Jìngmíng jīng jíjiě Guānzhōng shū juǎn shàng 淨名經集解關中疏卷上
The Guānzhōng Compendium-Commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, Upper Fascicle by 道液 (集); critical edition by 黎明 (整理)
About the work
The upper fascicle of Dàoyè’s 道液 Jìngmíng jīng jíjiě Guānzhōng shū 淨名經集解關中疏 (also titled Jìngmíng jīng Guānzhōng shū, Jìngmíng jíjiě Guānzhōng shū, Guānzhōng jíjiě, or Jìngmíng jīng shū), a major Táng commentary on the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa (T14 no. 475) in the Kumārajīva translation. The work is structured as a jíjiě 集解: Dàoyè takes Sēngzhào’s 僧肇 Zhù Wéimójié jīng 註維摩詰經 as his base text, retains selected glosses from Kumārajīva, Sēngzhào, and Daosheng 道生 from that work, supplements them with material from Sēngruì 僧叡 and from Tiāntái Zhànrán 湛然 not included in Sēngzhào’s commentary, and adds his own zhùshì 註釋 and kēwén 科文 (structural divisions).
Abstract
The work was Táng Buddhism’s most widely used pedagogical commentary on the Vimalakīrti. The Japanese pilgrim Jōgyō 常曉 (in his Jōgyō wajō shōrai mokuroku 常曉和尚請來目錄) records: “every monastery that lectured on the Jìngmíng trained its monks with Master Yè’s commentary; even with the existing commentaries of various masters, [their] wisdom was insufficient until they took up this text — by which the Dharma-mirror grows brighter, the wisdom-lamp shines more.” It is unrecorded in Chinese catalogues but listed in the Korean Yìtiān’s 義天 Xīn biān zhū zōng jiào zàng zǒng lù 新編諸宗教藏總錄, the Japanese Dōngyù chuándēng mùlù 東域傳燈目錄, and the Rù Táng xīn qiú shèngjiào mùlù 入唐新求聖教目錄. The work’s preface (preserved here) dates the composition to Shàngyuán 1 (760 CE) at the Císhèng sì 資聖寺 in Cháng’ān, with the second fascicle composed at the Pútí dàochǎng 菩提道場 in Cháng’ān during Yǒngtài chū sì 永泰初祀 (765 CE).
The Taishō text (T85n2777) is incomplete and full of errors; an early-twentieth-century edition by Jiāng Wèinóng 江味濃 made some progress but used limited witnesses. Lí Míng’s 1996 edition is based on five carefully selected Dūnhuáng manuscripts: S.2702 + P.2188 (joined to form the base text) + S.3770 + S.6503 + S.6568 + S.6580 + Beijing Library Běi 1330, drawing on c. 30 Beijing Library witnesses (姜 94 etc.) and dozens more in British, French, Russian, and Japanese collections.
Translations and research
- Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋, Shina bukkyōshi kōwa 支那佛教史講話 (Tōkyō: Kyōritsusha, 1907) — early survey covering the Wéimó commentary tradition.
- Charles Luk (Luk K’uan-yü), The Vimalakīrti Nirdesa Sūtra (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1972) — translation of the host sūtra with commentary excerpts.
- Lamotte, Étienne, L’Enseignement de Vimalakīrti (Louvain: Bibliothèque du Muséon, 1962) — the principal Western critical edition.
- Lí Míng 黎明, “Jìngmíng jīng jíjiě Guānzhōng shū 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 2 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1996).
Other points of interest
The lower fascicle is edited as KR6v0032 in volume 3. Together the two fascicles constitute the principal post-Sēngzhào / pre-Zhànrán synthesis of Vimalakīrti exegesis in Chinese, and a key witness to the Tiāntái – Sānlùn – Tang-court synthesis of mid-eighth-century commentary.