Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn zhí jiě 因明入正理論直解
Direct Explanation of the Treatise on Entering Correct Reasoning of Hetuvidyā by 智旭 (Zhìxù, 述)
About the work
The last and most influential of the late-Míng commentaries on the Rù lùn KR6o0003, in one juǎn, by 智旭 (Zhìxù / Ǒuyì 蕅益, 1599–1655), the great late-Míng Buddhist polymath. The colophon “古吳蕅益釋智旭述” identifies the author as “Shì Zhìxù of Gǔwú [Sūzhōu], style-name Ǒuyì”. The Zhí jiě divides the Rù lùn into a careful tripartite outline (解題 / 出論主 / 出譯師, then a section-by-section commentary) and proceeds with characteristic Ǒuyì rigour and clarity. It became the standard textbook of Buddhist logic in the early Qīng and Republican periods, far more widely read than any other MíngQīng treatment.
Structural Division
The Xuzangjing recension is not in CANWWW. The work comments on the Rù lùn KR6o0003.
Abstract
The text opens with a careful three-part outline of the title-explanation: (1) the title proper (正解論題), (2) identifying the author (出論主), and (3) identifying the translator (出譯師). The body then follows the Rù lùn lemma by lemma. Zhìxù draws upon all the available earlier Míng commentaries — Zhēnjiè KR6o0026, Wáng Kěntáng KR6o0027, Míngyù KR6o0028 — but goes back to first principles to recover the structural skeleton of Indian yīnmíng doctrine. The Yogācāra-Tiāntái-Chán-Pure-Land syncretism that characterises Zhìxù’s larger oeuvre is here held in restraint; the Zhí jiě is a deliberately sober and technical exposition. Composition is placed in Zhìxù’s mature period, c. 1635–1655 (he died in 1655). The Xuzangjing transmits from a late-Míng or early-Qīng print.
Translations and research
- Shen Jianying 沈剣英. Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn jiào shì 因明入正理論校釋. Shanghai, 2008. — Critical edition with extensive use of Zhìxù.
- Lusthaus, Dan. “Zhìxù on Buddhist Logic.” In Buddhist Logic: A Festschrift for Shōryū Katsura, ed. Patrick S. O’Donnell. Tokyo, 2014.
- Foulks McGuire, Beverly. Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Other points of interest
Zhìxù’s Zhí jiě is the closest we get to a modern textbook of Buddhist logic in pre-modern Chinese. Its clarity and concision were such that it became, in the late Qīng and early Republican period, the standard university teaching text on the subject — used by both Buddhist scholastic and secular philosophical institutions, including Lú Cháng’s 呂澂 Yīnmíng gāngyào 因明綱要 and the early-twentieth-century academic yīnmíng revival in China.