Yǒuzōng qīshíwǔ fǎ jì 有宗七十五法記
Records on the Seventy-Five Dharmas of the [Sarvāstivāda] School of Existence by 宗禎 (撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle Abhidharma pedagogical compendium on the seventy-five dharmas of the Sarvāstivāda-Abhidharma (the Yǒu-zōng 有宗 = “school of existence” = Sarvāstivāda), composed by the Edo monk Sōtei 宗禎 (also known as Onoyama 尾野山 / Teizan 禎山) in Kyōhō 13 = 1728. The work was an outgrowth of Sōtei’s own lectures on the Abhidharma-kośa (Jù-shè lùn 倶舍論) and was intended as an improvement on the previously-circulating anonymous primer KR6t0020 Qī-shí-wǔ fǎ míng-mù, which the author judged inadequate.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The first-person preface, signed and dated “Kyōhō 13, 8th month, 17th day; the Onoyama-temple monk Sōtei, [also called] Teizan, has written this” (享保戊申八月十七日尾野山僧宗禎禎山書), is unusually self-disclosing for a Japanese Buddhist preface. Sōtei sets out his motivation: “This year I lectured on the Abhidharma-kośa. From time to time I made notes, which I subsequently arranged in order and bound into a single volume. I give this to my young students.” The terminal colophon, by his disciples (“the staff-bearing young students”), notes that the manuscript was prepared in Kyōhō 15 = 1730, eleventh month (仲冬日), for publication: “The Onoyama abbot wrote these Seventy-Five Dharmas Records, having entered the inner-chamber and personally received instruction, [we disciples] each recorded what we heard and kept it in tenfold secrecy. One day the master publicly said, ‘Why should the Dharma-flavour be hoarded? Let it not be that I am stingy with it.’ Following his instructions, we have here annotated the original text in the margins, supplemented the meaning in the spacing above the lines, and committed it to publication.”
Sōtei 宗禎 (DILA A000599; also known as Teizan) is documented only by this canonical attribution and his Onoyama-temple affiliation. The notBefore = 1728 (composition by Sōtei) and notAfter = 1730 (publication and disciple-collation) are tight.
Doctrinal content: the work treats the seventy-five dharmas in the standard Kośa sequence of five categories, but with the substantial addition of a systematic treatment of the worthies and sages (xián-shèng 賢聖) at the end — the doctrine of the four stages of attainment (the four-fold śrāvaka progression from śrotāpanna to arhat). Sōtei’s exposition is anchored explicitly to Vasubandhu’s Abhidharma-kośa and to the Tang Pu-guāng 普光’s Jù-shè jì 倶舍記 and Fa-bao 法寶’s Jù-shè shū 倶舍疏 (T1822, T1823) — the principal Tang Chinese sub-commentaries. The work is therefore the principal Edo-period Japanese Abhidharma-kośa primer preserved in the Taishō, and the canonical successor to the older anonymous KR6t0020 Míng-mù primer.
The closing fascicle treats the nine progressive attainments (jiǔ 九 stages, ending with jù jiětuō 倶解脱 = the simultaneously-liberated arhat), making the work also a witness to the late-medieval Japanese Hossō integration of the Kośa and Hossō xián-shèng doctrines.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Sōtei 宗禎 (Onoyama) and Ushū shichijūgo-hō ki 有宗七十五法記.
- The text is referenced in the standard modern Japanese Abhidharma-Kosha pedagogical literature.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the few medieval/Edo Japanese Buddhist texts to record a self-disclosed lecture-origin with precise dates and a disciple-collation chain. As such it is a unique witness to 18th-century Japanese Abhidharma pedagogy and to the social structure of the Onoyama Kusha-school transmission.
Links
- CBETA: T71n2325
- DILA authority: A000599 (宗禎)
- Replaces / supplements: KR6t0020 Qīshíwǔ fǎ míngmù.