Yīnmíng dàshū dào 因明大疏噵
Explication of the Great Commentary on the Hetuvidyā Treatise by 明詮 (Míngquán / Myōsen, 撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle topical exposition (噵 = 導) by the early-Heian Kōfuku-ji 興福寺 Hossō scholar 明詮 (Myōsen, 789–868) on KR6o0008 Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏 (T44n1840) by 窺基 (Kuījī). The work is preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2273); the catalog metadata renders the rare technical character 噵 as a placeholder “ṭ” (the Taishō text and the DILA authority record both read 噵). The Japanese title is Inmyō Daishō dō.
Prefaces
The transmitted Taishō text has no formal authorial preface; it opens directly with the first gloss on the Dàshū’s preface (“大疏上卷噵 / 空桑息郞反。空桑者。孔子所生之處也…”) and proceeds lemma by lemma through Kuījī’s preface and body. The transmitted text closes with an Edo-period colophon dated Kansei 4 寬政四壬子年八月三五日 (1792) by 上陽沙門快道林常 (快道林常 Kaidō Rinjō, 1751–1810), the Buzan 豐山 Shingi-Shingon scholar who collated this and the parallel Lǐshū recension at the Buzan Aizen-in 愛染院. Kaidō’s colophon notes that he prepared the print from two manuscript witnesses — the Bekuroku 別録 and the Dō-hon 噵本 — which differ in opposite ways (the Bekuroku preserves the dō-text but omits passages; the Dō-hon preserves the wording but has many lacunae); he records his collation method as “from the two manuscripts together verified, following the more reasonable reading” (兩本雙撿以從理長者).
Abstract
Myōsen represents the second generation of Japanese Hossō yīnmíng learning after 善珠 (Zenju). The Dàoshō differs from Zenju’s Myōtō shō KR6o0009 in scale and orientation: at three fascicles it is far shorter, focuses on phonetic and lexical glosses (e.g. “空桑息郞反” — fǎnqiè spelling) rather than encyclopedic doctrinal exposition, and proceeds at a clip well-suited to use as a lecture-hall handbook. It is a dō-text in the strict sense — a master’s notes to be expounded orally rather than read silently — and survives only because of the Edo-end Buzan editorial reconstruction.
Composition window: Myōsen’s mature scholarly career falls in the period c. 820–868; the standard placement of the Dàoshō and its companion Lǐshū KR6o0013 is in his middle to late period.
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. — Treats Myōsen as a transitional figure between Zenju and the Heian inmyō rongi tradition.
- 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 work is one of the earliest fully-glossed-Japanese yīnmíng productions to survive: it includes interlinear kana readings (which the Taishō print partly preserves) and Japanese-style annotations marking fǎnqiè spellings of difficult characters. Kaidō Rinjō’s 1792 colophon is itself an important document for the late-Edo Buzan Shingi-Shingon editorial movement, which produced critical editions of much of the early-Heian Hossō inmyō corpus.