Jiàoshèng fǎshù (xuǎnlù xùwén) 教乘法數（選錄序文）
The Numerical Categories of the Teaching-Vehicle (Selected Prefatory Material Only) by 圓瀞 (集)
About the work
The Kanripo entry KR6s0008 is only the prefatory matter (序文) of the larger Jiàoshèng fǎshù 教乘法數, a Tiāntái-aligned Buddhist numerical-list lexicon by Yuánjìng 圓瀞 (style Xīnyuán 心源), then serving as Sēnglùsī yòu shànshì 僧錄司右善世 (Right Doctrinal Rectifier of the Monastic Registry) under the Xuāndé 宣德 court of the Míng. The full work, completed and printed in Xuāndé 6 (1431), is preserved separately in the Jiāxīng canon (J8) as a forty-juan compilation; the present KR6s0008 = P189 no. 1630 carries only the two prefaces from that printing, which is why the catalog meta marks the extent as 1 juan and the title as 教乘法數（選錄序文）.
Prefaces
The local source preserves two prefaces, both dated Xuāndé 6 = 1431 — together they fix the work’s dating and provide its self-positioning within the Míng fǎshù tradition.
(1) Preface by Dàoxiá 道遐 of the Jiāngzuǒ region, then xíngzài (court-in-residence) Sēnglùsī yòu jiǎngjīng 僧錄司右講經 (Right Sutra-Lecturer of the Monastic Registry), dated Xuāndé 6, 9th day of the 9th month (autumn) = late September 1431. In paraphrase:
The texts of the jīng / lǜ / lùn canons are clear and broad — easily exceeding several thousand-hundred juan in number. Tracing branch-back-to-root, gathering fruit and embracing cause, nature and characteristic differing in path, and what they signify is not one — each has its key, not easily searched throughout. Therefore the great-masters of former generations raised their outline and abridged their essentials, gathering and condensing them into books titled Zàngshèng fǎshù 藏乘法數, that the reader might from this gain the great outline of the various lineages’ destination and tendency. After it had circulated for a long time, there was one who studied for the Xiánshǒu 賢首 [Huáyán] school, Qiánxī Shēngōng 潛溪深公, who again increased and corrected, supplementing what was incomplete, and that too has been distributed in the four quarters. Yet of these two, the diligence of intent is fine indeed; but it is to be regretted that there are still many remaining gaps, and so those engaged with the manuscript-volume cannot avoid the lament of facing the text.
Now the Sēng-lù-sī yòu shàn-shì Xīn-yuán Jìng-gōng fǎ-shī 僧錄司右善世心源瀞公法師 [Yuán-jìng] has refined his study of the teaching-divisions and broadly assembled the various texts. In the moments between his lectures he has burned the lamp continuing the daylight, not abandoning an inch of time. Whatever is in the inner [Buddhist] canon, with side-reach to the hundred schools, he has all gathered and excerpted, with detailed correction added — continuing-and-entering, classifying and arranging it — separating it into twelve juan, inscribed Jiào-shèng fǎ-shù. About to commit it to woodblocks to broaden its transmission, he showed it to me, asking that I write a preface for the head of the volume…. The wonder of the upper-and-lower arrangement, the rightness of before-and-after sequence — luminous and clear, ranked-and-orderly — compared to the old version it is truly multiplied many-fold, neither tangled nor cluttered. Beginning with the One Mind 一心 and ending with the eighty-four-thousand dharma-gates 八萬四千法門 — the gates being combined to general-and-particular, the resemblances and differences of the names — without exhausting investigation, lucidly before the eyes; like a clear mirror set on a stand, like still water and cintāmaṇi-jewel — large or small object’s traces nowhere escape.
Time: Xuāndé 6, the year jìhài, autumn 9th month 9th day. Sēnglùsī yòu jiǎngjīng, Jiāngzuǒ Dàoxiá, prefaced.
(2) Self-preface by Yuánjìng, dated Xuāndé xīnhài 宣德辛亥 (= Xuāndé 6, 1431), 2nd month, 9th day, written at his lodgings at Qìngshòusì 慶壽寺 in the Sōngyīn 松陰 [Pine-shadow Hall]. In paraphrase:
Of the great canon-teaching that our Buddha spoke, and the lineage-masters’ interpreting commentaries — the names, characteristics, and numbered amounts among them are vast as the sea, and learners cannot easily fathom their shores. Of old there was one who made the Zàngshèng fǎshù, essentials but too sparse; later Shēngōng 深公 again continued it, calling it Xiánshǒu fǎshù 賢首法數. Reading them between lectures, I could not avoid seeing the broad and the brief differences between the two.
I, Yuánjìng, in early years roamed at Tiānzhúsì 天竺寺 [in Hángzhōu] and from the late master Yǔwēng 雨翁 received instruction in the Tiāntái teaching. Then on commission to Chánggān [Chánggānsì in Nánjīng], in the spaces between residence I obtained the chance to leaf and search the sutra-teachings, gathering the names and numbers — through the cold and heat the manuscript only began to take form. Now I receive dāna gifts to commit it to print and circulate it. Those who study Buddhism, on viewing it, may thereby in some part repay the August Dynasty’s grace of exalting the teaching, and may also have a small assistance in advancing their cultivation.
At that time: Xuāndé xīnhài, 2nd month, 9th day. Lodging at Qìngshòusì, the Pine-shadow Hall, prefaced.
Abstract
Authorship and date are unambiguously fixed by the two 1431 prefaces. Yuánjìng 圓瀞 (DILA A001412; lay style Xīnyuán 心源 / Xīnyuán Jìng 心源瀞 / Xīnyuán Yuánjìng 心源圓瀞; native of Kuàijī 會稽 in Zhèjiāng; birth and death dates not preserved) was a dharma-heir of Nánzhōu Pǔqià 南洲溥洽 (1346–1426), a leading early-Míng Tiāntái master. He studied first at Tiānzhúsì 天竺寺 in Hángzhōu under the Tiāntái master Yǔwēng 雨翁, then was assigned to the imperial monastery Chánggānsì 長干寺 in Nánjīng. Under Xuānzōng 宣宗 he was appointed Sēnglùsī yòu shànshì 僧錄司右善世 (Right Doctrinal Rectifier of the imperial Monastic Registry), one of the senior posts of the early-Míng monastic bureaucracy.
Composition spanned from his Chánggān residency (early reign of Xuānzōng, beginning Xuāndé 1 = 1426) through manuscript-completion in Xuāndé 6 (1431). notBefore = 1426, notAfter = 1431.
Yuánjìng’s preface positions the work explicitly against two predecessors:
- Zàngshèng fǎshù 藏乘法數 — an earlier (Yuán?) compilation, “essentials but too sparse”
- Xiánshǒu fǎshù 賢首法數 by Qiánxī Shēngōng 潛溪深公 — a Huá-yán-school expansion, still with gaps
— and presents the Jiàoshèng fǎshù as the corrected, expanded, twelve-juan synthesis. The 1431 first printing (preserved here in the Northern Yǒnglè canon’s xùzàng P1630, prefatory selection only) was structured in 12 juan, ordered from the One Mind to the eighty-four-thousand dharma-gates. The DILA Bǔxù gāosēng zhuàn tradition records a later expansion to 40 juan, which is the form preserved in the Jiāxīng canon (J8). In genre and structural intent the work is the immediate Tiāntái-school counterpart to the contemporaneous (1419) Yǒnglè-imperial DàMíng sānzàng fǎshù (KR6s0007) of the Tiāntái master Yīrú — both works arranging Buddhist numerical categories from “one” upward, and both standing in the line of SòngYuán fǎshù compilation that this Míng pair brought to its mature form.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located. The work’s standard mention is in:
- Bǔ xù gāo-sēng zhuàn 補續高僧傳, j. 25 (X77n1524_p0528b14) Nán-zhōu Pǔ-qià zhuàn — the immediate hagiographical context.
- Tiān-tāi-shān fāng-wài zhì 天台山方外志, j. 7.
- Shì-jiàn jī-gǔ luè xù-jí 釋鑑稽古略續集, j. 3.
- Fó-guāng dà cí-diǎn 佛光大辭典, p. 3874.1.
The full forty-juan recension of the Jiào-shèng fǎ-shù is in the Jiāxīng canon at J8 (separately catalogued elsewhere in the Kanripo collection if at all).
Other points of interest
KR6s0008 is one of the small handful of Kanripo entries that consist only of prefatory material — a digitization-side decision driven by the structure of the Northern Yǒnglè canon’s separate cataloging of the prefaces (P1630) versus the main text. The two 1431 prefaces are nonetheless an unusually full self-positioning of an early-Míng fǎshù compilation against its predecessors and a primary witness to the Sēnglùsī monastic-bureau’s early-Míng scholarly activity.
Links
- DILA authority: A001412 (圓瀞)
- CBETA: P189n1630
- Companion fǎshù compilation: KR6s0007 Dà Míng sānzàng fǎshù (Yǒnglè 17 = 1419, by Yīrú)
- Author’s teacher-line: Nánzhōu Pǔqià 南洲溥洽 (1346–1426)