Zhēnyán yào jué, juàn dìyī, dìsān 真言要決卷第一．第三
Essential Decisions on the True Word [Mantra Tradition], Juan 1 and 3 [only] anonymous (Dunhuang manuscript fragments)
About the work
Two-juan-fragments (juan 1 and juan 3) surviving from a longer lost work titled Zhēnyán yào jué 真言要決 (“Essential Decisions on the Zhēnyán / True-Word [Mantra] Tradition”), preserved in the Dunhuang Library Cave and incorporated into the Taishō canon’s gǔyì bù at T85 no. 2825. The original full work was at least three juan (juan 2 is lost); the fragments treat moral-ethical-legal categories and ritual-tantric practices in a manner consistent with late-Táng Esoteric Buddhist instructional literature.
Prefaces
The text has no preserved auto-preface or byline. The juan-1 fragment opens with discussions of the theft category (dào 盜) and karmic-legal infractions: ”… stealing, words of stealing, conduct of stealing, … seeking favor and regulating profit … gathering wealth, the self … disliking persons and loving the self, … the person who covets and is greedy, who lightly seeks ornaments, indulgent and luxurious objects, ornaments of beam-and-roof, releasing intent and indulging feeling. Studying floating words as one’s talent-and-debate. Cultivating clever falsehoods to be one’s wisdom-power. Slighting the poor and lowly, fawning on the rich and noble. Hating the upright and ugly, the rectified — jealous of the good. Protecting the short … ornamenting wrong, refusing remonstrance.”
Abstract
Authorship and date are unrecoverable. The “Zhēn-yán 真言” terminology in the title locates the work firmly within the Esoteric Buddhist tradition (zhēn-yán = mantrayāna), which arose in China through the imperial translation projects of Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏 (637–735), Vajrabodhi 金剛智 (671–741), and Bù-kōng 不空 (705–774). notBefore = 700 (the establishment of Tang-court Esoteric Buddhism); notAfter = 1000 (the standard Dunhuang manuscript bracket).
The juan-1 substance — moral-categorical analysis of conduct under headings like “stealing”, “fawning”, “jealousy” — is closer to a Mahāyāna vinaya-pedagogical treatise than to a strict ritual-mantra manual. The work plausibly belongs to the late-Táng to Five-Dynasties Esoteric–vinaya synthesis in which Esoteric ritual practice was framed within elaborate moral and karmic categorical analysis. Such syntheses are characteristic of the western frontier Buddhism preserved at Dunhuang.
The work is one of the principal Dunhuang witnesses to lost Esoteric instructional literature — works that did not survive in the canonical transmission but constituted significant pastoral resources in the late-Táng / Five-Dynasties Esoteric establishment.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located. See general Dunhuang-manuscript references at KR6s0026. Specific to Dunhuang Esoteric materials:
- Henrik H. Sørensen, Charles D. Orzech, and Richard K. Payne (eds.), Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011) — context for late-Táng Esoteric materials at Dunhuang.
- Dale Saunders, Mudrā: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture (Princeton, 1960) — foundational Esoteric-studies reference.
Other points of interest
The juan-1 / juan-3 transmission pattern — preservation of non-adjacent fragments — is typical of the Dunhuang Library Cave’s miscellaneous-manuscript holdings. The 2-juan extent recorded in the Kanripo catalog meta reflects the present preserved state, not the original full extent of the lost text.