Dàchéng fǎxiāng yánshén zhāng 大乘法相研神章
Mahāyāna Hossō Treatise on the Investigation of the Numinous by 護命 (撰)
About the work
A five-fascicle imperially-commissioned Hossō 法相 (Yogācāra) systematic doctrinal compendium, presented to the Heian court by Gomyō 護命 (750–834), the Sōjō 僧正 of Gangō-ji 元興寺 and patriarch of the Japanese Hossō school. The work was composed in the Tenchō 7 (= 830) imperial commission requiring all schools to “submit their doctrinal essentials” (令上宗要) to the court — Gomyō was at that time eighty years old, and Dàchéng fǎxiāng yánshén zhāng is his canonical reply on behalf of the Hossō school. The title yánshén 研神 — literally “polishing the numinous” — declares the work’s contemplative-philosophical aim: to “investigate the spiritual essence” by means of the Yogācāra doctrinal apparatus. It is the principal early-Heian Japanese Hossō summa, and a fundamental witness to how the Cí’ēn-school doctrine was transmitted, organised, and presented within the Japanese context two generations after Genbō 玄昉 brought it back from Táng China.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The preface, dated Tenchō 7 (天長七年). The branch year gēngxū 庚戌. The month jiànsì 建巳 (4th lunar month) = May–June 830 CE, opens with a meditation on the three realms and nine grounds as a “dwelling of sentient minds” and laments the binding power of the six robbers (sense-objects) and the three poisons. Gomyō then explains the work’s compositional occasion: “Now my sage dynasty has issued a general edict to the temples commanding them to submit their doctrinal essentials. I, Gomyō, having fortunately encountered this flourishing time, have long passed within the way of the religious life. My years are eighty. My form and spirit are aged. Yet I personally received the imperial edict, and joyfully open my empty heart and respectfully present Investigation of the Numinous on the Phenomenal Categories of the Mahāyāna, in five fascicles.” He then explicitly dates and signs the preface as above.
This is the most explicit dating in the entire Japanese Hossō canonical corpus. notBefore = 830, notAfter = 830. The author Gomyō (DILA A001962; Wikidata Q11367385) is securely dated by Japanese ecclesiastical records: born 750, died 834, making him eighty at the time of composition (consistent with the preface). He was a native of Yamato and the foremost early Heian Hossō patriarch, simultaneously Sōjō and head abbot of Gangō-ji 元興寺 — the temple at which the south-school Hossō (Nan-ji 南寺) doctrinal tradition was centred, in contradistinction to the Kōfuku-ji 興福寺 north-school (Hoku-ji 北寺) tradition that crystallised somewhat later.
Doctrinal content: the five fascicles are organised as a question-and-answer compendium (wèndá 問答) on the principal Yogācāra doctrinal categories — the bāshí 八識 (eight consciousnesses), the sānxìng / sānwúxìng (three natures / three non-natures), the bǎifǎ (hundred categories of dharmas), the zhǒngzǐ xūnxí (seeds and perfuming theory), the wǔxìng gèbié 五性各別 (five distinct types of gotra — the Hossō school’s most controversial doctrine on the existence of beings without the capacity for buddhahood), and the pánluómì (pāramitās) and pútí xīn (bodhicitta) treatments. The treatment is consciously synthetic, drawing on Kuījī’s 窺基 Chéng wéishí lùn shùjì KR6n0026, Huìzhāo’s 慧沼 Liǎoyì dēng KR6n0030, and Zhìzhōu’s 智周 Yǎnmì chāo — the standard Tang Cí’ēn commentarial triad. The closing fascicle treats the bǎifǎ míngmù 百四十法 (140 categories of dharmas) and concludes with a verse of dedication: “I have briefly praised this as best I could; my common mind has not understood the [doctrinal] principle. I dedicate it to our sovereign, that he may reign for a thousand generations.”
A subsequent transmission colophon dated Hōreki 5 (寶曆五) = 1755, sixth month, fifteenth day, records that the five fascicles had been preserved at the Shingon-shū Kangaku-in 眞言一宗勸學院 by Sōjō Kenga 賢賀 (then aged seventy-two), who restored the worm-damaged volumes with the help of his disciple Kakue 覺慧 and dedicated the restoration to the memory of “the Vinaya-master Hōritsu” 寶律師.
Translations and research
- Kashiwabara Yūsen 柏原祐泉 and others, Hossō-shū no kenkyū 法相宗の研究 — surveys the work’s place in the early Heian Hossō tradition.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — standard reference.
- The text appears in the standard Japanese Hossō-school kōsho literature and in Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Gomyō 護命; Daijō hossō kenjin shō 大乘法相硏神章.
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. The text has not been translated into a Western language.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the earliest and most important witnesses to the Nara-Heian Hossō school’s internal doctrinal organisation. Together with KR6t0013 Fǎyuàn yìjìng 法苑義鏡 by Zenju 善珠 (724–797) — slightly earlier in date but partly responding to a different Cí’ēn-Korean-tradition input — Gomyō’s Yánshén zhāng is the principal early-Japanese Hossō summa. It is also a witness to the imperial commission of 830 under Emperor Junna 淳和 to the major Nara schools to submit their shūyō 宗要 — the same commission that produced the parallel Sanron, Kegon, and Ritsu replies.