Fǎxiāng dēngmíng jì 法相燈明記
Records of the Lamp-Brightness of the Hossō [School] by 慚安 (集)
About the work
A single-fascicle disputation record by Zen’an 慚安 documenting the doctrinal disagreements between the two principal Japanese Hossō centres of the early Heian period: Gangō-ji 元興寺 (元寺, the “Nan-ji” 南寺 southern-school) and Kōfuku-ji 興福寺 (興寺, the “Hoku-ji” 北寺 northern-school). The author titles the work “the records of [the school’s] lamp-brightness” because his stated aim is to “transmit the two-times-eight (= sixteen) topics to later generations,” presenting on each topic both the yo-ji-gi 餘寺義 (= Kōfuku-ji “other temple” position) and the kaiji-gi 階寺義 (= Gangō-ji “stair temple” position). The work is at once a doxographic record, a disputation primer, and a paratext to the Yuima-e 維摩會 lecture-assembly tradition in Nara.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The terminal colophon explicitly dates and locates the composition: “Recorded at the Yuima-e Assembly of the tenth month of Kōnin 6” (弘仁六年十月維摩會時記). Kōnin 6 = 815 CE. The Yuima-e was the annual Vimalakīrtisūtra lecture-assembly held at Kōfuku-ji beginning in 813 — and Fǎxiāng dēngmíng jì is one of the earliest surviving documents of this institutional setting. The author signs himself “Shamon Zen’an, who has collected the essential positions of the master(s)” (沙門安集本師義), confirming Zen’an as the compiler-redactor rather than the original disputant.
Zen’an (DILA A001623) is otherwise undocumented except through this single canonical attribution. The 815 dating fixes his floruit to the early Heian Yuima-e generation. The notable opening passage of the work — “Since the Unsurpassed Right Dharma flowed east, the years that have elapsed… from the Buddha’s passing in the rénshēn year to Kōnin 6, total 1430 or, by another account, 1767. In our court of Yamato, from the thirteenth year of Hironiwa Tennō (= Emperor Kinmei 欽明, 552 = the year of Buddhism’s official arrival) to Kōnin 6 yi-wei, total 268 years” — is one of the principal early-Heian Buddhist datings of the Japanese chronology, and confirms the author’s awareness of the Sānbǎo gǎntōng lù 三寶感通錄 tradition of Buddhist chronology.
Doctrinal content: the work treats sixteen contested topics, divided into ten on neimíng 內明 (inner-knowledge = doctrine) and six on yīnmíng 因明 (Hetuvidyā = logic):
Inner-knowledge ten: (1) Two-Truths each having four levels; (2) Categorical attribution of ji-zai-yuan-cheng 寄在圓成 within the four-level scheme; (3) Layered ten-distinctions between xin-shou 心受 and xin-suo 心所 (mind and mental functions); (4) Whether the Mind and the Mental Functions are conjoined or separate; (5) Whether the self-essence of the Eight Consciousnesses is identical or distinct; … [and so on].
Hetuvidyā six: (1) The role of yan-yin 眼因 in the liángjiào 量教 (epistemic-teaching) argument; (2) The fājiàn 法見 / fāyīn 法因 distinction; … and the chéngmìng 成名 case. The tāyī 他依 / zìyī 自依 argument from Shun-jǐng 順憬 of Silla — a noted Hetuvidyā master of the post-Wǒnch’ǔk Korean Yogācāra tradition — is invoked explicitly, as is Wénguǐ 文軌 of Tang. The treatment of the juédìng xiāngwéi 決定相違 argument is particularly substantive.
The work is in essence a snapshot of the Yuima-e doctrinal debate culture of 815 and the most important Japanese Hossō document of its decade. The use of the abbreviations kaiji (= Gangō-ji = the Gomyō / Zenju southern tradition) versus yoji (= Kōfuku-ji = the Genbō / Kōfuku-ji northern tradition) is unique to this work; the dispute is the same one that animated Gomyō’s KR6t0005 Yánshén zhāng fifteen years later.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- The text is treated briefly in Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志, and in standard Japanese reference works (s.v. Hossō-shū 法相宗; Yuima-e 維摩會).
- The Korean-tradition logical contributions (Shun-jǐng) are discussed in Hatani Ryōtai 羽溪了諦 and the modern Japanese inmyō literature.
Other points of interest
This is one of the earliest documents anywhere in the Japanese Buddhist canon to record explicitly the doctrinal disagreements between Gangō-ji and Kōfuku-ji — a fault-line that defined Japanese Yogācāra scholasticism through to the Edo period. It is also the earliest surviving canonical text directly tied to the Yuima-e lecture-assembly tradition, and as such a unique witness to the institutional setting in which Nara-Heian Buddhist debate was conducted.