Èrjuàn chāo 二卷鈔
The Two-Fascicle Manual by 良遍 (草)
About the work
A two-fascicle Japanese-vernacular Yogācāra primer by Ryōhen 良遍 (1194–1252), and the most distinctive single work of his Hossō trilogy. Unlike his other two summae (the kanbun Guānxīn juémèng chāo KR6t0008 and Zhēnxīn yàojué KR6t0009), the Èrjuàn chāo is written in kana-mixed Japanese vernacular (katakana-majiri-bun カタカナ交じり文) — Ryōhen specifically uses it to make Yogācāra accessible to a Japanese audience outside the kanbun-trained sectarian elite. The work’s two fascicles cover the standard Hossō topical sequence: consciousness-only 唯識, three natures 三性, hundred dharmas 百法, four conditions 四縁, four divisions 四分, seeds 種子, five gotras 五性, karma and fruition 作業受果, and the five stages of practice 五位ノ修行. The colophon explicitly identifies the work as Ryōhen’s own 草 (draft).
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The author’s signature in the colophon — “Hossōshū Shamon Ryōhen sō” 法相宗沙門良遍草 (“Hossō-school monk Ryōhen, drafted”) — unambiguously attributes the work. Ryōhen (DILA A000541; Wikidata Q11614433) was born 1194 and died 1252. notBefore = 1230, notAfter = 1252.
Doctrinal content: the opening sets out the master-thesis of all Hossō doctrine in Ryōhen’s characteristic plain Japanese: “According to our school’s intention, in establishing the doctrine, the doctrinal categories are diverse. For now, considering yuishiki, sanjō, hyappō, shien, shibun, shuji, goshō, sagō juka, and gōji no shugyō, I have noted them down for you.” He then declares the central thesis: “All the various dharmas are not separate from my mind. The great oceans, rivers, Mount Sumeru and the iron-mountain ranges; the unfamiliar lands of other worlds, pure lands and bodhi; even the wondrous principle of the one-real-suchness — all are within my mind. Still less can the head, hands, feet, robes, and food of my own body be otherwise! To imagine that any of these are outside the mind is delusion. Through this delusion, beings from beginningless time have transmigrated in birth-and-death.”
This vernacular formulation is one of the most influential passages in the medieval Japanese Hossō tradition — much-cited in later Hossō-school primers and in the medieval Buddhist setsuwa tradition. The work’s pedagogical accessibility made it the principal medieval introduction to Hossō for non-sectarian readers, complementing Ryōhen’s two more technical kanbun trilogy-volumes.
The closing fascicle treats the three Buddha-bodies (sān-shēn 三身) — Vairocana 毘盧舍那 as dharmakāya, Lochana 盧舍那 as saṃbhogakāya, Śākyamuni 釋迦牟尼 as nirmāṇakāya — and concludes with a meditation on the three immeasurable kalpas of practice that, “in the moment of awakening, is gathered into a single instant” (覺ノ前ニハ是ヲ一刹那ニ收ム). This formulation — three immeasurable kalpas = one moment of mind — is one of Ryōhen’s principal contributions to the medieval Japanese theology of the Yogācāra path.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- The work is recognised in modern Japanese Buddhist studies as one of the principal vernacular-Buddhist primers of the early Kamakura — comparable in pedagogical importance to Hōnen’s Senchaku-shū and Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō zuimonki — but addressed to a Hossō rather than a Pure Land or Sōtō Zen audience.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — standard reference.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Ryōhen 良遍 and Nikan-shō 二卷鈔.
Other points of interest
This is one of the most important early-Kamakura vernacular Buddhist texts, and the only work in the entire KR6t Hossō corpus that is written principally in Japanese rather than kanbun. Its placement at the head of the medieval-Japanese Hossō pedagogical tradition (alongside the kanbun works of the trilogy) makes it a unique witness to the Kamakura impulse toward doctrinal vernacularisation even within the Nara conservative establishment.