Yīnyuán xīn shìlùn kāijué jì 因緣心釋論開決記
Notes Resolving Nāgārjuna’s Pratītyasamutpāda-hṛdaya Treatise and Commentary anonymous Chinese composition; critical edition by 華方田 (整理)
About the work
A Chinese sub-commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Yīnyuán xīn lùn sòng (KR6v0033) and Yīnyuán xīn lùn shì (KR6v0034) — author unknown — in one fascicle. The commentary opens with a fourfold xù 序: (1) a biographical introduction to Nāgārjuna; (2) the master’s purposes in composing the verse-treatise and vṛtti (cited verbatim in the source as: “to cut off the doubt-net of disciples of the five virtues, to extinguish the eternalist-and-annihilationist heresies of the heterodox, and to lead future dull-rooted ordinary beings and sharp-rooted holy ones to a correct understanding of dependent origination, a clear apprehension of the two truths, and the speedy attainment of the unsurpassed bodhi*‘s correct cause*”); (3) doctrinal demonstration that Nāgārjuna’s words possess zhèngliàng 正量 (right authority) and may be transmitted; (4) sectarian placement of the work within the Mahāyāna kōng-zōng 空宗 (Madhyamaka).
Abstract
The author and date of this sub-commentary are unknown; on the basis of the doctrinal terminology (especially the jiào / lǐ 教/理 framework and the explicit kōngzōng placement) and the manuscript paleography, Huá Fāngtián places it in the Táng. The work is unrecorded in any Chinese Buddhist catalogue and was lost from the canon. The Taishō text (T85 no. 2816) was set from S. 269 alone (head intact, tail damaged with c. 1,000 characters lost), with c. 30 transcription errors (e.g. děng 等 misread as hù 互, ēn 恩 as sī 思, suīluè 雖略 as nánsī 難思). Huá Fāngtián’s 1996 edition adopts S. 269 + Beijing Library Běi 7258 (麗 83, head damaged tail intact) as the joint base text — together they restore the work’s full extent — and collates against Běi 7256 (海 39) and P. 2211. The triple-collation with KR6v0033 and KR6v0034 resolves further difficulties.
Translations and research
- See KR6v0033.
- Huá Fāngtián 華方田, “Yīnyuán xīn shì-lùn kāijué jì 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 3 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1996).
Other points of interest
- The recovery of the tail c. 1,000 characters from Běi 7258 is one of the principal text-critical contributions of the Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn edition: the closing section contains the author’s zōngjié 宗結 placing the work in the Mahāyāna kōngzōng and was wholly absent from the Taishō.
- The sub-commentator’s account of Nāgārjuna draws on Lóngshù púsà zhuàn 龍樹菩薩傳 (T2047) and is therefore post-Kumārajīva (post-413 CE).