Xuǎnzé chuánhóng juéyí chāo 選擇傳弘決疑鈔
Notes Resolving Doubts on the Transmission and Diffusion of the Senchakushū by 良忠 Ryōchū (述)
About the work
A five-fascicle scholastic commentary on Hōnen’s Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū KR6t0314, composed by the third Chinzei-line patriarch 良忠 Ryōchū (1199–1287) in his Kamakura period and serving as the definitive Chinzei-line interpretation of Hōnen’s foundational text. Frequently abbreviated Ketsugi-shō 決疑鈔. The work is the doctrinal companion volume to Ryōchū’s other principal commentary, the Kangyō-sho dentsūki KR6f0081 觀經疏傳通記 (T 2209, completed 1274–75) on Shàndǎo’s Guānjīng shū; the two together constitute the Chinzei-line scholastic corpus.
Abstract
Composed in the form of section-by-section questions-and-answers on each chapter of the Senchakushū, the Ketsugi-shō aims (as the title says) to “resolve doubts” arising from the transmission of Hōnen’s text — both intra-textual (apparent contradictions, scriptural cross-references) and inter-school (defences against the criticisms of Hieizan and Kōfuku-ji and against the rival Pure-Land interpretations of Kōsai’s ichinen-gi 一念義, Shinran’s Jōdoshinshū, and Shōkū’s Seizan branch). The textual chain is laid out explicitly in the postface: “Enkō Daishi [Hōnen] composed the Senchakushū setting forth the doctrine of exclusive nenbutsu of the Pure Land, and transmitted it to the Chinzei master Benchō; Benchō transmitted it to Nen-shi [Ryōchū = Nen’a 然阿]; Nen-shi composed the Denkō ketsugi-shō in five fascicles to elucidate the Senchakushū, detailing the Yoshimizu patriarch’s instructions …” — preserving the canonical Chinzei genealogy Hōnen → Benchō → Ryōchū.
The composition span cannot be precisely fixed; Ryōchū worked on the text repeatedly over decades, recension upon recension (“此鈔記主亟歴刪補 … 分卷不同 … 今依再治本即爲五卷” — “the master frequently revised it; the fascicle-divisions differ …; the present version follows the revised redaction in five fascicles”), and the final five-fascicle form is the work of his Kamakura years from c. 1259 onward, completed before his death in 1287. The currently-circulating recension is the late-Edo critical edition prepared by Shidani Ninshō 獅谷忍澂 in 1700 (元祿 13 / 庚辰), whose postface (dated 元祿庚辰三月初八日) describes thirty years of textual collation work against medieval manuscripts and the woodblock-printed editions of 了譽聖冏 Ryōyo Shōgyō (記主師 successor) and Ryōei 良榮; Ninshō’s text is the basis of the Taishō edition. Ryōchū’s own preface and the Ketsugi-shō proper are interleaved (會本 kaihon) with the running text of the Senchakushū, so that the parent text appears full-height while the commentary is one character indented — a typographic convention “indicating reverence for the patriarch’s teaching” (表尊重祖訓).
The Ketsugi-shō is the most influential scholastic commentary in the Chinzei tradition; from the late thirteenth century until the modern academic curricula of Bukkyō Daigaku 佛教大學 (the Jōdoshū sect-university), Ryōchū’s reading was the standard textbook for the doctrinal training of Jōdoshū priests. The text codified the Chinzei distinction between the hongan-nenbutsu (the original-vow nenbutsu) of Hōnen and the assisting practices (助業), defending the moderate Chinzei position against both the more radical senju-ichigi exclusivism of the Seizan branch and the tariki-shinjin (Other-Power faith) of the Shinshū.
Translations and research
No complete Western-language translation has been located. The text is treated in: Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002), and Blum’s discussion of Ryōchū in Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez (eds.), Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton UP, 2014), s.v. “Ryōchū”; Itō Yuishin 伊藤唯眞, Jōdo-shū no seiritsu to tenkai 浄土宗の成立と展開 (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981); Tamura Enchō 田村圓澄, Hōnen-shōnin den no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1956); Jōdo-shū zensho 浄土宗全書 vols. 7–8 (Sankibō, 1907–14).
Other points of interest
The Taishō text is the kaihon 會本 (interleaved edition) prepared by Shidani Ninshō (1700) — the editorial postface details the early-modern history of the text: that fourteenth-century editor 了譽聖冏 Ryōyo Shōgyō (“Kei-shi” 冏師) had already pointed to corruption in the manuscripts (蠧魚古本); that Ninshō spent thirty years collating; that he had to abandon his own collation work due to chronic arm pain (久患臂痛 — “long suffering from arm-ache”) and had his colleague Chōin 澄隱 complete the cross-checking of canonical citations from the Tripitaka. The postface concludes with the standard Eikō (廻向) verse “Dedicating this merit equally to all who together arouse the bodhi-mind for rebirth in the Land of Peace and Bliss” — a model of late-Tokugawa Buddhist scholarly piety.
Links
- CBETA online
- Parent text: KR6t0314 (Hōnen, Senchakushū)
- Companion commentary: KR6f0081 (Ryōchū, Kangyō-sho dentsūki)
- Chinzei-line precursor: KR6t0315 (Benchō, Tetsu senchaku)