Zhìzhě dàshī biézhuàn zhù 智者大師別傳註
Annotated [Edition of the] Separate Biography of the Great Master Zhì-zhě [= Zhì-yǐ]
annotated by 曇照 (Tánzhào / Sìmíng Tánzhào, fl. mid-Northern Sòng, 註)
About the work
A 2-juan SòngTiāntāi annotated commentary on the Suí Tiāntāi Zhìzhě dàshī biézhuàn 隋天臺智者大師別傳 (KR6r0085, T2050) — the canonical biography of 智顗 Zhìyǐ (538–597) composed by his senior disciple Guàndǐng 灌頂 (561–632). The commentary is the standard SòngTiāntāi exegesis of the school’s foundation-narrative and gives line-by-line annotation of Guàndǐng’s biography on the model of the contemporary Sòng jízhù 集註 commentary form. Composition is dated to the period of the Sìmíng / Shānjiā Tiāntāi revival under Sìmíng Zhīlǐ (960–1028) and his successors; the bracket 1010–1080 represents the most defensible window.
Abstract
Tánzhào’s commentary opens by explaining the title-elements: “Tiāntāi” is the place-name (the mountain in modern Zhèjiāng); “dàshī” the honorific; “biézhuàn” the “separate biography” — distinguished from the multi-life gāosēng zhuàn of KR6r0053 (Dàoxuān’s Xù gāosēng zhuàn) by being a single-subject biography in the xíngzhuàng 行狀 tradition. He notes that there are four early biographies of Zhìyǐ from his immediate disciples — by Guàndǐng (the present); by Fǎlùn 法論 of Yùquánsì 玉泉寺; by Zhìguǒ 智果 of Kuàijī 會稽; and by Fǎlín 法琳 of Lóngtiánsì 龍田寺 on Zhōngnánshān — of which only Guàndǐng’s survives. This early-biography prosopography is itself the principal source for the documentary tradition surrounding Zhìyǐ.
The commentary then proceeds with a verse-by-verse, phrase-by-phrase annotation: explaining proper names, identifying scriptural citations, glossing technical Tiāntāi terminology, and supplying secondary-historical material from secular sources (Cuī Bào 崔豹’s Gǔjīn zhù 古今註 is cited at the head, in Tánzhào’s gloss on the term zhuàn 傳 itself). The commentary integrates Guàndǐng’s narrative with the broader SòngTiāntāi understanding of Zhìyǐ’s biography as the founding event of the school, and is a principal source for how Northern-Sòng Tiāntāi understood its own origins.
The text was preserved through Sìmíng / Tiāntāishān manuscript-tradition and printed only in the late Míng. The Manji Xuzangjing (X77 no. 1535) is the standard print witness. There is no Sòng-period print, and the work is not included in the canonical Sòng-Yuán-Míng-Korean recensions.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located. The work is technical Tiāntāi exegesis and has not received independent monographic treatment.
- 池田魯參 (Ikeda Rosan), 《摩訶止觀の研究》 (Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1986) — discusses the Sòng commentarial tradition that includes Tán-zhào.
- 王雷泉, various articles on Sòng-Tiāntāi historiography and Sì-míng / Shān-jiā lineage texts.
Other points of interest
The commentary is one of the few extant Sòng commentaries on a biographical text within the Buddhist canon, and as such testifies to the Tiāntāi school’s elevated status of its foundation-biography to a quasi-canonical position warranting the same scholastic exegetical treatment as Zhìyǐ’s own doctrinal works. It is methodologically parallel to the commentaries on Confucian xíngzhuàng and xùzhuàn literature being produced in the same period at the Sòng court.
Links
- CBETA: X77n1535