Yīnmíng lùnshū míngdēng chāo 因明論疏明燈抄
A Lamp-Bright Digest of the Commentary on the Hetuvidyā Treatise by 善珠 (Shànzhū / Zenju, 抄)
About the work
A twelve-fascicle sub-commentary by the Nara-period Hossō 法相 master 善珠 (Zenju, 724–797) on KR6o0008 Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏 (T44n1840), the great commentary (大疏 Dà-shū) by 窺基 (Kuījī, 632–682) on Śaṅkarasvāmin’s Nyāyapraveśa KR6o0003. It is the principal East-Asian sub-commentary on Kuījī’s Dà-shū and the foundational work of Japanese Buddhist logic (inmyō 因明), preserved in Taishō vol. 68 (no. 2270). The Japanese title is Inmyō ronsho myōtō shō.
Prefaces
The work opens with a four-line dedicatory gāthā placed at the head of the first juǎn:
稽首難思眞妙法 證入實相牟尼尊
域龍天主諸聖衆 翻譯敎主梵木叉
於此因明大智海 我今隨力抄文義
爲令法燈常無絶 願共衆生入正理
“I bow my head to the inconceivable, true and wondrous Dharma, and to the Muni-Honored-One who has realized the True Mark; to Dignāga (Yùlóng 域龍), Śaṅkarasvāmin (Tiānzhǔ 天主), and all the holy assembly; to the translation-master and to Brahma-vyākaraṇa. Upon this great ocean of yīnmíng-wisdom I now, according to my measure, digest its text and meaning, that the Lamp of the Dharma may shine without end, and that I, together with all sentient beings, may enter the gate of Right Reason.” The title 明燈抄 (Míng-dēng chāo, “Lamp-Bright Digest”) derives from the third couplet. The opening of the body proper enters directly into glossing the Dà-shū’s preface (“文。詳夫空桑啓聖…”).
Abstract
The commentary is signed “日本沙門釋善珠抄” — “compiled by the Japanese śramaṇa Zenju.” Zenju was the principal Japanese Hossō 法相 (Yogācāra) scholar of the late Nara and early Heian periods, founding abbot of Akishino-dera 秋篠寺 and later sōjō 僧正, the highest rank of the Buddhist clergy. The transmission of the yīnmíng corpus into Japan came through 玄昉 (Genbō) and his immediate successors, but Zenju is the first Japanese scholar to produce a sustained scholastic synthesis of the entire Chinese yīnmíng commentarial tradition.
The Míngdēng chāo is a zhāng-chāo 章抄 (lemmatic sub-commentary): Zenju quotes the Dà-shū phrase by phrase (“文。…”) and supplies extended exegesis. The work is encyclopaedic in scope: in commenting on the opening of Kuījī’s preface he digresses to expound the Yìjīng’s “six positions of the hexagram” (六位), the figure of Confucius’s mother in the Sōushénjì 搜神記, the Lǎozǐ’s “two books” of dào and dé, and the life of Liè-zǐ 列子 — witnessing the breadth of secular-Chinese literacy maintained within Nara Hossō. The substance of the commentary, however, lies in its systematic exposition of the Hetuvidyā terminology (the three-membered syllogism, the nine reasons, the fourteen fallacies of the hetu and ten of the dṛṣṭānta, the four contradictions 四相違) on the basis of Kuījī’s framework, supplemented by 文軌 (Wénguǐ), 神泰 (Shéntài), 慧沼 (Huìzhǎo) and 智周 (Zhìzhōu). Through Zenju’s quotation, the work preserves substantial fragments of the lost early-Táng “old commentaries” (古疏).
The work is undated. Zenju’s mature scholarly output is generally placed in the period after his 753 ordination and before his death in 797. The standard estimate for the composition window of the Míngdēng chāo is the latter half of his career, i.e. c. 770–797. Internal evidence: the work is quoted by name in KR6o0010 Yīnmíng dàshū chāo by 藏俊 (Zōshun, 1104–1180), and from the Kamakura period onwards it is the universally cited Japanese authority on the Dàshū.
Translations and research
- Takemura Shōhō 武邑尚邦. Inmyōgaku — sono genri to tenkai 因明學――その原理と展開. Kyoto: Hyakkaen, 1986. — Systematic treatment of Japanese inmyō including Zenju’s Myōtō shō.
- Frankenhauser, Uwe. Die Einführung der buddhistischen Logik in China. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996.
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻, Tonkō bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌佛教の研究, Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1990 — contextualises Zenju’s Hetuvidyā work within the Sinitic yīnmíng tradition.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志, Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1962.
Other points of interest
The Míngdēng chāo is the principal vehicle through which the lost early-Táng “old commentaries” on the Rù lùn — particularly those of 文軌 (Wénguǐ), Jìngyǎn 淨眼, and Dàoxuān 道宣 — were transmitted to Japanese Hossō scholastics. Zenju quotes them by name in order to compare them with Kuījī, and his quotations form a major source for reconstructing the pre-Kuījī Chinese reception of Dignāga. The Kamakura-era commentary tradition (Zōshun KR6o0010, Eihen KR6o0011, Myōsen KR6o0012) takes the Myōtō shō as the standard interpretation of the Dàshū.