Bǎojìng chāo 寶鏡鈔
The Jewelled-Mirror Compendium by 宥快 (記)
About the work
A single-fascicle polemical-doctrinal treatise by Yūkai 宥快 (1345–1416) of Kōya-san Hōshō-in. The work defends Shingon’s claim to doctrinal supremacy against the contemporary doctrinal-pollical challenges of the medieval Buddhist establishment. The header is explicit: “Shamana Yūkai’s record” 沙門宥快記.
Abstract
Authorship. Yūkai.
Date. Within Yūkai’s mature career, late 14th to early 15th century.
Content. The work opens with a programmatic statement of Shingon’s distinctive doctrinal claims:
“The Mantra Esoteric teaching — that which the Great Sun Awakened-King has expounded; that which the eight patriarchs have transmitted as the secret teaching. It is called the supreme highest Buddha-vehicle; it is named as the realm utterly transcending all the schools. Truly, it is what extinguishes the most heavy karmic burdens, what saves the hardest-to-convert beings, what suddenly verifies Buddha-wisdom alone…”
(眞言密教。大日覺王所説。八祖相承祕法也。號無上最上佛乘。稱諸宗超絶境界。誠滅極重之罪業。度難化之衆生。頓證佛智獨)
The work proceeds through Yūkai’s defensive-polemical articulation of the Kogi-Shingon orthodoxy:
- The doctrinal-superiority claim — Shingon as the supreme highest Buddha-vehicle.
- The transmission claim — the eight-patriarch lineage from Mahāvairocana to Kūkai.
- The salvific claim — Shingon’s distinctive efficacy in extinguishing karmic burdens and saving difficult beings.
- The defense against contemporary objections — Yūkai’s response to Negoro-ji Shingi-Shingon reformist challenges, and to the apparent-teaching schools’ polemical positions.
The title’s jewelled-mirror (寶鏡) image — the work as a mirror reflecting the true doctrinal position of Shingon — situates Yūkai’s project as a clarifying rather than innovating one: not advancing new doctrine, but reflecting back the orthodox Kogi-Shingon position against contemporary distortions.
Significance. The work is a key documentary source for Yūkai’s polemical-defensive project of consolidating the Kogi-Shingon Kōya-san orthodoxy against the late-medieval doctrinal challenges. It is studied alongside his major scholastic compositions (KR6t0160 Shízhùxīn yìlín, KR6j0668 Dàrì jīng shū chāo) as the principal polemical statement of his late-medieval Shingon consolidation effort.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation located.
- Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra (Columbia, 1999).