Mòdēng chāo 末燈鈔
Anthology of the End-of-the-Lamp [Letters] by 從覺 Jūkaku (編)
About the work
A six-fascicle anthology of letters and short doctrinal pieces by 親鸞 Shinran, compiled by Shinran’s great-grandson 從覺 Jūkaku (1295–1360, son of 覺如 Kakunyo) and completed in Genkō 3 / 1333. The full title given in the text is Hongan-ji Shinran daishi go-ko-shō narabi ni hen-shū sho-sho go-shōsoku-tō ruijūshō 本願寺親鸞大師御己證并邊州所所御消息等類聚鈔 — “A Topical Anthology of Master Shinran of the Hongan-ji’s Own Realizations together with the Letters Sent to the Various Provinces.” The compilation preserves the largest single collection of Shinran’s letters and is the most important manuscript witness to Shinran’s late-Kyoto correspondence with his disciples in Hitachi, Shimōsa, and the other Kantō provinces.
Abstract
The collection opens with the doctrinal essay U-nen mu-nen no koto 有念無念事 (“On ‘with-thought’ and ‘without-thought’”), dated Kenchō 3 / 1251 intercalary ninth-month 20th day, when Shinran was 79. The essay distinguishes jiriki (self-power) and tariki (other-power) recitation and is followed by ~40 letters arranged by ruijū (topical grouping) — letters on the controversies of his Kantō disciples (the jinen-hōni 自然法爾 controversy, the zōaku-muge 造惡無礙 antinomian crisis, the disinheritance of Shinran’s son Zenran 善鸞 for heresy), letters of consolation, and short doctrinal aphorisms.
The work is the principal documentary source for the last 25 years of Shinran’s life in Kyoto, after his return from the Kantō c. 1235. Many of the letters are dated, the latest from Kōchō 2 / 1262, the year of Shinran’s death. Letters in the Mattōshō overlap substantially with KR6t0371 Shinran shōnin go-shōsoku-shū and the autograph Zenran gi-zetsu jō preserved at the Hongan-ji; the Mattōshō is generally judged the more carefully edited recension. Jūkaku’s editorial principle was to preserve Shinran’s kana-majiri vernacular without normalization, which makes the Mattōshō a key witness for the history of late-Kamakura Japanese prose as well as for Shinshū doctrine.
The title — “End-of-the-Lamp Anthology” — alludes to the mappō eschatology that pervades Shinran’s correspondence (the mappō-Latter-Dharma era as the “extinguishing of the lamp [of the Dharma]”) and also to Jūkaku’s perception of himself as the late, dim heir of a vanishing tradition.
Structural Division
A single-fascicle work in CANWWW (extent given as 1巻 there, though the catalog meta and Taishō print are six fascicles); no internal toc sub-parts are tabulated in div29.xml. The 41 numbered pieces are letters and short essays; no related-text cross-references are recorded by CANWWW.
Translations and research
The Hongan-ji-ha Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書 (1941, repr. 1972), vol. 2, gives the standard critical edition. English translations of selected letters: Yoshifumi Ueda & Dennis Hirota (trans.), Letters of Shinran: A Translation of Mattō-shō (Hongwanji-ha, 1978), and the same in The Collected Works of Shinran (Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997), vol. 1, pp. 523–615. German selections in Hans Haas, Amida-Buddha unsere Zuflucht (Göttingen 1910). Major studies: James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Indiana UP, 1989), ch. 4–5; Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002); Hirata Atsushi 平田厚志, Mattō-shō kō 末燈鈔考 (Hōzōkan, 1990). The 善鸞 義絶 (disinheritance of Zenran) letters are treated in Bandō Shōjun 坂東性純, Zenran no kenkyū 善鸞の研究 (Hōzōkan, 1969).
Links
- CBETA online
- Compiler: 從覺 (Jūkaku)
- Author of the letters: 親鸞 (Shinran)
- Parallel letter-collection: KR6t0371 (Shinran shōnin go-shōsoku-shū)