Sānlùnzōng chūxīn chūxué chāo 三論宗初心初學鈔
Beginner’s Manual for the Sanron School by 實慶 (草)
About the work
A single-fascicle introductory primer for first-time students of the Sanron school, drafted by Jikkei 實慶, ājari 阿闍梨 of the Sonkō-in 尊光院 sub-temple of Tōdaiji 東大寺 Shingon-in in the early-to-mid Edo period. The work opens with the go-ji kyōhan 五時教判 (the standard “five-period teaching-classification” — Avataṃsaka, Āgamas, Mahāyāna vaipulya, Prajñāpāramitā, Lotus / Nirvāṇa) and then turns inward to the Sanron school’s distinctive doctrinal apparatus: the four assemblies (sì-huì 四會), the eight negations (bā-bù 八不), the two truths (èr-dì 二諦), the four kinds of conventional and ultimate truth (sì jiǎ 四假), with examples drawn from the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra 大智度論, Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā 中論, Dvādaśa-dvāra-śāstra 十二門論, and Śata-śāstra 百論. The text is conspicuously elementary in tone — its target audience is the novice — and it survives as the only Edo-period work of basic Sanron pedagogy in the canon.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The terminal colophon, dated Jōkyō 2 = 1685 (貞享二年六月二十八日), records that the work was copied at the South-One Cell (南一室) of Tōdaiji Shingon-in by an unnamed copyist, and identifies the source as “the draft (草) of Tōdaiji’s Sonkō-in ājari Jikkei” — confirming Jikkei as the author and the surviving text as a copy of his manuscript draft. Two further copyings are recorded: Genroku 5 (元祿五壬申, = 1692) by Shōken 性憲 of Ryōga-in (楞伽院); and Bunka 8 (文化八年, = 1811) by Ryūei 隆映 of Sonkō-in, who copied “from the autograph manuscript of Ritsu-shi Jūkei 重慶” (a previous transmitter). The chain is: Jikkei (composition) → Jūkei (律師, “Vinaya-master”) → Shōken (1692) → Ryūei (1811) → Taishō.
Jikkei is documented in DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001614 only by this single attribution. The colophons place him at Tōdaiji’s Shingon-in / Sonkō-in in the mid-17th century. He cannot be precisely dated, but the latest terminus ante quem — the 1685 copy by an external hand — and the still-active draft state of the work at that point suggest a composition in the second-third quarter of the 17th century. The bracket notBefore = 1620, notAfter = 1685 is conservative.
Doctrinal content: the text is structured as a five-period teaching narrative — beginning, in unusually crisp prose, with the Buddha’s Avataṃsaka preaching in the second week after enlightenment, then proceeding to the Deer-Park Āgama preaching as a vyavahāra concession to the inferior capacities of the śrāvakas, the Tipitaka / Tridharma (sūtra-vinaya-abhidharma) preserved at the First Council, and so on. The sì jiǎ 四假 (four conventionalities) framework — derived from Jí-zàng’s Èr-dì zhāng 二諦章 and from Chinkai’s Sān-lùn míng-jiào chāo (KR6t0001) — receives a remarkably explicit elementary treatment, anchored to the four foundational Sanron treatises: the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra gets suí-yuán jiǎ + yīn-yuán jiǎ (because it is “broad in healing the disease and slow in expounding the principle”); the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā and the Dvādaśa-dvāra-śāstra get yīn-yuán jiǎ and jiù-yuán jiǎ respectively (because they are “weak in healing the disease but strong in expounding the principle”); the Śata-śāstra is duì-yuán jiǎ — “directly opposing the opponent.” This is one of the clearest surviving elementary expositions of the Sanron sì jiǎ doctrine.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- The text has not been the subject of a critical edition beyond the Taishō. Modern Japanese reference: brief notice in Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Jikkei 實慶 and Sonkō-in 尊光院.
Other points of interest
The text is a unique witness to the Edo-period Tōdaiji Sanron tradition — a small late-medieval Sanron-Shingon revivalist current centered on the Shingon-in’s Sonkō-in sub-temple at Tōdaiji. The Edo Sanron school is otherwise extremely poorly attested in the Taishō canon, and Sānlùnzōng chūxīn chūxué chāo is essentially its only surviving introductory primer, transmitted into the 19th century through the JūkeiShōkenRyūei chain.
Links
- CBETA: T70n2308
- DILA authority: A001614 (實慶)