Wéishí fēnliàng jué 唯識分量決
Determinations on the Divisions and Pramāṇas of the Vijñaptimātra by 善珠 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Yogācāra treatise by the founder of Japanese Hossō scholarship, Zenju 善珠 (724–797), focusing on two central topics of the Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi: the four divisions of consciousness (sì-fēn 四分) and the doctrine of the inference / pramāṇa (liàng 量). The first is the Yogācāra account of how consciousness is structured into the seen-aspect, the seeing-aspect, the self-witnessing-aspect, and the witnessing-of-self-witnessing-aspect; the second is the Hossō school’s adoption of the Hetuvidyā (Buddhist logic) tradition’s account of valid cognition. The work is one of the principal early Japanese Yogācāra treatises and a “secret key” (bì-jiàn 祕鍵) — as the recovery-preface puts it — to the philosophical core of the Chéng wéishí lùn.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The work’s transmission history is uniquely well-documented. Zenju (724–797; DILA A001337; Wikidata Q11418958) is securely identified as the author by both the catalog meta and the principal colophon-tradition. The work was assumed lost from the late medieval period onward — “its circulation had already ceased; scholars said it was lost and untransmitted, which long was a regret” — until rediscovered in three independent Meiji-period manuscript witnesses (described in the 1913 Taishō-period preface by Jōin 定胤 of the Hōryū-ji Gakumon-ji 法隆寺学問寺). The earliest of these is an autograph copy by the Kōfuku-ji (山階寺) monk Ichiō 壹應, dated Hōki 3 = 772, ninth month, twenty-fifth day — during Zenju’s own lifetime. A second copy by Ichiō’s disciple Shin’ei 信叡, dated Hōki 4 = 773, second month seventeenth day, immediately follows. The third copy is dated Kanji 8 = 1094, by Ken’in 賢仁 of Daigo-ji, in his twelfth year at the age of twelve, who recovered the manuscript from a bell-tower at Daigo-ji while playing. The Taishō text is established from the Kamo Jinkō-in 加茂神光院 copy as collated against the Kōfuku-ji witnesses by Jōin in Taishō 1 (1912), tenth month seventh day.
This transmission history places the composition firmly within Zenju’s mature scholarly career: notBefore = 760, notAfter = 772 (the date of the first surviving copy, made within Zenju’s lifetime).
Doctrinal content: the work systematically expounds the sì-fēn yì 四分義 (the doctrine of the four divisions of consciousness) and the liàng yì 量義 (the doctrine of pramāṇa / inference) as treated in the Chéng wéishí lùn KR6n0025. Zenju draws on Kuījī’s KR6n0026 Shùjì, Huìzhāo’s KR6n0030 Liǎo-yì dēng, and the Shùyào commentary, as well as on the Silla Korean Yogācāra tradition of Wǒnch’ǔk 圓測 and the Hetuvidyā tradition of Wén-guǐ 文軌. The work is the principal early-Japanese witness to the Hetuvidyā-Yogācāra integration that the Tang Cí’ēn school had pioneered.
The work is closely related to Zenju’s longer KR6t0013 Fǎyuàn yìjìng — the two together constituting his principal Yogācāra œuvre. It is also the direct source-text for the late-Heian Saidaiji bettō Chūsan’s KR6t0018 Sìfēn yì jílüè sījì 四分義極略私記 — a Heian sub-commentary that itself became a Hossō standard.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — standard reference.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Zenju 善珠 and Yuishiki bunryō ketsu 唯識分量決.
- The work’s recovery history is discussed in Jōin Sōshō 定胤宗章 (the 1912/1913 Taishō recovery preface) and in the modern Taishō paratext.
Other points of interest
The transmission history of Wéishí fēnliàng jué is one of the best-documented manuscript-recovery stories in the Japanese Buddhist canon: the work survived through three independent Meiji-period witnesses (Daigo-ji, the Imperial Museum, Kamo Jinkō-in), each derived from the Hōki 3 (= 772) autograph of Ichiō — making it one of the few medieval Japanese Buddhist works whose canonical text is traceable through an unbroken manuscript chain back to a copy made during the author’s own lifetime.