Dà zōng dì xuán wén běn lùn lüè zhù 大宗地玄文本論略註
Brief Annotation on the Foundational Treatise of the Great-Source-Ground Profound Text by 楊文會 (Yáng Wénhuì, 略註)
About the work
A four-juǎn late-Qing annotation of the [[KR6o0098|Dà zōngdì xuánwén běn lùn 大宗地玄文本論]] (T1669) by the lay-Buddhist scholar and reformer 楊文會 (Yáng Wénhuì, 1837–1911), founder of the Jīnlíng kèjīngchù 金陵刻經處 (“Nanjing Sūtra Press”). The work is preserved in the Manji-zokuzōkyō 卍續藏經 (X46) and circulated under the imprint of the Jīnlíng kèjīngchù during Yáng’s lifetime. It is one of the principal texts in Yáng’s lay-Buddhist revival programme of the late Qing period.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not record an internal sub-division. The text is divided only by juǎn (1–4).
Abstract
The text opens with a xùshuō 序說 (“introductory discourse”) in which Yáng explains the doctrinal centrality of the “five vajra positions” (金剛五位) of the parent treatise — a doctrinal scheme that, in his view, “encompasses the entire net of Buddhist teaching” and “harmonises the zōng (lineage / Chán) and jiào (doctrine / scholastic) traditions, yǒu (existence / Yogācāra) and kōng (emptiness / Madhyamaka) — for over a thousand years no one has propounded this, and so the supreme subtle teaching has been buried.” Yáng’s Lüèzhù is thus a programmatic revival of a then-marginal apocryphal text as the foundation for his own ecumenical Buddhist synthesis. The work is one of the most striking products of the late-Qing lay-Buddhist intellectual movement, which sought to bypass sectarian divisions and recover what its leaders saw as a unifying core.
楊文會 himself was an exceptional figure: a lay Buddhist of Anhui origin who, after travelling in Europe, established the Jīnlíng kèjīngchù in 1866 to reprint Buddhist texts (especially apocryphal and rare ones) and to provide a platform for modern Buddhist education. He was the principal teacher of 太虛 Tàixū and a major influence on 歐陽竟無 Ōuyáng Jìngwú; through them he shaped twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism decisively. His revival of the Dà zōngdì xuánwén běn lùn and of [[KR6o0078|the Awakening of Faith]] in his teaching curriculum was central to this enterprise.
Translations and research
- Welch, Holmes. The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. — Foundational Western study of the late-Qing revival; treats Yáng extensively.
- Goldfuss, Gabriele. Vers un bouddhisme du XXe siècle: Yang Wenhui (1837–1911), réformateur laïque et imprimeur. Paris: Collège de France, 2001. — Comprehensive monograph.
- Lai, Whalen. “Buddhist Modernism in China: Yáng Wén-huì and the Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda Śāstra.” Journal of Chinese Religions (various). — Treats the doctrinal program.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the few genuinely modern texts in the Buddhist Tripitaka — composed in Yáng’s lifetime, circulated by his own press, and only later canonised in the Manji-zokuzōkyō. Its inclusion alongside texts of the sixth century is characteristic of the open-canon tradition of the Manji-zokuzōkyō itself.