Púsà jièběn zōngyào fǔxíng wénjí 菩薩戒本宗要輔行文集
Anthology of Texts Assisting the Practice of the Essentials of the Bodhisattva Precept Code by 叡尊 (撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle anthology of canonical citations supplementing the Pú-sà jiè-běn zōng-yào 菩薩戒本宗要 (T74n2352) of Tài-xián 太賢 (Korean Vinaya master of Silla, fl. mid-8th c.) on the Brahmajāla-sūtra (Fàn-wǎng jīng 梵網經) bodhisattva precepts. Compiled by Eison 叡尊 (1201–1290), restorer of Saidai-ji 西大寺 and founder of the Shingon-Risshū 真言律宗 movement of Kamakura-period Vinaya revival, the work supplies scriptural and śāstra-passage corroboration for each lemma of Tài-xián’s terse handbook. The title’s fǔ-xíng (literally “assisting practice”) echoes Zhànrán’s Mó-hē zhǐ-guān fǔ-xíng zhuàn-hóng-jué 摩訶止觀輔行傳弘決 — a deliberate cue to the Tendai-Vinaya synthesis that defines Eison’s school.
Abstract
The colophon, given at the end of the second fascicle, is dated with unambiguous precision: “Kōan 8, yi-yi year, 2nd month, 6th day. Saidai-ji śramaṇa Eison.” (弘安八年乙酉二月六日西大寺沙門叡尊). Kōan 8 = 1285 CE. The opening text gives the author’s setting: “the strivings of more than eighty years (八旬有餘之老力)” — Eison was 85 sui at the time, two months from his 85th birthday. notBefore = notAfter = 1285 is therefore exact.
The work is structured as a glossarial commentary: the lemmata of Tài-xián’s Pú-sà jiè-běn zōng-yào (Korean Yogācāra Vinaya master, late 7th – mid 8th century, contemporary and rival of Wǒnhyo) are picked up in sequence, and under each Eison assembles relevant supporting passages from the canon. The opening section sets out the metaphysical and exegetical framework: a Yogācāra analysis of the term “bodhisattva” drawn from Kuījī’s 玄贊 (the Fǎ-huá xuán-zàn commentarial tradition), then the Sōng-yuè-shū 嵩岳疏 (Fǎzàng’s lineage Brahmajāla-commentary) on the meaning of “jiè-běn” (precept-code), and Tài-xián’s own Gǔ-jì 古跡 on the structure of the Brahmajāla’s “Mind-Ground Chapter” (心地法門品). Eison then proceeds through the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts of the Brahmajāla, citing the Yogācāra-bhūmi, the Niè-pán (Mahāparinirvāṇa) sūtra, the Sì-fēn lǜ 四分律 of the Dharmaguptaka, the Zuì-shèng-wáng jīng 最勝王經 (Yìjìng’s Suvarṇaprabhāsa), the Pú-sà běn-yè yīng-luò jīng 菩薩本業瓔珞經, and shorter passages from many Mahāyāna sūtras.
The text concludes with a striking citation from the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra on the Bodhisattva’s transcendence of the āsrava (defiling outflows): “the bodhisattva-mahāsattva is able to observe deeply and not generate outflows; therefore the bodhisattva is called ‘outflow-free.’ How could a Tathāgata be called ‘with outflows’? Therefore the Tathāgata is not called ‘with outflows.‘” The bookend of the work is the implicit argument that the Brahmajāla precepts, by virtue of their bodhisattva grounding in the Yogācāra triple-platform doctrine, are themselves the gate to the anāsrava. This is the central doctrinal pillar of the Saidai-ji Vinaya revival.
This work was composed late in Eison’s career, after his major precept-revival activity at Saidai-ji and after the institutional consolidation of the Shingon-Risshū. It supersedes Tàixián’s terse handbook as the working precept-text of the Saidai-ji lineage and is one of the few Eison works to address Tàixián directly.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Paul Groner, “Vicissitudes in the Ordination of Japanese ‘Nuns’ during the Eighth through the Tenth Centuries,” in Barbara Ruch (ed.), Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002) — for the Saidai-ji context.
- Lori Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010) — for the Eison-Saidai-ji Shingon-Risshū movement.
- Matsuo Kenji 松尾剛次, Eison 叡尊 (Kyoto: Mineruva, 2004) — the standard Japanese biography.
Other points of interest
The work documents the Saidai-ji school’s commitment to a Korean Yogācāra source (Tàixián) as the doctrinal foundation of its precept practice — an unusual choice in 13th-century Japan, where the dominant precept authority was the Chinese Tiantai-Vinaya (ZhànránDàoxuān) line. This Korean orientation distinguishes the Shingon-Risshū from the contemporary Kakujō-Nara Bodhisattva-precept movement (see KR6t0050, KR6t0051).