Hossōshū xiánshèng yì lüè wèndá juàn dìsì 法相宗賢聖義略問答卷第四
Brief Questions and Answers on the Hossō School’s Doctrine of the Worthies and Sages, Fourth Fascicle by 仲算 (撰)
About the work
A single surviving fascicle — the fourth — of a longer Hossō debate-record by the famous late-Heian Kōfuku-ji Yuima-e champion Chūzan 仲算 (935–976), originally a multi-fascicle treatise on the Yogācāra doctrine of the worthies and sages (xiánshèng 賢聖, the hierarchy of Buddhist religious attainment). The work is organised in ten gates:
- shìmíng 釋名 (explanation of names);
- chūtǐ 出體 (presentation of essence);
- zhāngzēngjiǎn 彰増減 (showing increase and decrease);
- fèilì 廢立 (abrogating and establishing);
- dé-wén-shēn-dì 得文身地 (attaining the stages of literary-corpus / kāyādhiṣṭhāna);
- zhūbù bùtóng 諸部不同 (the differences among the various schools);
- xiǎndé dùnjiàn 顯得頓漸 (showing sudden vs. gradual attainment);
- jìntuì chābié 進退差別 (the distinctions of progress and regression);
- yìmén liàojiǎn 義門料簡 (the consideration of doctrinal gates);
- shì zhū fángnàn 釋諸妨難 (resolving the various objections).
The first five gates were in the earlier fascicles (now lost); the present surviving fascicle treats gates 6–10. The “spoiling-objections” (fángnàn) section at the end is the most distinctive part of the work, treating seven objections to the name-explanation gate (1), one objection each to gates 2–8, and ten objections to the doctrinal-gate-consideration (gate 9). The work is a snapshot of the Yuima-e debate tradition at its highest level.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The author Chūzan 仲算 (935–976; DILA A000314; Wikidata Q11378586) was the dominant Yuima-e debater of his generation and is associated with the Kōfuku-ji tradition. His dates are securely fixed in the Japanese ecclesiastical record. The composition of Xiánshèng yì lüè wèndá falls within his mature scholarly career: notBefore = 960, notAfter = 976 (his death).
The terminal colophon, however, is remarkably explicit about transmission: “The above is copied from the autograph manuscript of the venerable Chūzan. The manuscript was in cursive characters, with some places worn away and unreadable; I have therefore added marginal notes indicating my doubts where the reading is uncertain. May later students supply the corrections.” The colophon then gives the lineage: the working manuscript was that of Seishi-shitei 清水森宗理居士 (a layman of Shimo-Shimizu, presumably a private collector who held the manuscript outside the temple sphere) of the South Capital (Nanto = Nara). The collation was dated 元録六天暦次癸酉臘月下旬 — Genroku 6 = 1693 CE, late twelfth month. This is the date of the surviving 17th-century transmission, not the work itself.
Doctrinal content: gate 6 (the “differences among the various schools”) explicitly treats the Saṃghikāya (Mahāsāṅghika), Aupanaya (Mahīśāsaka), the Lokottaravāda and other Hīnayāna vinaya schools’ divergent doctrines of the worthies and sages, comparing them to the Mahāyāna Yogācāra position. Gate 8 — jìn-tuì chā-bié — treats the doctrine of whether a Buddha-disciple, having attained the stream-enterer (śrotāpanna) stage, can subsequently regress; the Hossō school’s position is that regression is impossible from the moment of darśanamārga 見道, in contrast to the Sarvāstivāda position that allows for regression from the lower fruits. Gate 10 treats the objections raised by Fan-shi 範法師 (a Kōfuku-ji opponent now unknown) against the position that “one in the desire-realm, with short life-span, may quickly attain extinction-and-deliverance in the desire-realm.”
The work is the principal canonical witness to Yuima-e debate culture of the mid-10th century and a key document for understanding how Hossō-school scholastic identity was forged in the disputational setting of the Heian court.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — standard reference.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Chūzan 仲算 (a famous Yuima-e champion) and Hossō-shū kenshō gi ryaku mondō 法相宗賢聖義略問答.
- Treatment in the Edo-period Genjun 玄純 Hossō kōsho tradition.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the few medieval Japanese canonical texts to preserve only a fragment of an originally longer treatise — the first three fascicles are lost and only fascicle 4 survives. This fragmentary state, combined with the 1693 Edo collation colophon, makes the work a tightly-documented exemplar of how medieval Japanese Yogācāra scholarship survived the Sengoku disruption: through private lay collectors (such as Seishi-shitei in this case) rather than through continuous institutional transmission.