Shì Móhēyǎn lùn yìngjiào chāo 釋摩訶衍論應教鈔
A Responsive-to-Imperial-Edict Digest of the Mahāyāna Commentary by 道範 (Dàofàn / Dōhan, 記)
About the work
A one-fascicle digest of the Shì móhēyǎn lùn KR6o0084 composed in Karoku 2 (嘉祿二年, 1226) by the Kamakura-period Mount Kōya Shingon scholar 道範 (Dōhan, 1178–1252) by command of an imperial-prince patron, on the basis of oral teachings received from his masters 覺海 (Kakukai) and “Zenrin Sōzu” 禪林僧都. Preserved in Taishō vol. 69 (no. 2288). The Japanese title is Shaku Makaen-ron ōkyō shō. The Taishō print bears the catalog-internal number “No.2287” through an editor’s slip (the work is in fact T2288). The catalog metadata correctly identifies the title and author.
Prefaces
The work opens with a table of fifteen koto-topics that structure the exposition: “題目 / 一論大綱之事 / 一題額之事 / 一初二頌之事 / 一今造此論等之事 / 一論別之事 / 一總有一百部之事 / 一建立同一相之事 / 一十藏之事 / 一持其行法隨應不失所以立名曰藏焉也之事 / 一總百洛叉數事 / 一六馬鳴之事 / 一八萬四千四十八種之事…” — fifteen items covering the work’s general structure, title-rubric, opening verses, the “100 śāstras” question, the “10 piṭakas” enumeration, the “six Aśvaghoṣas” question, the “84,048 dharma-gates” enumeration, and so forth.
The authorial signature appears in the colophon at the end of the work: “嘉祿二年正月比依禪定二品大王教命大綱記之 阿闍梨道範 右禀覺海法橋之口説依禪林僧都之指授。顯祕二趣略以抄之。是啻寫箕裘之勢詎敢作膠柱之思 一校了” — “In about the 1st month of Karoku 2 (1226), by the imperial command of the Zenjō Nihon Daiō 禪定二品大王 (the Retired-Emperor Cloistered-prince Second Rank), the general outline was recorded by Ācārya Dōhan 阿闍梨道範. The contents follow the oral teaching of Hokyō (法橋) Kakukai 覺海 with the instructions of Sōzu (僧都) Zenrin 禪林; the exoteric and esoteric aspects are both briefly digested. This is but to imitate the inherited skill of my teachers; how could I dare to act with the stubborn fixity of one who glues the bridge of the lute?”
A second colophon dated Bun’ei 2 (文永二年六月二十四日, 1265) records the copying of the manuscript “於南山三昧壽院” — “at the Mt. Kōya Sanmai Juyū-in [Sanmai-ji 三昧寺]” by 空忍 Kūnin.
Abstract
The Ōkyō shō is the principal early-Kamakura Mount Kōya engagement with the Shakuron and a documentary witness to the institutional structure of post-Kakuban Shingi-Shingon scholastic education. The colophon’s reference to “禪定二品大王教命” — “the imperial-prince command” — most plausibly identifies the patron as Prince Dōkaku 道覚 (1204–1250), a son of Retired Emperor Go-Toba 後鳥羽 who took monastic vows at age 8 and was ordained at Mount Kōya. The patron’s “Karoku 2” (1226) imperial-prince command for Dōhan to digest the Shakuron documents the close patronage relation between the Kōyasan Shingi establishment and the Insei imperial court in the early thirteenth century.
The “ōkyō” 應教 (“responsive to imperial command”) in the title refers to this circumstance. The work’s two-fold kemmitsu hermeneutic — “顯祕二趣略以抄之”, presenting both exoteric and esoteric readings — follows the Kakuban-Shingi paradigm. Dōhan’s distinctive contribution is the citation by name of the oral teaching of two specific senior teachers (Kakukai and Zenrin Sōzu), making the work a documentary record of Kōyasan oral transmission as well as a doctrinal exposition.
Date: Karoku 2.1 (around January–February 1226), explicitly recorded in the authorial colophon.
Translations and research
- Inaya Yūsen 稲谷裕宣. Shingi shingon-shū kyōgaku no kenkyū 新義真言宗教學の研究. Kōyasan: Kōyasan Daigaku, 1978.
- Tsuda Shin’ichi 津田眞一. Dōhan no Mikkyō shisō 道範の密教思想. Tokyo: Hokuju, 2010.
Other points of interest
The dating of the work to Karoku 2 (1226) places it within the period of intense Kōyasan-imperial-court patronage exchanges that immediately preceded Dōhan’s eventual political exile (the Sanuki ruzai 讚岐流罪 of 1242). The patronage of the imperial-prince Dōkaku for Dōhan’s scholarly work documents the political stakes of Shingon doctrinal scholarship in the early-Kamakura court-monastic complex.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Person Authority (Dōhan): A001550