Dàchéng Sānlùn dàyì chāo 大乘三論大義鈔
A Digest of the Great Meaning of the Mahāyāna Three-Treatise School by 玄叡 (Xuánruì / Gen’ei, 集)
About the work
A four-fascicle topical compendium of Sanron 三論 (Mādhyamika) doctrine by the early-Heian Gangō-ji 元興寺 scholar 玄叡 (Gen’ei, d. 840), the principal systematiser of the Japanese Sanron tradition descended from 吉藏 (Jízàng) via the Asuka-period Sanron transmission. Preserved in Taishō vol. 70 (no. 2296). The Japanese title is Daijō Sanron daigi shō. The Taishō text is prefaced by an Edo-period editorial introduction by an unnamed editor (the Kè Dàchéng Sānlùn dàyì chāo xù 刻大乘三論大義鈔序), reflecting the Edo-era rediscovery and printing of this otherwise rare work.
Prefaces
The work opens with a published Edo-era editorial preface (the Kè … xù) that places the Daigi shō in its broader doctrinal context:
夫世雄在世者。弟弟口誦而多不假色塵之文字。專以心印心而不依經卷部帙矣。雙樹枯衰之曛。飲光結集之晨。各背誦于文句貝文縑緗未足須焉。像季衆生者。念根日夜減損。謄鈔專護于法藏。色塵特作於佛事也。
“When the Hero of the World was in the world, the disciples mouth-to-mouth recited [his teachings] and largely did not borrow the written letters of form-and-dust; they directly sealed mind with mind and did not depend on the sūtra-rolls and piṭaka-bundles. Under the twilight of the withered twin-trees, in the dawn of Kāśyapa’s First Council, each recited from memory the words and phrases; the palm-leaf manuscripts and silk-and-yellow rolls had not yet become necessary. But the xiàng-jì (image-end) sentient beings — their faculty of smṛti (mindfulness) decreases day and night — and so the copyings-out come into being to preserve the Dharma-storehouse, and form-and-dust comes specially to serve as a Buddha-deed.”
The editorial preface then describes the Daigi shō’s purpose as “summarising the parallel statements (對) of the Sanron and Yogācāra schools” and emphasises that “the meaning of debate is to extend the lineage: it is not a guide for fault-finding” — paralleling Jízàng’s framing of Sanron dialectic as constructive rather than destructive.
The body of the work itself opens directly with the first topical exposition without further preface.
Abstract
The Daigi shō is the principal early-Heian Japanese Sanron systematic exposition and one of the two or three most important Sanron documents preserved from the Nara-Heian period. Composed by Gen’ei during the period of his Gangō-ji activity (c. 820–840), it is a topical compendium rather than a lemmatic commentary: it gathers the contested points of Sanron doctrine (e.g., the two truths, the eight negations, the four-cornered (catuṣkoṭi) analysis, the doctrine of Buddha-nature) and treats them comparatively with reference to the parallel Hossō and Kegon doctrines.
The work’s principal sources are the twin masterworks of Jí-zàng — Sān-lùn xuán-yì 三論玄義 KR6m0026 and Dà-chéng xuán-lùn 大乘玄論 KR6m0031 — supplemented by quotations from the Indian Mādhyamika literature (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra) and from the broader East-Asian Buddhist tradition. The methodological orientation is dialectical-systematising: Gen’ei does not assume that the reader is studying a particular Jí-zàng text but presupposes general doctrinal interest and provides a comprehensive Sanron-perspective overview.
The work survived only marginally through the Heian and Kamakura periods; its prominence in the Edo period is due to the Gangō-ji preservation tradition and the late-Edo Sanron revival.
Composition window: c. 820–840 (Gen’ei’s documented period of activity at Gangō-ji).
Translations and research
- Robert, Jean-Noël. Les doctrines de l’école japonaise Tendai au début du IXe siècle. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1990. — Contextualises Gen’ei’s work within early-Heian doctrinal scholarship.
- 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. — Treats early-Heian Sanron systematically.
- Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.
Other points of interest
The Daigi shō is one of only a handful of substantial Heian Sanron works to survive. Its preservation owed to the Gangō-ji scholastic tradition; the Edo-era printing — to which the present Kè … xù belongs — brought the work into wider circulation and made it accessible to the Tokugawa Sanron revival of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The work is one of the principal sources for the reconstruction of the early-Heian doctrinal landscape and for the history of Japanese Mādhyamika more generally.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Person Authority (Gen’ei): A000299
- Wikidata (Gen’ei)