution problem.
  • Tola, Fernando and Carmen Dragonetti, On Voidness: A Study on Buddhist Nihilism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995.

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