Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏
Commentary on the Treatise on Entering Correct Reasoning of Hetuvidyā (the “Great Commentary”, 大疏) by 窺基 (Kuījī, 撰)
About the work
The single most important and influential commentary on Buddhist logic in the East Asian tradition: a comprehensive sub-commentary in three juǎn on Śaṅkarasvāmin’s Nyāyapraveśa KR6o0003, composed by 窺基 (Kuījī, 632–682), the principal disciple of 玄奘 (Xuánzàng) and the founder of the Cí’ēn 慈恩 (also called Fǎxiàng 法相) school of East Asian Yogācāra. Universally referred to in the tradition as the “Great Commentary” (大疏 Dà-shū) — to distinguish it from Wénguǐ’s earlier shū KR6o0021 — Kuījī’s commentary became the orthodox reference work for yīnmíng in China, Korea, and Japan: every subsequent commentator on the Rù lùn takes the Dà-shū as their primary point of reference, whether to gloss it (as in the entire Cí’ēn lineage of Huìzhǎo KR6o0018, KR6o0019, KR6o0022 and Zhìzhōu KR6o0023, KR6o0024, KR6o0025), to challenge it, or, in Japan, to produce yet larger sub-commentaries on it (Zenju 善珠’s Myōtō shō KR6o0009 and Zōshun 藏俊’s Daisho shō KR6o0010 and others).
Structural Division
CANWWW (T44N1840) lists no internal sub-divisions for the three-juǎn structure. CANWWW related-text pointers connect this commentary back to the parent Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn KR6o0003 (T32n1630).
Abstract
The opening preface narrates a brief intellectual history of Indian thought down to the rise of Buddhist logic, identifying 商羯羅主菩薩 (Śaṅkarasvāmin, here: 商羯羅) as the disciple of 域龍 (Dignāga) and the author of the Rù lùn; it then connects the work’s transmission to Kuījī’s “親教三藏大師” (his own personal teacher, the Tripiṭaka master Xuánzàng) and his journey to India. The body of the Dà-shū glosses the Rù lùn line by line, expanding extensively on each of the four canonical operations (能立, 似能立, 能破, 似能破) and the two cognitive operations (現量, 比量), introducing copious distinctions in the discussion of fallacies, especially the famous treatment of xiāngwéi 相違 (contradiction) of which the Rù lùn identifies four kinds (法自相相違, 法差別相違, 有法自相相違, 有法差別相違) — Kuījī’s treatment of these came to be regarded as so authoritative that an entire later sub-genre of “four contradictions” (四相違) commentaries developed around it KR6o0014, KR6o0015, KR6o0016, KR6o0017. The text is incomplete: only the upper juǎn (卷上) and middle juǎn (卷中) survive in full, with the third (卷下) preserved only as a fragment ending mid-sentence. The Cí’ēn tradition treated this as the unfinished masterwork of Kuījī’s yīnmíng studies, and devoted significant effort to “completing” it — particularly Huìzhǎo’s Yìduàn KR6o0018, Yì-zuǎn-yào KR6o0019, and Xù-shū KR6o0022 all act, in their different ways, as continuations or completions of the missing portions. Composition is normally placed in Kuījī’s middle period at the Dà Cí’ēn-sì 大慈恩寺, sometime between 660 and his death in 682.
Translations and research
- Takemura Shōhō 武邑尚邦. Inmyō nyū shōri ron go shaku 因明入正理論悟釋. Kyoto: Hyakkaen, 1995. — Annotated modern Japanese translation grounded in Kuījī’s Dà-shū.
- Shen Jianying 沈剣英. Yīnmíng dà shū jiào shì 因明大疏校釋. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008. — Critical edition with extensive philological apparatus.
- Frankenhauser, Uwe. Die Einführung der buddhistischen Logik in China. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. — German monograph including treatment of Kuījī’s commentary.
- Yīnshùn 印順. Yīnmíng yǔ zhōng-guān 因明與中觀 [Buddhist Logic and Madhyamaka]. Taipei: Zhèngwén, 1981.
Other points of interest
Almost the entire later East Asian yīnmíng corpus is, in some sense, a footnote to this commentary. Its structural division of the Rù lùn commentary into three juǎn — even though only fragments of the third survive — became the de facto outline for all subsequent commentaries; Wáng Kěntáng 王肯堂’s Jí jiě KR6o0027 and Míngyù 明昱’s Zhí shū KR6o0028 both rebuild Kuījī’s tripartite structure even when proposing variant readings. The Japanese tradition developed an entirely independent layer of “explanations of Kuījī’s Dàshū” (大疏抄, 明燈抄, 融貫鈔) that runs to many thousands of leaves and constitutes one of the largest surviving bodies of medieval East Asian logical literature.