Wéikè 惟慤 — Mid-Tang Buddhist yìjiě 義解 (“doctrinal-exegesis”) master, resident at the Chóngfúsì 崇福寺 in Cháng’ān (or in the 神都 — i.e., Luòyáng during the period when the Wǔ Zhōu and successor Tang courts used Luòyáng as the secondary capital). Native of Shàngdǎng 上黨 (in modern southern Shānxī); lay surname Lián 連, claiming descent from the Qí dàfū Chēng 齊大夫稱 (a Warring-States great officer of the state of Qí). Lifedates unrecorded; productive period spans the late seventh and early-mid eighth centuries.
Took the tonsure at age nine after losing both parents (九歲割愛), received the precepts in his early twenties (冠年納戒). Around the age of forty, while resident at the shén-dū (Luòyáng), he undertook to compose a commentary on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra (KR6j0118) at the request held in the residence of the former chief minister Fáng Róng 房融 (the Tang official traditionally credited with the polishing of the Śūraṃgama translation). According to the Sòng Gāosēng-zhuàn hagiography, he had a vision in which the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (Miào-jí-xiáng 妙吉祥), riding the lion suān-ní 狻猊, entered through his mouth (忽夢妙吉祥乘狻猊自愨之口入), and from that point the writing of the commentary “flowed as if the Buddha himself were teaching the Prajñāpāramitā to Subhūti” (由茲下筆若大覺之被善現談般若焉). The work was completed in Dàlì 1, bǐng-wǔ = 766 CE (起大曆元年丙午（766）也) in three fascicles.
The original three-fascicle commentary is lost as an independent work, but its substantive content is preserved as the textual base of the Lèngyán-jīng jiān 楞嚴經箋 (KR6j0679, X11 no. 271), a 10-fascicle expanded version produced in the Sòng by Kě-dù 可度 可度 who provided extensive sub-glosses (jiān 箋, “marginalia”). The work is therefore the earliest extant commentary on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra, predating Cháng-shuǐ Zǐ-xuán’s Yì-shū by some two and a half centuries.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A008962; Sòng Gāosēngzhuàn 宋高僧傳 fasc. 5, Wéikè zhuàn 惟慤傳 (T50n2061_p0738b14–c).