Jìngtǔ tóngméng zhǐguī míngmù 淨土童蒙指歸名目
Topical-Headings as Guideposts for Pure-Land Beginners by 覺融 Kakuyū (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Seizan-line catechetical primer by Kakuyū 覺融 of Ugi Hōdō-in 鵜木寶幢院 (a sub-temple of the Seizan-Fukakusa lineage). The title’s dōmō 童蒙 (“infant-and-naive” = “beginners”) signals the genre: an elementary-level introduction to Pure-Land doctrine through enumerated topical headings (名目 meimoku), each given a concise definition followed by a shi-un 私云 (“[my] personal note”) expanding the gloss. The work is the standard medieval Seizan-Fukakusa elementary-level catechetical text and complements KR6t0335–KR6t0336 (the intermediate-level Yōshū and Chiku-rin-shō) and KR6t0337–KR6t0342 (Ken’i’s advanced doctrinal works) as the elementary primer of the school.
Abstract
The opening entry illustrates the method: “Item: the matter of “Discard-and-Establish” (廢立 hairyū) — Personal note: “discard-and-establish” means taking-and-rejecting (取捨); it is a topical term common to all schools; in particular the Tendai school uses it especially. In that [Tendai] school…” (一廢立之事 / 私云。廢立ト者。取捨ノ義也。諸宗通用之名目也。就中天台ニ專ラ用ル也). The entry then sets out the Seizan-line’s appropriation of the hairyū term: discarding the Way of Sages and establishing the Pure-Land Way.
Successive entries cover the elementary doctrinal vocabulary of the school: jōzen and sanzen; the Three Minds; the Two Ways; the Original Vow and the Forty-Eight Vows; the Nine Grades and the Three Pure-Land Sūtras; the kihō ichinyo and ichinen go-jō doctrines; the raigō welcoming-descent; the deathbed protocols; and the institutional structure of the school (the jūhachi danrin of the Edo period). Each entry is brief — a single paragraph at most — and designed for memorization by novices.
Author. Kakuyū 覺融 is identified by his institutional title (Ugi Hōdō-in shamon) but is otherwise an obscure medieval Seizan-Fukakusa figure. His authorship of two consecutive Taishō entries (KR6t0343 and KR6t0344) is the principal evidence for his historical existence. The Ugi Hōdō-in cloister is located in the Sai-no-yama / Higashiyama religious landscape of medieval Kyoto.
Date. Composition undatable from internal evidence; a late-Kamakura to Muromachi date (13th–15th c.) is most likely on stylistic grounds.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. The genre of Seizan-line catechetical primers is treated in: Fujimoto Kiyohiko 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); critical text in Seizan zensho (1928–35); Itō Yuishin 伊藤唯眞, Jōdo-shū no seiritsu to tenkai (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981).
Links
- CBETA online
- Companion work by same author: KR6t0344 (Jōdoshū hōmon dai-zu)
- Cf. parallel-genre Seizan-Fukakusa primers: KR6t0335, KR6t0336