Shī kǒu 師口
Master’s Mouth [Transmissions] by 榮然 (撰)
About the work
A four-fascicle Shingon ritual kuden compendium by Yōnen 榮然 (fl. late 12th to mid-13th c.), a Kōyasan-based master of the Chū’in-ryū transmission line associated with Kōnen 興然 (1121–1203). The title Shī kǒu — literally “master’s mouth” — explicitly indicates the work’s character: the transmitted-from-the-master oral teachings, recorded as received without the editorial systematisation of a formal encyclopedia.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: composition window ca. 1180–1240, within Yōnen’s career. The transmission-history is unusually long and well-documented: copyists’ colophons preserve transmissions at Ōei 22 (1415), 11th month, 23rd day, transmitted to Junior Sōzu Jōkyō 定經 at Takao Kanbō; Ōei 22 (1415) transmitted by Jitsujun 實順 (age 51) of the Ono branch; Kanshō 6 (1465), 9th month, 6th day, transmitted to Junior Sōzu Benin 辨意 by Daisōjō Jōshō 定紹 — “from the master Sōjō Hirotsugu’s transmission, to be received in mind and never forgotten”; Bunmei 14–27 (1482–1495), 11th month, 8th–27th day, transmitted to Sonjun risshi 尊潤 by Gondaisōjō Kōyū 高祐 (the complete four-fascicle text); and Kanbun 7 (1667), 9th month, 10th day, when the temple’s own transmission-manuscript having become damaged, the Hōgon-in’s manuscript held by Hōin Shingen 眞源 was collated against by Sōgon 宗儼.
Doctrinal content: the table of contents distinguishes between front-side (面) and back-side (裏) topics — i.e. major and minor:
Front Side (Top): Bhaiṣajya-guru, Amitābha, Mahāmāyūrī, Protection [Sūtra], Pure-Eye Pacifier (能淨眼). Front Side (Bottom): Akṣobhya, Ratnasaṃbhava, Śākyamuni, Buddhalocanā, Cakravartin, Uṣṇīṣa-vijayā, Renwang, Rain-Prayer, All-Inexhaustible-Birth (出生無邊). Back Side (Top): Six-Syllable, Same-Offering, Fifteen-Children Sūtra, Child-Sūtra Offering, Aparimitāyus, Eight-syllable Mañjuśrī, same-dwelling-stabilization, Five-syllable Mañjuśrī, Mañjuśrī 500,000-recitation, One-tuft Mañjuśrī, Memory-and-Retention purification.
The work is a typical mid-Kamakura Kōyasan working notebook, with the careful kuden-mode annotations and the long manuscript transmission chain that the small-circle ritual transmissions of medieval Kōyasan typically generated.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Links
- CBETA: T78n2501
- DILA authority: A001130 (榮然)
- Related: KR6t0206 Yon-kan (Kōnen, Yōnen’s Chū’in-ryū predecessor).