三論興緣

Sānlùn xīngyuán 三論興緣

Origins of the Sanron School by 聖守 (撰)

About the work

A short single-fascicle Sanron-school lineage and origin narrative by the late-Kamakura Tōdaiji Shingon-Sanron monk Shōshu 聖守. The text is organised in eight gates (略有八門): (1) the original cause-and-condition (xīng-yuán 興緣) of the Sanron school; (2) the cause-and-effect of the Buddha; (3) the council of the Dharma; (4) the schools of the Buddhist tradition; (5) the establishment of the school; (6) the differentiation from other schools; (7) doctrinal exposition; (8) entry into the Way. Despite its modest extent, the work is one of the more substantive medieval Japanese accounts of the Sanron school’s origin-myth and lineage, ranging from the Buddha’s life, the Indian Mādhyamika patriarchs (Mañjuśrī, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva), through Kumārajīva’s Sì-lùn translations under Yáo Xìng of the Later Qín, the Liang-dynasty controversy that supposedly displaced the Chéngshí school in favour of the Sān-lùn, the rise of the Shèshān 攝山 (“Shēyong” / Shē Mountain) tradition with Sēng-zhào 僧肇, Sēng-ruì 僧叡, Dào-lǎng 道朗, Fǎ-lǎng 法朗, down to the Korean monk Hyegwan 惠灌 who transmitted the school to Japan in the reign of Emperor Kōtoku 孝德 (r. 645–654).

Abstract

Authorship and dating: The colophon signs the author as “Tōdaiji Shingon-in śramaṇa, [holder of] Esoteric Vinaya plus Sanron, Shōshu, sixty-two years of age” (東大寺眞言院密律兼三論沙門聖守春秋六十二). This places Shōshu as a Tōdaiji Shingon-in bikkhu of the late Kamakura period, simultaneously trained in Esoteric Vinaya (密律) and Sanron — a typical late-medieval Nara composite specialisation. A separate notation immediately following records that the Kenji 建治 2 (= 1276) second-month twelfth-day copy was made “at the New Zen-in, by another’s hand, finished” (於新禪院命他人書寫畢), with the copyist named Ryōnen 亮然, Shingon-in jūryo (Shingon-in resident), in his twelfth summer of monastic standing. A still-later 17th-century recopy is dated Jōkyō 4 = 1687.

The 1276 transcription colophon implies the original composition was complete by that date; combined with the author’s recorded age of sixty-two, this places Shōshu’s birth around the 1210s. DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001480 records Shōshu only by way of this single canonical attribution; Wikidata Q11610972 is the corresponding minimal entry. No more precise composition date is recoverable; the bracket notBefore = 1230, notAfter = 1276 reflects Shōshu’s mature scholarly career.

Historiographic content: the text’s narrative is one of the principal medieval-Japanese sources for the legend of Hyegwan 惠灌 (Korean: Hyegwan, 高麗朗法師 ← Goguryeo monk Lǎng/Rāng) as the founder of Japanese Sanron, his arrival during Emperor Kōtoku, his promotion to Sōjō 僧正, his calling on the rains during a Sanron lecture-assembly. Shōshu also lists the second-generation Japanese Sanron heritage: Dōji 道慈 (the Nanto Sanron patriarch, in KR6t0003 also), Chizō 知藏, Chikō 智光 (author of the Sanron sōshō 三論宗章), Gangyō 願曉, Gonsō 勤操, Jitsumin 實敏, Genei 玄叡, and Anchō 安澄 (the Chū-ron sho ki author at KR6m0024). The text closes with reference to a contemporary or near-contemporary teacher Kanri 觀理 daisōzu (d. 1107), suggesting that Shōshu places himself in a lineage extending from Kanri.

The work is in many places a paraphrase of (or contains common-source material with) the next Taishō text, Sānlùnzōng lànshāng KR6t0003 (T70n2307B) — a parallel and probably overlapping treatment of the same lineage material. Both should be read together as the principal medieval Japanese Sanron-lineage corpus.

Translations and research

• No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
• The text is occasionally cited in modern Japanese Sanron-school histories — for instance in Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨, Bukkyō daijiten 仏教大辞典, s.v. Shōshu 聖守 and Sanron-shū 三論宗 — but has not been the subject of a critical edition beyond the Taishō.

Other points of interest

The work documents the late-13th-century Shingon-Sanron synthesis at Tōdaiji — its author was a fully-credentialed practitioner of Esoteric ritual (密), of the vinaya (律), and of the Sanron school simultaneously, a triple identity that captures the doctrinal accommodation under which Sanron survived past the rise of Tendai and Shingon and into the Kamakura. The Tōdaiji Shingon-in is the same institutional milieu in which KR6t0001 Sānlùn míngjiào chāo by 珍海 was preserved and recopied.

Links

• CBETA: T70n2307A
• DILA authority: A001480 (聖守)
• Wikidata: Q11610972
• Closely related companion text: KR6t0003 Sānlùnzōng lànshāng 三論宗濫觴.