Míngběn chāo 明本抄
A Digest of the Light-Bright Root by 貞慶 (Zhēnqìng / Jōkei, 撰)
About the work
A thirteen-fascicle topical chāo on contested points of yīnmíng 因明 (Buddhist logic) by the late-Heian / early-Kamakura Kōfuku-ji Hossō scholar 貞慶 (Jōkei, 1155–1213). The work systematically treats the contradictory-reason doctrine (相違因 xiāngwéi yīn) and its sub-distinctions as expounded in KR6o0008 Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn shū 因明入正理論疏 (T44n1840) by 窺基 (Kuījī), as supplemented by KR6o0009 Myōtō shō of 善珠 (Zenju). Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2281). The Japanese title is Myōhon shō. The title 明本 (“Light-Bright Root”) is a reverent allusion to Zenju’s Myōtō 明燈 (“Lamp-Bright”): Jōkei is presenting his work as a digest of the root (本) of the Hossō inmyō tradition.
Prefaces
The transmitted Taishō text has no formal authorial preface. It opens directly with the heading “相違因。局通對。陳後説。言陳意許。相違因得名” and proceeds in koto form through a thirteen-fascicle exposition. A late copy-colophon at the end of juǎn 1 records “文永四年五月二十四日甲酉於東大寺鼓坂。以尊勝院御本書寫了” — “Copied on the 24th day of the 5th month of Bun’ei 4 (1267) at Kosaka, Tōdai-ji, from the gohon (master-copy) of Sonshō-in 尊勝院” — by 聖禪 Shōzen, “Provisional Vinaya-Master of the Kegon school, age 66” (華嚴宗權律師聖禪). The Sonshō-in 尊勝院 was Jōkei’s principal Kōfuku-ji sub-cloister, and this colophon documents that the Myōhon shō was transmitted directly from his Sonshō-in master-copy down to the mid-Kamakura period.
Abstract
Jōkei is one of the most consequential figures of the early-Kamakura Buddhist establishment — author of the Kōfuku-ji sōjō 興福寺奏狀 of 1205 against 源空 Hōnen’s Pure Land movement, founder of the Kasagi-dera 笠置寺 hermitage, and the leading Kōfuku-ji Hossō scholar of his generation. His yīnmíng output represents a different facet of his learning from the Lotus, Maitreya, and Avalokiteśvara devotional works for which he is best known: it is technical Hossō scholastic logic produced during his Kōfuku-ji period before his 1193 retreat to Kasagi.
The Myōhon shō is organised around the doctrine of xiāngwéi yīn but is encyclopaedic in its compass: each koto gathers the views of the principal authorities — Zenju KR6o0009, Zōshun KR6o0010, Shinkō KR6o0016 KR6o0017, 文軌 Wénguǐ (古師), 慧沼 Huìzhǎo KR6o0018 (泗洲義燈), 智周 Zhìzhōu KR6o0023, 西明 Xīmíng / 圓測 Wǒnch’ŭk, 邑師 — and adjudicates among them. The work’s distinctive contribution is its strict use of the yīzhǔ (依主) compound analysis for xiāngwéi yīn: “Suìyǒu liǎngzhòng wèndá, yóuwèi tuō zōng yīn xiānglì gù, Sìzhōu Yìdēng, Zhìzhōu chùchù Shànzhū děng shī, jiē yòng yīzhǔ” — “Although there are two answers, neither escapes the equivalence of zōng and yīn; therefore Sìzhōu (Huìzhǎo)‘s Yìdēng, Zhìzhōu in various places, and Master Zenju and others all use the yīzhǔ compound analysis.” This is the locus classicus of the Kamakura-era consensus on the question.
The work is undated. The principal composition window is Jōkei’s Kōfuku-ji period before his 1193 retreat to Kasagi, c. 1180–1193, though further additions could have been made into the early 1200s.
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.
- Ford, James L. Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. — Treats Jōkei’s overall career and lists the Myōhon shō among his scholastic works.
- Morrell, Robert E. Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1987.
- 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 Myōhon shō is one of two paired yīnmíng works by Jōkei — the other being KR6o0033 Myōyō shō 明要鈔. In the standard Kamakura-era Hossō scholastic ordering, the Myōhon shō is the broader exposition and the Myōyō shō is the focused decisional summary. The pairing parallels the earlier sījì / duànluè jì pairing of Shinkō KR6o0016 KR6o0017 — a structural homology that documents the persistence across two centuries of a distinctive Kōfuku-ji method of producing scholastic literature.