Yīnmíng lùnshū sìxiāngwéi luè zhùshì 因明論疏四相違略註釋
A Brief Annotation on the Four Contradictions Section of the Hetuvidyā Commentary by 源信 (Yuánxìn / Genshin, 撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle topical zhùshì 註釋 (“annotation”) on the Four Contradictions (四相違) section of KR6o0008 Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏 (T44n1840) by 窺基 (Kuījī), composed in Jōgen 3 (貞元三年戊寅) = 978 CE by the great Japanese Tendai master 源信 (Genshin, 942–1017), at the time still a young scholar attached to the Mt. Hiei 比叡山 Shuryōgon-in 首楞嚴院. Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2276). The Japanese title is Inmyō ronsho shi-sōi ryaku-chūshaku.
Prefaces
The work opens with an unusually personal authorial preface that fixes the date and circumstance of composition:
貞元三年戊寅歳春二月。同門嚴公相話曰。我山法花會廣學立義。莫不抽逸才奧學矣。余謬當其撰。不能固辭。聊尋因明之義。將知正理之門。就中。四種相違。
“In the second month of spring, Jōgen 3, wùyín year (978), my fellow-student Master Gen 嚴公 spoke with me: ‘At the Hokke-e debate-ceremony of our mountain, anyone of broad learning who proposes a thesis (立義 ryūgi) does not fail to display recondite genius.’ I in confusion was assigned the post; I could not firmly decline. So, casually, I sought out the meaning of Hetuvidyā, in order to know the gateway of Right Reason — and among its topics, particularly the four kinds of contradiction.” The signature reads “天台首楞嚴院沙門源信撰” — “by Genshin, śramaṇa of the Shuryōgon-in of the Tendai school.”
Abstract
Genshin’s Sìxiāngwéi zhùshì is one of his earliest dated compositions and a key document for the early-Heian transmission of Hossō yīnmíng learning into the Tendai school. The preface makes the institutional circumstance explicit: the Hokke-e 法花會 (Lotus Assembly) of Mt. Hiei included a ryūgi (立義) debate-position which required mastery of yīnmíng, and Genshin was assigned to prepare. Having no inherited Tendai-school inmyō literature, he turned to the Hossō tradition — Zenju’s Myōtō shō KR6o0009 and Kuījī’s Dàshū KR6o0008 — and produced this distilled zhùshì of the Four Contradictions chapter for his own use at the debate.
The work is consequently brief and selective rather than encyclopaedic: it focuses on the points most likely to come up in oral debate, treats them in lecture-room (講堂) prose rather than commentarial line-by-line glossing, and assumes that the reader already has the Dàshū lemma in front of him. The Japanese-Tendai reception of the Hossō inmyō tradition documented here parallels the better-known case of KR6o0034 Pànbǐliánglùn 判比量論 by 元曉 (Wŏnhyo), in which the Silla scholastic tradition is shown to have engaged with the post-Kuījī Cí’ēn-school yīnmíng literature.
Date: 978 CE — explicitly stated in the preface (Jōgen 3 = 貞元三年戊寅). Genshin was 36/37 at the time, two decades before composing his epoch-making Ōjō yōshū (985 CE).
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.
- Itō Zuiei 伊藤瑞叡, Genshin no kyōgaku 源信の教學, Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1988 — treats Genshin’s early scholastic works including this one.
- Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士, Heian shoki bukkyō shisō no kenkyū 平安初期佛教思想の研究, Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1995.
Other points of interest
The Sìxiāngwéi zhùshì is one of the very few non-Hossō Heian-period inmyō productions — most of the Heian inmyō literature is from Kōfuku-ji and Yakushi-ji Hossō scholars (Zenju, Myōsen, Eihen, Kanri, Shinkō). Genshin’s Tendai composition documents the fact that inmyō learning was, by the late tenth century, no longer confined to the Hossō establishment but had become a general scholastic competence required at the major monastic debate-ceremonies. The preface is also a rare candid statement of the social dynamics of the Hokke-e — the ryūgi-assignment Genshin describes as not declinable was the principal stepping-stone in the Hieizan monastic-promotion track.