Yīnmíng dàshū róngguàn chāo 因明大疏融貫鈔
A Harmonising Digest of the Great Commentary on the Hetuvidyā Treatise by 基辨 (Jībiàn / Kiben, 撰)
About the work
A nine-fascicle Edo-period harmonising sub-commentary on KR6o0008 Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏 (T44n1840) by 窺基 (Kuījī), composed by the Yakushi-ji 藥師寺 Hossō scholar 基辨 (Kiben, 1718–1791). Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2272). The body of the work bears the prefatory title 勸策樂大乘者必當普學因明論道小言 (“A Small Discourse Exhorting Those Who Delight in the Great Vehicle Necessarily to Pursue the Universal Study of the Inferential Path of Hetuvidyā”).
Prefaces
The opening 小言 (Xiǎo yán, “Small Discourse”) that prefaces the body is itself a substantial doctrinal essay on the place of yīnmíng within Mahāyāna scholasticism. Kiben argues — drawing on the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, the Yogācārabhūmi (Yújiā shī dì lùn), the Xiǎn-yáng shèngjiào lùn (Prakaraṇāryavāca), and Xuánzàng’s account in the Xīyù jì — that Hetuvidyā is one of the five vidyā-fields (五明) and is, of the five, the one expressly named by the Buddha in the Saṃdhinirmocana as the means by which the Tathāgata’s pure 言音 (yán-yīn, “speech-sound”) is to be distinguished from the impure speech of the tīrthikas. Kiben grounds the inmyō-curriculum on this scriptural authority, citing in particular the Saṃdhinirmocana’s “five pure marks” (現量, 比量, 喻量, 真圓成量, 理量・教量) and the seven impure marks identified with Akṣapāda Gautama’s nine-cause analysis. The colophon-signature reads “南都西京藥師寺留學傳法相大乘宗沙門基辨撰” (“by Kiben, śramaṇa of Yakushi-ji at the Western Capital of the Southern Capital, student-instructor of the Hossō-Mahāyāna school”).
Abstract
The title Róngguàn chāo 融貫鈔 (“Digest That Harmonises and Threads Through”) signals Kiben’s project of synthesis: the earlier Japanese inmyō commentarial literature — Zenju’s Myōtō shō KR6o0009, Zōshun’s Daishō shō KR6o0010, the Heian and Kamakura inmyō note-traditions (KR6o0014 觀理, KR6o0015 源信, KR6o0016 眞興), and the Kamakura monastic-debate (rongi 論義) literature — had produced over four centuries an enormous but mutually inconsistent body of glosses. Kiben’s enterprise, characteristic of the Tokugawa-era kogaku 古學 revival, is to read the Dàshū lemmatically once again with full attention to the Sanskrit and Chinese sources behind it, and on that basis to adjudicate among the prior Japanese commentaries.
The work proceeds in conventional 疏 / 鈔 form: each lemma of the Dàshū is signalled “疏。…” followed by Kiben’s discussion under “鈔曰。…“. Within each chāo-block he cross-quotes the earlier Japanese authorities by short title and offers his judgment. The work is encyclopaedic in scope and is the standard Tokugawa-era reference for Japanese inmyō. Modern Japanese Hossō scholarship — including Takemura Shōhō’s foundational Inmyōgaku no kenkyū — relies heavily on the Róngguàn chāo for the structure of its analyses.
Composition window: Kiben’s mature scholarly output is conventionally placed in the period c. 1750–1791. The work is undated but is cited by name in Edo-end Hossō literature.
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.
- Iida Yūei 飯田祐英, Hossō-shū inmyō-gaku no kenkyū 法相宗因明學の研究, Kyoto: Hyakkaen, 1975.
Other points of interest
The opening Xiǎo yán is one of the very few surviving Edo-period systematic statements of the doctrinal rationale for inmyō study within a Buddhist scholastic curriculum. Its appeal to the Saṃdhinirmocana’s “five pure marks of speech-sound” provides a Yogācāra-grounded justification for what Edo-era critics (especially Tendai and Pure Land polemicists) often dismissed as a marginal Sino-Indian scholastic technique. Kiben’s framing — Hetuvidyā as the de jure vidyā of the Tathāgata’s transformative speech — was influential in the late-Edo Hossō revival.