Anchō 安超 — Medieval Japanese Tendai 天台 scholar-monk, conventionally associated with the Sanmon 山門 (Mt. Hiei / Enryaku-ji main-line) tradition. Identified through the doctrinal stance of his only surviving canonical work KR6o0075 Pútíxīn lùn jiànwén 菩提心論見聞 (T70n2294), which gathers the views of the three principal medieval Japanese Esoteric lineages — Tōji 東寺 (Kogi Shingon main line), Mii 三井 (Onjō-ji / Tendai Jimon-ha), and Sanmon 山門 (Hieizan Tendai) — on each contested point and adjudicates from the Sanmon perspective, indicating his own affiliation.
Precise lifedates are not preserved in standard biographical sources and Anchō does not appear in the DILA Buddhist Person Authority database. The composition of his Kenmon must antedate the Kōō 1 (康應改元己巳, 1389) copy-colophon by 定智 Jōchi at Kekajō-ji 花藏寺 in Ueno-no-kuni (modern Gunma); on internal grounds (citation of Kakuban 覺鑁’s Daishin yōgi shō 大日要義抄 in juǎn 3, but no apparent citation of post-Kakuban Shingi-Shingon literature) the work is plausibly placed in the late Kamakura period, c. 1250–1350.
A second copy-colophon dated Kan’ei 8 (寛永八年, 1631) records the transmission of the manuscript to Tenkai Daisōjō 天海大僧正 (1536–1643), the Tendai monk-advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, at the Hieizan Saitō Keikō-in 西塔溪廣院 — documenting the work’s transmission through the Edo-era Tendai establishment.
Source: transmission colophons preserved in T70n2294; internal doctrinal evidence.