Dàchéng fǎyuàn yìlín zhāng shīzǐhǒu chāo 大乘法苑義林章師子吼鈔
The Lion’s Roar Compendium on Kuījī’s Mahāyāna Yì-lín Chapters by 基辨 (撰)
About the work
A monumental twenty-two-fascicle sub-commentary on Kuījī’s 窺基 Dàchéng fǎyuàn yìlín zhāng 大乘法苑義林章 (T1861 = KR6n0029), composed by the late-Edo Hossō patriarch Kiben 基辨 (1718–1791) of Yakushi-ji 藥師寺. The title — shīzǐhǒu “lion’s roar” — is taken from a sūtra-passage on the lion’s eleven activities at dawn: breaking the false lions; testing his own strength; purifying his dwelling-place; informing his cubs; assuring his pride; awakening the eyes; not letting the heedless beasts wander; gathering the followers; subduing the great elephants; teaching the offspring; ornamenting the kin. Kiben transposes these eleven activities to his own lecture-project: to break false claimants to the Mahāyāna who speak the words but lack the heart; to test his own learning; to purify his mind-ground; to inform his disciples of his mind-ground; to reassure his audience; to inspire industry in the lazy; to prevent superficial study; to gather genuine students; to subdue the obstinate; to teach his disciples; and to dignify his Hossō lineage.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The first-person preface, dated An’ei 5 = 1776, spring, opens: “In the spring of An’ei 5, having hung my staff in Heian[-jō, = Kyōto], I lectured on the Dàchéng yìlín zhāng with the aim of bringing my students to set foot upon the correct path of the Middle Way.” This pinpoints the work’s terminus a quo to the 1776 Kyōto lecture series — and the twenty-two-fascicle scope means the work was likely composed over several years thereafter. Kiben (1718–1791; DILA A001020) lived another fifteen years; notBefore = 1776, notAfter = 1791 (his death).
Doctrinal content: the work is the most extensive Japanese-language exposition of Kuījī’s Yìlín zhāng — the canonical Yogācāra category-treatise — preserved in the Taishō canon. Each fascicle treats one or more of Kuījī’s yìlín sections in extensive detail, drawing on the prior Japanese commentarial tradition: Zenju’s KR6t0013 Yìjìng, Shinkō’s KR6t0015 Yuishiki-gi shiki, Seihan’s KR6t0014 Goshin-gi ryakki, Chūzan’s KR6t0016 Kenshō-gi, and through them the Tang Cí’ēn commentaries of Kuījī, Huìzhāo, Zhìzhōu — and adding to them the Korean Yogācāra of Wǒnch’ǔk and Shùnjǐng. The work is in effect the summa of one and a half millennia of Cí’ēn-school commentarial scholarship, focused on Kuījī’s encyclopedic Yogācāra category-treatise.
The CANWWW related-texts list correctly identifies the work as the primary Japanese sub-commentary on KR6n0029 Yìlín zhāng (T45N1861, the whole work — Kiben treats every section), and as commenting on KR6t0016 Hossōshū xiánshèng yì lüè wèndá by Chūzan — confirming the integration of the prior Japanese Hossō tradition into Kiben’s lecture-output.
Kiben’s persona in the work is unusually personal: he refers to himself in the first person, names his disciples, and writes self-deprecatingly about his lecture style. The work is therefore not only a doctrinal compendium but also a unique source for the social history of late-Edo Hossō scholarship.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — treats Kiben’s summa as the late-Edo synthesis of Japanese Hossō scholarship.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Kiben 基辨 and Shishikuku-shō 師子吼鈔.
Other points of interest
The Shīzǐhǒu chāo is one of the longest single Japanese Buddhist canonical works (22 fascicles) and represents the most ambitious sub-commentarial project in the entire late-Edo Hossō revival. It is the principal late-Tokugawa Yakushi-ji product, and as such a foundational document of the late-Edo Nara-school revival that prepared the ground for the early Meiji Buddhist scholarship of figures like Yūki Reimon.