Xíngshì chāo zhōng fēnmén túlù 《行事鈔》中分門圖錄
Outline of the Sectional Divisions of the Xíngshì chāo by 道宣 (述); critical edition by 蘇軍 (整理)
About the work
A complete one-fascicle structural outline (kēfēn 科分) of Dàoxuān’s 道宣 great Vinaya commentary Sìfēnlǜ shānfán bǔquē xíngshì chāo 四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔 (T40 no. 1804). The author Dàoxuān himself (signed “Jīngzhào Chóngyì sì shāmén Dàoxuān shù” 京兆崇義寺沙門道宣述) walks his reader systematically through all thirty piān 篇 of the Xíngshì chāo and lists the 1,360 mén 門 (subsections) into which they decompose. The outline uses a four-tier 甲–乙–丙–丁 nesting scheme (corresponding to the four Heavenly Stems used as Buddhist outline-markers), and frequently differs in minor ways from the exact subsection structure of the received text of the Xíngshì chāo itself, suggesting that it represents an intermediate or working draft of Dàoxuān’s exegetical scheme.
Abstract
The work is unrecorded in any Chinese Buddhist catalogue and was lost from the canon. Sū Jūn 蘇軍’s edition is based on a single Dūnhuáng witness, Beijing Library Běixīn 722, with no other surviving copy. Internal evidence — the explicit signature, the references to “this chāo” in the first person, and the structural divergences from the received Xíngshì chāo — establish authenticity. The text is therefore plausibly composed during Dàoxuān’s residency at the Chóngyì Sì 崇義寺 in Cháng’ān, sometime between his 626 ordination and his 667 death. It is the earliest surviving authorial outline of any Chinese Vinaya commentary and an important corrective to the textual history of the Xíngshì chāo (the foundational text of the Nán shān 南山 / Lǜzōng 律宗 lineage).
Translations and research
- Suwa Gijun 諏訪義純, Chūgoku chūsei bukkyōshi kenkyū 中国中世仏教史研究 (Tōkyō: Daitō shuppansha, 1988) — context on Dàoxuān’s exegetical project.
- Sū Jūn 蘇軍, “Xíngshì chāo zhōng fēnmén túlù 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
- Tonami Mamoru 礪波護 et al., eds., Tonkō no shūkyō to bunka 敦煌の宗教と文化 (Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 2000) — broader Vinaya manuscript context.
Other points of interest
The 1,360-mén count makes this the most precise authorial inventory of any Táng-Buddhist commentary’s internal structure, and is sometimes used by modern scholars to disambiguate variant subsection numbering across the multiple Táng and Sòng recensions of the Xíngshì chāo.
Links
- CBETA
- Host text: T40n1804 (Xíngshì chāo)