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華嚴五教章匡眞鈔

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Text ID
KR6t0040
Date
1720–1731
Dynasty
日本

Huāyán wǔjiào zhāng kuāngzhēn chāo 華嚴五教章匡眞鈔

Truth-Correcting Compendium on Fa-zang’s Avataṃsaka Five-Teachings Treatise by 鳳潭 (撰)

About the work

A ten-fascicle Edo-period Kegon sub-commentary on Fa-zang’s Wǔ jiào zhāng 華嚴五教章 KR6a0011 by the celebrated Hōtan 鳳潭 (1659–1738), the most learned Edo Kegon scholar and the leading critic of the Korean Hui-yuan 慧苑 splinter-tradition. The full title given in the body of the work is Huā-yán yī-chéng jiào fēn-jì fǔ-zōng kuāng-zhēn chāo 華嚴一乘教分記輔宗匡眞鈔 — “Compendium for Sustaining the School and Correcting the Truth on the One Vehicle Teaching-Classification of the Avataṃsaka.” The work is at once a sub-commentary on Fa-zang’s classic and a polemical defence of the Kegon school’s orthodox interpretation against the Hui-yuan / Jìng-fǎ-yuàn 靜法苑 splinter-tradition that had departed from Fa-zang’s positions.

Abstract

Authorship and dating: The opening self-preface is uncompromising: “The dharma-realm of complete-doctrine — its nature-ocean is profoundly mysterious. The young man inquires of his friend at the hundred-towered city. Its waves are vast and not easily to be drained out. At the end of the Sui, the first patriarch — the Master Du-shùn of Dūnhuáng, the Mind-Emperor — burst through the [worldly] dust and grass, established the Wǔ jiào zhǐ guān 五教止觀 and passed it to Mount Zhìxiàng. The venerable Zhìyǎn 智儼 of the early Táng made the Sōuxuán 搜玄 and the Kǒngmù 孔目, boiling like a great cauldron in the teaching; and passed it on as a flask to Xiánshǒu (Fa-zang). The great teacher Fa-zang of Xiánshǒu, having received this Chapter and the Tànxuán 探玄, roused his school like a great wave, thundering through the times — truly, the school’s doctrine was complete in his hand. Alas! There arose one Jìngfǎyuàn [= Hui-yuan], who suddenly rebelled against his master’s teachings — like a stone-and-hammer that cannot meet. Had the master still been alive, he would have struck the drum and attacked him. As for the Pure-Cool, Great-Unifying National Master [Chéngguān]…” The polemical edge against Hui-yuan, and the strong identification with the Du-shùn / Zhìyǎn / Fa-zang / Chéngguān orthodox line, is characteristic of Hōtan’s late-Edo Kegon revivalist project.

The terminal colophon reads: “Huāyán yīchéng jiào fēnjì fǔzōng kuāngzhēn chāo, fascicle 10, great-tail [= final volume]. Kyōhō 16, xīnhài (= 1731), second collation completed.*” — fixing the terminus ante quem exactly. The work was certainly composed in Hōtan’s late years; given his death in 1738 and the 1731 second-collation date, the composition window is notBefore = 1720, notAfter = 1731. The publication-imprint lists the Izumo-ji 出雲寺 Genkyū 元丘, the Kuntoku-dō 熏徳堂 Shunshō 春章, the Bundai-ken 文臺軒 Ushige 宇重, the Heiraku-ji 平樂寺 Chishin 智信, the Inoue-saijitsu-shi 井上齋實氏, and the Zuishō-kaku 瑞翔閣 Chōhō 朝鳳 — all major Kyōto Buddhist publishers — confirming the work’s reception as a major late-Edo Kegon publication.

Doctrinal content: the closing fascicle treats the opening-and-combining (kāi-hé 開合) of the Buddha-bodies (shēn shù kāi-hé 身數開合), citing the Buddha-bhūmi-śāstra on the self-receiving-use body (zì shòu-yòng shēn 自受用身) and other-receiving-use body (tā shòu-yòng shēn); the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra’s four-buddha doctrine (reaction-transformation buddha, merit buddha, wisdom buddha, thus-as-thus buddha); and the standard one-buddha through ten-buddha schemes across the five teachings. Hōtan integrates Yogācāra, Tathāgatagarbha, and Kegon positions in his characteristic encyclopedic mode.

Translations and research

  • No complete Western-language translation located.
  • Hōtan is treated in Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), and in Erik Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), as one of the most important Edo Kegon scholars.
  • Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Hōtan 鳳潭 and Kegon gokyōshō kyōshin shō 華嚴五教章匡眞鈔.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the principal Edo-period Buddhist scholarly publications, with a high-profile multi-publisher imprint and a polemical engagement with the entire prior Kegon commentarial tradition. As the late-Edo Tokugawa-era counterpart to Gyōnen’s KR6t0035 Tōnglù jì, Hōtan’s Kuāngzhēn chāo represents the culmination of Japanese Kegon scholarship on Fa-zang’s Wǔ jiào zhāng — and its polemic against Hui-yuan-derived heterodoxies is a unique witness to the Edo-Buddhist orthodoxy-formation in the Kegon school.

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