Míngyào chāo 明要鈔
A Digest of the Light-Bright Essentials by 貞慶 (Zhēnqìng / Jōkei, 撰)
About the work
A five-fascicle decisional summary on xiāngwéi yīn (相違因, the contradictory reason) and the related contested points of the Yīnmíng rù zhèng lǐ lùn doctrine, by the late-Heian / early-Kamakura Kōfuku-ji Hossō scholar 貞慶 (Jōkei, 1155–1213). Functions as the focused decisional companion to his broader Myōhon shō KR6o0032. Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2282). The Japanese title is Myōyō shō. The title 明要 (“Light-Bright Essentials”) refers, like Myōhon shō, to the Myōtō shō of 善珠 (Zenju) KR6o0009: the present work distils the essentials of Zenju’s lamp-bright digest.
Prefaces
The work has no formal authorial preface. It opens directly with the central terminological problem of xiāngwéi yīn and proceeds in a more compressed and decision-oriented style than the Myōhon shō. The opening section is laid out under a series of paired-oppositions (對): “局通對 / 衆量諍不同 / 宗依宗體 / 前後對共相 / 言許對宗依宗體 / 能違宗意許” — each pair representing one of the standard contested points to be resolved.
The work proceeds through the standard catalogue of failures committed by other commentators: 立義極廣失 (“the fault of overly broad thesis-assertion”), 多有闕減失 (“the fault of multiple omissions and reductions”), 違疏現文失 (“the fault of contradicting the explicit text of the commentary”), 不顧己失失 (“the fault of failing to notice one’s own faults”). A late transmission colophon dated Jōwa 4 (貞和四年, 1348) records that the work was orally transmitted by Seigyō Sōzu 盛曉僧都 to four named recipients; a second colophon dated Kannō 2 (觀應二年, 1351) records the copying of the manuscript by Kengi 顯意, “Provisional Lecturer, age 46”, at the Karin-in 花林院 imperial residence. An earlier internal seal in the colophon — “前大僧正御判四十三” (“the seal of the former Great Sōjō at age 43”) — most plausibly refers to Jōkei himself at age 43 (i.e. 1197), supporting the dating of composition to the mid-1190s.
Abstract
The Myōyō shō is the focused decisional companion to the more discursive Myōhon shō KR6o0032. Its method is to enumerate the prior commentarial errors in a catalogue of “shī” (失 “faults”) and to issue the correct decision in a compressed format suitable for monastic examination preparation (ryūgi 立義 rongi 論義). The work was clearly intended for use by senior debaters in the Kōfuku-ji Yuima-e 維摩會 and Hokke-e 法華會 examination cycles.
The transmission colophons document an unusually well-preserved lineage: from Jōkei (c. 1197) → through the Kamakura Kōfuku-ji scholastic chain → to Seigyō Sōzu in 1348 → to Kengi in 1351. The very high quality of transmission and the use of the work in late-Kamakura / early-Muromachi monastic examination preparation testify to its central place in the Kōfuku-ji scholastic curriculum.
The work is undated. Composition window c. 1190–1213, with c. 1197 a strong terminus ante quem if the “age 43” seal is Jōkei’s own.
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.
- 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 opening “fault-list” structure of the Myōyō shō — naming each defective interpretation and issuing the correct judgment — is a distinctive late-Heian / Kamakura Japanese scholastic genre, paralleled in the Tendai fugen 不見 literature and in the Shingon fudeki 不滴 literature, but rarely as systematically as here. The catalogue is itself a major secondary source for reconstructing the lost interpretive positions of the early-Kamakura Hossō commentary tradition.