Kǒuchuán chāo 口傳鈔
The Anthology of [Shinran’s] Oral Transmissions by 覺如 Kakunyo (撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle Shinshū doctrinal treatise by Kakunyo 覺如 覺如 (1270–1351), composed in Genkō 1 / 1331, recording in 21 chapters the oral teachings of 親鸞 Shinran as transmitted from Shinran → Nyoshin 如信 → Kakunyo (Kakunyo claimed to have received the transmission from his uncle Nyoshin, who was Shinran’s grandson). The title — Kuden-shō — names the work’s distinctive epistemic claim: it transmits doctrines spoken by Shinran but never written down.
Abstract
The 21 chapters cover the principal doctrinal disputes of the second-generation Shinshū community: the aku-nin shō-ki 惡人正機 dictum (chs. 1–2), the shinjin-ichinen moment (ch. 3), the ōchō 横超 sudden-rebirth doctrine (ch. 4), the jinen-hōni naturalness doctrine (chs. 5–6), the non-deathbed doctrine (i.e. that shinjin already accomplishes rebirth, so the moment of death is doctrinally irrelevant — chs. 7–9), the relation of shinjin to nenbutsu (chs. 10–14), and the question of how to distinguish authentic Shinshū from competing Pure Land formulations (chs. 15–21).
The work is the principal source for what subsequent Hongan-ji tradition considers the normative Shinshū interpretation of Shinran. Many of the doctrinal formulations now taken for granted in Shinshū theology — including the strong reading of aku-nin shō-ki as the primary (not merely secondary) intention of Amida’s vow — derive in their classical form from the Kuden-shō, not directly from Shinran’s own writings.
Critical caveat. Modern scholarship has questioned whether all 21 kuden are authentically traceable to Shinran. Some appear to be Kakunyo’s own scholastic elaborations projected back onto the Shinran → Nyoshin → Kakunyo line. Akamatsu Toshihide 赤松俊秀 and Inaki Sen’e 稲城選惠 in the post-war period have separated the layers; the consensus is that chs. 1–4 are reliably Shinran-derived, chs. 5–14 are mixed, and chs. 15–21 are largely Kakunyo’s own.
Date. Internally dated Genkō 1 / 1331 ninth month, when Kakunyo was 62.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T83N2663) records the work as a 3-fascicle treatise by Kakunyo with no internal toc sub-list (the 21 chapter divisions are not separately tabulated) and no related-text cross-references.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書, vol. 3. No complete English translation; sections in Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū (1989), ch. 5; Blum, Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (2002). Japanese: Akamatsu Toshihide, Shinshū-shi no kenkyū 真宗史の研究 (Iwanami, 1957); Inaki Sen’e, Kuden-shō kōgi 口傳鈔講義 (Hongan-ji, 1971).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 覺如 (Kakunyo)
- Companion: KR6t0373 (Shitsuji-shō), KR6t0375 (Den-e), KR6t0376 (Hōon kōshiki)