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 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 the Awakening of Faith in his teaching curriculum was central to this enterprise.
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- 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.