Zìyào jí 自要集
Collection of [the Author’s] Own Essentials by 定專 Jōsen (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Shinshū doctrinal anthology by Jōsen 定專, fifth abbot of the Senju-ji 専修寺 of the Takada 高田 branch of Jōdo Shinshū. The work is essentially the author’s personal commonplace-book of doctrinal citations and clarifications, organized as a self-reference on the principal Shinshū doctrinal questions of his day. The Taishō text is prefaced by a printer’s preface dated Kōka 1 / 1844 narrating the work’s rediscovery: it was found in Kōka 1 (=甲午, 1834? or 1894?) by the Senju-ji cleric Kōon 洪音 at the house of one Muraki in Shionohama, identified by the colophon of Shin’e 眞慧 眞慧 (the tenth Takada abbot) as Jōsen’s autograph, and then published with Senju-ji approval.
Abstract
The collection covers the standard Shinshū doctrinal topics — shinjin, nenbutsu, the seven masters, the relation of Shinshū to other Pure Land schools — but with the Takada-ha distinctive emphases: less polemical against the rival schools than Hongan-ji texts, more accommodating of Tendai and Shingon elements in popular practice, and particularly attentive to the Kantō-Takada genealogical line back to Shinbutsu 真佛 (Shinran’s direct disciple). The work is a useful comparison-text to the Hongan-ji-line scholastic corpus (the Kakunyo go-bu-shō) and demonstrates the doctrinal diversity of early Shinshū outside the Hongan-ji.
Date. The author is Jōsen, fifth Senju-ji abbot, active in the early-to-mid 14th c. The preface dates the autograph colophon as Enbun 3 / 1358 — the terminus ante quem. Composition is therefore in the period c. 1320–1358.
Note on the printer’s preface. The 1844 (or possibly 1894 — the cyclical year jiǎwǔ 甲午 falls in both 1834 and 1894 in the Edo / Meiji) preface by Shōkun 照薫 narrates the work’s discovery and printing; it is a useful documentary witness to the Senju-ji bibliographic culture of the late Edo / Meiji periods.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T83N2672) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Jōsen with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Shinshū shōgyō zensho, vol. 3 (Takada-ha section). No English translation. Studies: Inaki Sen’e, Takada-ha shisō no kenkyū (Hongan-ji, 1990).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 定專 (Jōsen)
- Cognate Takada-ha texts: KR6t0382 (Daimyōmoku), KR6t0384 (Kenshō ryūgishō)