Yīn yuán xīn shì lùn kāi jué jì 因緣心釋論開決記
Notes on Opening and Resolving the Commentary on the Heart of Dependent Arising
About the work
A one-juǎn anonymous Tang-era sub-commentary on the Yīn-yuán xīn lùn shì 因緣心論釋 (KR6o0058; T32n1654) — the prose commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya-kārikā. The text is preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts and entered the Taishō canon as T85n2816 in the Gǔ yìbù 古逸部 (“ancient lost works”) section. The Taishō editorial apparatus marks it as related to T1654 (“No. 2816 [cf. No. 1654]”). The author and date are unknown; internal evidence suggests a Chinese hand of the Tang period.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not record a separate sub-division; the work proceeds through “four gates” (四門) of analysis:
- Míng zàolùn zhī zhǔ 明造論之主 — On the author of the treatise
- Míng zàolùn zhī yīn 明造論之因 — On the conditions of its composition
- Míng suǒ-shù zhī lùn wéi zhèng-liáng bù 明所述之論為正量不 — Whether the treatise is a pramāṇa
- Biàn lùn suǒ zōng 辨論所宗 — On the doctrinal affiliation
Abstract
The Taishō text opens “將釋此論。先以四門分別。然後釋其正論之文。言四門者…” and immediately distinguishes the work from a straightforward verse-by-verse commentary by introducing four hermeneutic “gates” (門), a feature characteristic of Tang Yogācāra (Cí’ēn 慈恩) sub-commentarial style. The first gate identifies “the great master Nāgārjuna” 龍猛大師 as having achieved the bodhisattva first-stage (極喜地, pramuditā-bhūmi). This sub-commentary is one of a small group of Buddhist texts surviving only in Dunhuang manuscripts (P. ?, S. ?), and it provides important indirect evidence for the Tang reception of Nāgārjunian pratītyasamutpāda literature in the northwestern frontier scholastic tradition. The author is unknown; the doctrinal position is broadly Yogācāra-Madhyamaka, with citation of Sthiramati and Asaṅga.
Translations and research
- Tonkō Bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌仏教の研究 (Kyoto, various editors). — Treats the Dunhuang Buddhist manuscript corpus.
- Demiéville, Paul. “Recents travaux sur Touen-houang.” T’oung Pao (1970, 1973). — Surveys Dunhuang Buddhist manuscript scholarship.
Other points of interest
The text is one of only a handful of works in the Taishō canon that descend exclusively from Dunhuang manuscripts and survive nowhere else in the East Asian transmission. Its placement in the Yújiā / Lùnjí division (T32 → T85 gǔyìbù) reflects the Taishō editors’ conservative cataloguing of these recovered Dunhuang witnesses.