三階教文獻綜述

Sānjiējiào wénxiàn zōngshù 三階教文獻綜述

A Comprehensive Survey of the Sānjiē-jiào Documents by 西本照真 (Nishimoto Teruma)

About the work

A scholarly bibliographic survey by Nishimoto Teruma, published as item No. 076 in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn 藏外佛教文獻 vol. 9 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 2003). The article catalogues every surviving witness — Dūnhuáng manuscripts (Stein, Pelliot, Beijing, Russian, and Taiwan collections), Japanese-preserved old copies (Hōryūji 法隆寺, Shōgozō 聖語藏, Kōshōji 興聖寺, Nanatsudera 七寺), and other holdings — of the literature of the Sānjiējiào 三階教 (“Three-Stages Teaching”), the controversial SuíTáng Buddhist movement founded by 信行 Xìnxíng (540–594) and successively suppressed by the Táng court before disappearing as an organised tradition by the Sòng. The survey is organised in three parts: (i) the original 14 + 5 + 1 + 3 = 23 documents identified by Yabuki Keiki 矢吹慶輝 (1879–1939) in his foundational Sangaikyō no kenkyū 三階教之研究 (1927); (ii) the additional 19 documents identified by various scholars — including the author himself — between 1927 and the late 1990s; and (iii) ten newly identified documents the author located during 2002 fieldwork in Chinese collections. The article serves as the analytical companion to Nishimoto’s KR6v0092 — his critical edition of the Fóxìngguān xiūshànfǎ 佛性觀修善法 reconstructed from two complementary fragments — and to his monograph Sangaikyō no kenkyū (1998).

Abstract

Yabuki’s 1927 Sangaikyō no kenkyū established the modern study of Sānjiējiào literature, identifying 23 manuscript witnesses — 14 in the Stein corpus (S.2446, S.832, S.2684, S.59, S.212, S.5668, S.2137, S.190, S.721V, S.4658, S.1315, S.5841, S.3962, S.2423), 5 in the Pelliot corpus (P.2059, P.2412.1, P.3413V, P.2412.2, P.3202), 1 in the Tomi-oka 富岡 family Dūnhuáng holding (Kyōto, lost in the 1923 Kantō earthquake), 1 in the Lónggǔ University Dàgǔtànxiǎnduì 大谷探險隊 holding, and 3 Japanese-preserved old copies of the Sānjiē fófǎ 三階佛法 (the Hōryūji, Shōgozō, and Kōshōji witnesses, photo-printed in 1920 by Ōya Tokujō 大屋德城). After Yabuki, the additional documents identified — among them the Sānjiējiào mǒuChánshī xíngzhuàng shǐmò 三階某禪師行狀始末 (P.2550), the Qióngzhà biànhuòlùn 窮詐辨惑論 (P.2115R), the Xìnxíng-attributed Shòu bājiè fǎ 受八戒法 (P.2849R3), the Zhìfǎ 制法 (P.2849R1, S.7450B.2), the Qǐshífǎ 乞食法 (P.2849R2), the Fóxìng guān 佛性觀 cluster (S.1004; Taiwan 99; Дх 92 Èguān 惡觀), the long Dìsānjiē fófǎ guǎngshì 第三階佛法廣釋 (S.6344, 北 8725R), the Fóxìng wèndá 佛性問答 (北新 1002), the long Dàshèng wújìnzàngfǎ 大乘無盡藏法 (S.9139), and the long Nanatsudera (七寺) witness of the Sānjiē fófǎ — together brought the total to 42 by the end of the 1990s. The 2002 fieldwork in Russian, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Yunnan, and other holdings added a further ten documents (Nos. 43–52), several of which fill in lacunae of previously fragmentary texts and one of which — Дх 1813 — substantially overlaps with the existing S.5841 witness, allowing reciprocal reconstruction. The survey also flags the recovery of the Fóxìngguān xiūshànfǎ 佛性觀修善法 from the joining of 北 8386 (which preserves only the latter half) with 北新 1002 (which preserves only the first half), restoring c. 10,000 characters of one of the doctrinally most important Sānjiē texts (edited as KR6v0092). The article is the most comprehensive bibliographic foundation for any future study of the Sānjiējiào corpus.

Translations and research

• Yabuki Keiki 矢吹慶輝, Sangaikyō no kenkyū 三階教之研究 (Tōkyō: Iwanami, 1927) — the foundational study, of which Nishimoto’s 1998 monograph is the comprehensive revision.
• Nishimoto Teruma 西本照真, Sangaikyō no kenkyū 三階教の研究 (Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1998) — the principal modern monograph.
• Hubbard, Jamie, Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Heresy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001) — the principal English-language monograph on the Sānjiē-jiào.
• Lewis, Mark Edward, “The Suppression of the Three Stages Sect: Apocrypha as a Political Issue,” in Robert E. Buswell, Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990), pp. 207–238.
• Robson, James, “Inventing the Three Stages: A Reconsideration of the Origins, Genealogy, and Suppression of the Sānjiē-jiào,” in Christoph Anderl, ed., Zen Buddhist Rhetoric in China, Korea, and Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 99–144.

Other points of interest

The cataloguing methodology Nishimoto applies — exhaustive joins between fragmentary witnesses across different collections, attention to verso-recto reuse (e.g., P.2849 carrying three different Sānjiē texts on different sides), and the philological reconstitution of titles from internal evidence (擬題, “tentative title”) — has become a model for the recovery of other lost Buddhist textual lineages from the Dūnhuáng material. The 1923 Kantō earthquake loss of the Tomi-oka Huáyánzhāng 華嚴章 manuscript is also documented here as a permanent gap in the corpus.

Links

• CBETA
• Cf. KR6v0092 (Nishimoto’s edition of the Fóxìngguān xiūshànfǎ — the principal text recovered by the joining methodology described in this survey)
• Cf. the Sānjiējiào fragmentary editions in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vols. 1–4 (esp. vol. 4, with Fāng Guǎngchāng’s editions of the long Dàshèng wújìnzàngfǎ S.9139 and the Fóxìng wèndá 北新 1002)