Ēmítuó jīng shūchāo xié 阿彌陀經疏鈔擷
Selected Excerpts from the Shū-chāo on the Smaller Amitābha-sūtra by 徐槐廷 (Xú Huáitíng, 擷)
About the work
A late-Míng one-juǎn abridgement of 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s Shūchāo KR6p0019 by the lay-Buddhist 徐槐廷 Xú Huáitíng, signed without dynastic ascription but datable from internal evidence to the late Wànlì or early Chóngzhēn period. The genre is xié 擷 (“plucking” / “selecting”) — a condensation of the parent four-juǎn commentary into a single accessible juǎn for lay practitioners. The author’s preface frames the work explicitly as a popularising contraction: the Shūchāo is “vast and difficult of access for the common reader, and a brief gathering of its essence is needed for those who lack leisure for sustained study.”
Abstract
The Xié is one of several late-Míng / early-Qīng condensations of the Shūchāo that mark the transition of Zhūhóng’s commentary from a doctrinal classic into a popular devotional resource. Where the Yǎnyì KR6p0022 expands the Shūchāo into a still longer sub-commentary for scholarly use, the Xié compresses it into a portable manual. The selection is principally directed at lay-devotional concerns: the doctrinal status of niànfó as a unifying practice, the meaning of yīxīn bù luàn, the procedure for the daily devotional regime, and the soteriological status of rebirth in the Pure Land. Doctrinal subtleties of the underlying Tiāntái / Chán polemic are largely set aside.
The dating bracket (c. 1620–1644) covers the late-Wàn-lì to late-Míng period; precise composition date is not preserved.
Translations and research
- Yu Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. Columbia UP, 1981.
- Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, 1993 — for the late-Míng lay-devotional context.
No dedicated monograph located.