Wǔdēng yántǒng jiěhuò biān 五燈嚴統解惑編
Resolution of Doubts about the Strict Orthodoxy of the Five Lamps
by 通容 (Tōngróng), self-defence of the Wǔdēng yántǒng 五燈嚴統 (KR6q0019), 1654
About the work
A one-juan polemical pamphlet by 通容 Fèiyǐn Tōngróng defending the lineage re-attributions in his Wǔdēng yántǒng 五燈嚴統 (KR6q0019) against the Cáodòng-line counter-attacks that the Yántǒng had immediately provoked on its 1653 publication. The title — “Resolution of Doubts about the Wǔdēng yántǒng” — frames Tōngróng’s intervention as clarification rather than retreat.
Abstract
Tōngróng works through the disputed lineage attributions one by one, citing earlier sources to justify his decisions in the Yántǒng. The principal Cáodòng-side respondents (為霖 Wèilín et al.) had argued that Tōngróng’s reattributions were Línjì-side pseudo-genealogy; Tōngróng counters that he is merely correcting accreted Cáodòng errors. The polemic is unresolvable on its own terms — both sides could and did adduce earlier-source quotations supporting their position — but the Jiěhuò biān is essential reading alongside the Yántǒng to understand the structure of the controversy.
Translations and research
No English translation. Treated together with the Yántǒng in 吳疆 Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (OUP, 2008).
Other points of interest
The pair Wǔdēng yántǒng + Wǔdēng yántǒng jiěhuò biān together constitute the principal documentation of the mid-seventeenth-century Línjì-Cáodòng lineage dispute as it was conducted in print.