Kiben 基辨 (also written 基辧, 1718–1791) — Edo-period Japanese Hossō 法相 (Yogācāra / Faxiang) scholar-monk of Yakushi-ji 藥師寺 at the Western Capital (西京 / 南都西京) of Nara, and one of the principal Tokugawa-era systematisers of the Japanese Hossō scholastic tradition. He bears in the colophons of his works the formula “南都西京藥師寺留學傳法相大乘宗沙門” — “śramaṇa of Yakushi-ji at Saikyō in the Southern Capital, student-instructor of the Hossō-Mahāyāna school.”
His principal extant canonical work is the Yīn-míng dà-shū róngguàn chāo 因明大疏融貫鈔 (KR6o0011, T69n2272), a nine-fascicle harmonising sub-commentary on 窺基 (Kuījī)‘s Dà-shū on the Nyāyapraveśa KR6o0008. The title róngguàn 融貫 (“harmonising and threading through”) signals his project of synthesising the discordant readings of the prior Japanese commentarial tradition — Zenju’s Myōtō shō KR6o0009, Zōshun’s Daishō shō KR6o0010, and the lemmatic kana expositions of the Heian-Kamakura inmyō lineage — into a single coherent treatise. It is in effect the late-Edo summa of Japanese inmyō learning.
DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001020.
Source: DILA A001020; standard Edo Hossō-school biographical sources; Yakushi-ji kōsōden.