Shǒu zhàng lùn 手杖論
Treatise of the Walking-Staff (Yaṣṭi-śāstra) by 釋迦稱 (Shìjiāchēng / Śākyakīrti, 造) and 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)
About the work
A short one-juǎn verse-and-prose treatise composed by the Indian Buddhist ācārya Śākyakīrti 釋迦稱 (also Sanskritised as Buddhakīrti) and translated by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 635–713) at the Táng court between his return to China in 695 and his death. The metaphor of the title is explicit in the opening verses: as a traveller relies on a walking-staff (手杖, yaṣṭi) on a smooth or slippery road, so the practitioner relies on the doctrine of dependent origination as a support against the slips and falls of the cycle of birth and death. The work is a compact abhidharma-style refutation of various non-Buddhist views, set in dialectical form.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T32N1657) does not record an internal sub-division.
Abstract
The Taishō text opens “手杖論一卷 / 尊者釋迦稱造 / 大唐三藏法師義淨奉 詔譯” with a programmatic statement of purpose: “The world is full of those who through lack of wisdom give rise to wrong views; out of compassion for those sinking and sunk, I now compose this treatise.” The opening verse develops the walking-staff simile: even on a smooth road one may need a staff, how much more so on the slippery and dangerous path of saṃsāra. The Sanskrit original (the Yaṣṭi-śāstra) does not survive; a Tibetan translation in the bsTan-‘gyur preserves a closely parallel work attributed to Śākyakīrti (or Buddhakīrti). The translation is registered in the Kāiyuán-lù 開元錄 (T2154) within Yìjìng’s late corpus. The author Śākyakīrti is poorly attested independently; he may be the same as the Buddhakīrti who appears in late Indian abhidharma lineages, but no certain identification is possible.
Translations and research
- Frauwallner, Erich. Die Philosophie des Buddhismus. Berlin, 1956. — Brief notice.
- Mochizuki Bukkyō Daijiten 望月仏教大辞典 s.v. Shujō-ron. — Standard reference summary.
- Wayman, Alex. “The Yaṣṭi-śāstra: Buddhakīrti’s Treatise of the Walking-Staff.” Various editions.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the smaller and more obscure works in the Taishō Lùnjí division. Its translator, Yìjìng, was renowned for his interest in abhidharma and meditation literature, and the Shǒuzhàng lùn fits his broader translation programme of supplying the Chinese tradition with previously unrendered Indic doctrinal-polemical works.
Links
- CBETA
- Dazangthings date evidence (705): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/