Huāyán yīchéng yì sījì 華嚴一乘義私記
Private Records on the Meaning of the Avataṃsaka One Vehicle by 増春 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Kegon Q&A primer by the mid-Heian Daihōshi 大法師 (great-Dharma-master) Zōshun 増春, composed during the Tenryaku 天暦 era (= 947–957 CE). The work treats the Avataṃsaka doctrine through a sequence of dialectical questions, opening with the etymology of the title 華嚴 (huā-yán — Sanskrit gaṇḍa-vyūha 健拏驃訶, “various flowers” + “ornamentation”) and proceeding through the analysis of the four kinds of lotus (sì zhǒng lián-huā — utpala 溫鉢羅, kumuda 拘物頭, padma 鉢豆摩, puṇḍarīka 奔荼利, corresponding to blue, yellow, red, and white lotuses respectively), to substantive doctrinal points about the yī-chéng 一乘 (One Vehicle) doctrine and its relation to the four periods of the Buddha’s teaching.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The terminal colophon of the work is unusually explicit: “This [text] is a selection of essentials from a three-fascicle private record. Composed by the great Dharma-master Zōshun in the Tenryaku era. Enpō 7 (= 1679), 3rd month, 12th day — one collation completed.” The 1679 collation note continues with details of subsequent copying: “Tenpō 11 (= 1840), 3rd month, 24th day, night, fourth hour — copied and finished. Śramaṇa Ryōju Rikai 龍珠理海, signed. But this private record is a single fascicle of secret and precious writing; it ought not to be shown to outsiders.”
The composition is therefore precisely dated to the Tenryaku era = 947–957. The catalog meta confirms Zōshun 増春 (DILA A001651) as the author, and the colophon-attribution “Daihōshi” is consistent with a senior Kegon scholar of the Tōdaiji or Tōji tradition. The surviving Taishō text is itself an abridgment (lüèchāo 略抄) of an originally larger three-fascicle treatise — the abridgement-process was probably done in the Edo period for the Enpō 7 (1679) re-engraving, which would also explain the cautionary note “ought not to be shown to outsiders” — a typical Edo-period esoteric-transmission formula.
Doctrinal content: the work treats the relation of the One Vehicle doctrine to the Buddhist jiào-pàn 教判 (teaching-classification) schemes — explicitly addressing the Avataṃsaka’s position as the first time of the Buddha’s teaching, and the Prajñāpāramitā corpus as the fourth time. The interpretation hinges on the question of whether the Prajñāpāramitā admits or denies the buddhahood of the determined two-vehicle practitioners (dìng-xìng èr-shèng 定性二乘). Zōshun follows the Kegon-school position that the Prajñāpāramitā admits this and is therefore in the fourth-time category. The text references the 廣疏料簡 (= Fa-zang’s 法藏 Tàn-xuán jì 探玄記 KR6a0009) as its principal source.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Zōshun 増春 and Kegon ichijō gi shiki 華嚴一乘義私記.
Other points of interest
The work’s mid-Heian date (947–957) makes it one of the earliest surviving Japanese Kegon-school doctrinal works after the foundational generation of Rōben 良辨 and Shinjō 審詳. It is also unique in the Japanese Kegon canon for its explicit citation of the Sanskrit etymology of the title huā-yán / gaṇḍa-vyūha, indicating mid-Heian Japanese Kegon awareness of Indian linguistic-philological scholarship.
Links
- CBETA: T72n2327
- DILA authority: A001651 (増春)