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掌中論

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Text ID
KR6n0119
Date
700–711
Dynasty
唐

Zhǎngzhōng lùn 掌中論

Treatise [Holding the Doctrine] in the Palm of the Hand (Hastavāla-prakaraṇa / Hastābhavaprakaraṇa) by 陳那菩薩 (Dignāga, 造), translated by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)

About the work

A single-fascicle verse-and-prose treatise attributed to 陳那菩薩 Dignāga (c. 480–540), translated by 義淨 Yìjìng in the early-eighth-century Táng. Preserved in the Taishō at T31n1621. The Yìjìng translation is the second extant Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit Hastavāla-prakaraṇa; the first is KR6n0118 Jiějuǎn lùn 解捲論 by 真諦 (Paramārtha). The two Chinese versions correspond to the same Sanskrit / Tibetan original (preserved as Tōh. 3848 / Peking 5248). Modern scholarship has redirected the attribution to Āryadeva (Tib. tradition); the Chinese traditional attribution to Dignāga is retained in the catalog.

Structural Division

CANWWW does not record sub-parts or cross-references for T31N1621.

Prefaces

The text opens directly with the prose framing: “The treatise says: in the three realms there is only conventional designation; in fact there is no external object. Because of false attachment, [students continue to misperceive]. Now, in order to provide for those who have not yet realised the truth, I shall investigate the gate of the self-nature of dharmas, to bring about non-inverted understanding; for this reason this treatise is composed.” Then the verses follow.

Abstract

The Yìjìng translation is doctrinally tighter and terminologically more standardised than the Paramārtha version of KR6n0118; the title Zhǎngzhōng 掌中 (“in the palm of the hand”) translates the Sanskrit hastavāla via the metaphor of holding the doctrine compactly in the hand, rather than Paramārtha’s jiějuǎn (releasing the fist) reading. The two Chinese titles thus represent two different Chinese readings of the same Sanskrit metaphor.

The doctrinal target — that conventional objects are mere designations on nominal aggregations and that the xiūzhī xiájìng (the cultivated practitioner’s discriminative knowledge) progressively dissolves the false superimposition — is identical in both translations. The Yìjìng version became the standard reference for the work in the Cí’ēn-school tradition.

義淨 Yìjìng (635–713) returned from his India sojourn in 695 and conducted his major translations in Chángān between 700 and his death in 713; the Zhǎngzhōng lùn is from this productive late period, conventionally dated 700–711.

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.
  • Frauwallner, Erich. “Dignāga und sein Schule.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens 5 (1961), 125–148.
  • Tola, Fernando and Carmen Dragonetti, On Voidness: A Study on Buddhist Nihilism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995.

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