Sānlùnzōng lànshāng 三論宗濫觴
The Headwaters of the Sanron School by 師行 (撰)
About the work
A very brief single-fascicle Sanron-school lineage and origin narrative, originally compiled as a hōonkō 報恩講 (“repaying-debt assembly”) commemoration of the dharma-debt to the Sanron patriarchs. The title — literally lànshāng 濫觴, the headwaters / source-spring — declares the work’s scope: to trace the Sanron school back to its Indian origins and then forward through China to Japan, treating each transmission as a “tributary” of one river. The work is anonymous in the body of the canon but a transcription note identifies its author as Mor-yuki 師行 (also read Shikō), then in-shu 院主 of the Tōnan-in 東南院 of Tōdaiji, holder of the court rank Ōkurakyō tokugō 大藏卿得業.
Abstract
The text is organised as a continuous narrative of the school’s transmission. It opens with Mañjuśrī 文殊 and Aśvaghoṣa 馬鳴 as the source-realisers of the eightfold negation (bā-bù 八不); Nāgārjuna 龍樹 obtains the Avataṃsaka in the nāga palace and travels through India “raising the torch of the true Dharma”; Āryadeva 提婆 strikes the drum of treatise-debate at the royal court; Bhāviveka 清辨 and Dharmapāla 護法 contest the two extremes of emptiness and existence. The Chinese transmission begins with Kumārajīva 羅什 redirecting Sēng-ruì 僧叡 and Sēng-zhào 僧肇 from Hīnayāna; Liáng Wǔdì subsequently embraces the Mahāyāna and sets aside the Chéngshí school. The text praises the Shèshān 攝嶺 (Shēyong) lineage and the Shǔngshān 山門 (“Gateway-Mountain”) lineage as the two parallel Sanron transmissions in southern China, with Dào-lǎng 道朗 and Fǎ-lǎng 法朗 named as the chief southern patriarchs.
The Japanese transmission begins with Hyegwan 惠灌 (高麗惠灌法師), the Goguryeo monk invited to Japan during the reign of Emperor Kōtoku 孝德 (r. 645–654) — there to “lecture on the Sānlùn, bring sweet rain to the assembly hall, and receive the appointment of Sōjō” 僧正. This is described as “the source of the Buddha-dharma’s arrival, and the wellspring of our school’s diffusion.” The text then names the early Japanese Sanron generation: Dōji 道慈 and Chizō 知藏, “who received the great undertaking from across the sea”; Chikō 智光 and Gangyō 願曉, “who passed on the lingering current to the eastern diffusion”; Gonsō 勤操, Jitsumin 實敏, Genei 玄叡, Anchō 安澄 — the latter being the author of the Chū-ron sho ki KR6m0024. The narrative culminates with Kanri 觀理 daisōzu (d. 1107), described as the immediate transmitter whose disciple’s disciple the author claims to be.
Dating: the latest figure named in the text is Kanri (d. 1107). The author 師行 was in-shu of Tōdaiji Tōnan-in — the Sanron-Shingon institutional center where the works of Chinkai (1092–1152) and the ShōshuKakuchō transmission chain (see KR6t0001, KR6t0002) were preserved. The composition therefore must postdate Kanri and fits the late-Heian to mid-Kamakura compositional window for Tōnan-in Sanron paratexts. notBefore = 1100 (Kanri is named as an in-memoriam patriarch); notAfter = 1300 (a generous outer bound; the transcription text mentions a southern Tōdaiji-Kanon-in collation by Eikun 英訓 of Sanron-shū). The catalog meta gives no author; the transcription note in the text itself identifies 師行 of Tōnan-in.
The work is closely parallel to KR6t0002 Sānlùn xīngyuán by 聖守 and the two texts together form the principal medieval Japanese Sanron lineage corpus. They share much of the same lineage-list (Hyegwan → Dōji → Chizō → Anchō etc.) and probably draw on shared source-material now lost — most likely the lost Chikō den and the Tōnan-in shoshū dōchō documents.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Japanese reference: brief notice in Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Sanron-shū 三論宗 and Tōnan-in 東南院; no critical edition beyond the Taishō.
Other points of interest
This text and KR6t0002 are the two principal medieval Japanese narrative sources for the legend of Hyegwan 惠灌 as the Goguryeo-Japanese founder of Japanese Sanron. The lineage they preserve is the Sanron-internal self-understanding of the late-Heian Tōdaiji school, and as such it is the chief witness — outside chronicle sources like the Genkō shakusho 元亨釋書 — for how the school imagined its own descent.