Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn lüèshù 大乘起信論略述
Brief Exposition of the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith by 曇曠 (Tánkuàng, 撰)
About the work
A two-juǎn late-Tang Yogācāra commentary on the Awakening of Faith by 曇曠 Tánkuàng (fl. c. 770–790), a senior Yogācāra scholar of the Cháng’ān Xīmíngsì 西明寺 who in 774 produced a Bǎifǎ míngmén kāizōng yìjué and was active in the Héxī corridor (modern Wǔwēi 武威) propagating the Faxiang school. Recovered through the Dūnhuáng cache and printed in Taishō Vol. 85 (the so-called 古逸部 / 疑似部 — Taishō’s archive of “antique-recovered” and “doubtful” texts).
Structural Division
CANWWW does not register entries in Taishō Vol. 85 in the same form as the canonical volumes; the work cross-references with KR6o0079 (T32n1667), the Śikṣānanda recension of the parent text, with which Tán-kuàng generally works.
Abstract
The text opens with a preface by 沙門澄漪 Chéng-yī (“the monk of Limpid Ripples”) commending Tán-kuàng’s commentary: “Perfect awakening was hidden in obscurity, and heterodox learnings rose like peaks. Without a proper exposition, the Right Dharma would have been distorted. Therefore the great being Aśvaghoṣa expounded paramārtha-satya, drawing together the various śāstras and binding the multiple sūtras, breaking the two extremes and harmonizing the Middle Way, composing this treatise to encourage future ages.” The preface continues: “There is a monk, Tán-kuàng of Jiàn-kāng [region], young and fond of learning, mature and accomplished in virtue, profound in his comprehension of the meaning…”
Tán-kuàng’s commentary takes up the Awakening of Faith from a Yogācāra-school standpoint: he has a strong interest in the relation between the ālayavijñāna / Tathāgatagarbha identification, in line with his Xī-míng-sì training under the line of 圓測 Yuán-cè. The text was unknown in mainstream East Asian Buddhism for centuries, surviving only in the Dūnhuáng cache; it has therefore not entered the canonical commentarial dialogue developed by 法藏 and 子璿. Composition is bracketed by Tán-kuàng’s documented activity period 770–800.
The Taishō establishes the text from the Dūnhuáng manuscript witnesses, base 高麗 absent, collated against the Dūnhuáng 甲 manuscript variants.
Translations and research
- Ueyama Daishun 上山大峻. Tonkō bukkyō no kenkyū 敦煌佛教の研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1990. — The standard study of the Dūnhuáng Yogācāra corpus, including Tán-kuàng’s works.
- Ueyama Daishun. “Donkō no kenkyū” 曇曠の研究 [Studies on Tán-kuàng]. Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 (Kyoto) 35 (1964): 141–214. Continued in 36 (1964): 191–262. — Foundational source for the Tán-kuàng corpus.
- Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. Daijō kishin-ron no kenkyū 大乘起信論之研究. Tōkyō, 1922.
Other points of interest
The recovery of Tánkuàng’s Awakening of Faith commentary from the Dūnhuáng cache provided a rare witness to the late-Tang Héxī Yogācāra reception of the Qǐxìn lùn — a strand of the Buddhist commentarial tradition that did not survive into mainstream Chinese transmission and thus does not feed into the standard Sòng and later commentarial dialogue.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Tánkuàng): A001803