Yīnmíng dàshū sìzhǒng xiāngwéi chāo 因明大疏四種相違抄
A Digest of the Four Contradictions in the Great Hetuvidyā Commentary by 珍海 (Zhēnhǎi / Chinkai, 記)
About the work
A one-fascicle topical digest 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 by 珍海 (Chinkai, 1092–1152), the Tōdai-ji 東大寺 Sanron 三論 scholar-monk of the late-Insei period. Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2280). The Japanese title is Inmyō Daishō shi-shu sōi shō. The signature reads “東大寺珍海記之” — “Recorded by Chinkai of Tōdai-ji.”
Prefaces
The work has no formal authorial preface. It opens directly with the central terminological problem of the chapter: “疏云。相違義者。謂兩宗相返。此之四過。而取他因。能令立者宗成相違。與相違法而爲因故。名相違因。因得ヲモテ果名名相違也。非因違宗名爲相違。故無宗亦違ト云テ因例” — quoting Kuījī’s preliminary characterisation of xiāngwéi and immediately glossing the relation between yīn (reason) and zōng (thesis) in the term “contradiction-reason” (相違因), with Japanese kana-style interlinear marks (ヲモテ, ト云テ) characteristic of late-Heian and Kamakura scholastic annotation.
Abstract
Chinkai is the most important Sanron-school inmyō writer of the late Heian period and an outstanding instance of cross-school scholastic competence: a Sanron monk by initial training, he received Shingon initiation at Daigo-ji 醍醐寺 and Kanshū-ji 勸修寺 and also practised Pure Land devotion. His major surviving Sanron works are sub-commentaries on the works of 吉藏 (Jízàng) — Sānlùn xuányì and Dàchéng xuánlùn — but he also engaged extensively with the Hossō yīnmíng corpus, of which this Sìxiāngwéi chāo and KR6o0083 Dàchéng zhèngguān luè sījì are the principal surviving witnesses.
The work moves directly to the contested technical question — what exactly the “contradiction” in xiāng-wéi yīn contradicts — and treats it with the precision characteristic of Sanron dialectic. Chinkai notes that 文軌 (Wénguǐ) and other “old masters” (古師) read the relation as chí-yè 持業 (the karmadhāraya analysis), while Kuījī adopts yī-zhǔ 依主 (tatpuruṣa); Chinkai sides with Kuījī. This positions the chāo within the standard mid-twelfth-century Hossō debate on the Four Contradictions, but conducted from the Sanron perspective — making it methodologically distinctive within the late-Heian sōi literature.
The work is undated. Chinkai’s documented scholarly activity falls c. 1120–1152; this is the standard composition window. The work is presumably composed during his Tōdai-ji period (i.e., before his retirement to Echizen).
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.
- 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. — Contains material on Chinkai’s place in the late-Heian Sanron-Hossō scholastic landscape.
Other points of interest
Among the Heian Four Contradictions literature, Chinkai’s is the only major work composed from a Sanron-school perspective. The Hossō works (KR6o0014 Kanri, KR6o0015 Genshin, KR6o0016 KR6o0017 Shinkō) all assume the Kuījī framework as essentially correct; Chinkai, while ultimately siding with Kuījī on the Sanron-vs-Wénguǐ question of compound-analysis, brings to bear Sanron-style dialectical method (the four-cornered anwita-yukti analysis characteristic of the Jízàng commentarial tradition). The chāo is thus a documentary witness to the late-Heian Sanron-Hossō scholastic conversation more broadly.