Mìmìtán dūfǎ dàāshélí cháng niànsòng shēngqǐ 祕密壇都法大阿闍梨常念誦生起
The Structural Genesis of the Great Ācārya’s Continuous Recitation in the Secret-Altar Comprehensive Method
(anonymous)
About the work
A single-fascicle anonymous structural-analytical exposition of the Garbhadhātu gōngyǎng-fang-biàn 供養方便會 (“Offering Skillful-Means assembly”) and the zǒngniànsòng 總念誦 / biéniànsòng 別念誦 (general / particular recitation) sequence, focused on the continuous daily recitation discipline of the senior Tendai esoteric master (dūfǎ dàāshélí 都法大阿闍梨, “Ācārya of the Comprehensive Method”). Companion-piece to Kakuchō’s KR6t0103.
Abstract
Authorship. Anonymous. No author signature in the catalog meta or in the Taishō edition. The text is collected immediately after Kakuchō’s KR6t0103 Tāizàngjiè shēngqǐ in the Taishō arrangement and shares its analytical idiom; modern Taimitsu scholarship treats it as a closely-related mid-Heian Yokawa Taimitsu product, possibly by a Kakuchō-tradition successor.
Date. Tentatively late 10th to late 11th century, on the basis of the procedural-analytical idiom and its arrangement immediately after Kakuchō’s structural-genesis works in Taishō. No internal datable colophon.
Content. The work analyses the two-fold recitation (zǒngniànsòng / biéniànsòng) at the heart of the senior ācārya’s daily Garbhadhātu practice:
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General recitation (總念誦): the mudrās and mantras of the Three-Family 三部 and Four-Heavy-Thirteen-Great-Assemblies 四重十三大會 deities. This breaks down further into (a) practice-place generation — the bùzì bāyìn 布字八印 and central-throne mudrās-and-mantras (the First Assembly) — and (b) the zìshòu fǎlè 自受法樂 self-enjoyment-of-Dharma plus the final manifestation of the permitted-trace deities — from the biànzhī yìn 遍智印 through the world-protector deities (the twelve remaining assemblies).
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Particular recitation (別念誦): focused on the practitioner’s chosen central deity.
The work’s chief technical contribution is its careful resolution of the order-of-recitation problem in the Mahāvairocanasūtra chapter seven Cìdìfǎ text, where the bùzì bāyìn and biànzhī sequences appear in textually-inverted order from the practical recitation order. The compiler offers a sīànyì 私案義 (“private-judgment understanding”) of the proper procedural sequence — a hallmark of the shōki genre.
The work is among the technical references for the daily-discipline of the senior Tendai esoteric ācārya and would have been studied in the apprentice-master kuden transmission within the Eshin / Yokawa lineage.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation located.
- Misaki Ryōshū 三崎良周, Taimitsu no kenkyū (Sōbunsha, 1988).
- Hazama Jikō 硲慈弘, Nihon Bukkyō no kaiten to sono kichō 日本仏教の開展とその基調 (Sanseidō, 1948) — for the development of the shōki genre in mid-Heian Taimitsu.