Huìdá 惠達 (also written 慧達; lifedates uncertain, fl. early–mid 5th c.), Eastern Jìn / LiúSòng Chinese Buddhist monk of the Xiǎozhāotísì 小招提寺 in Jiāngníng 江寧 (modern Nanjing), the earliest editor of 僧肇 Sēngzhào’s collected treatises and the author of the canonical preface to KR6m0038 Zhào lùn T1858. The preface is one of the principal early-Chinese-Buddhist documents on the figure of Sēngzhào and on the editorial conception of the Zhàolùn as a unified four-treatise collection rather than four independent essays. Huìdá’s biographical record is sparse; the Sòng gāosēng zhuàn 宋高僧傳 does not preserve a notice on him, and his lifedates can be inferred only from internal evidence in the preface and from references in 元康 Yuánkāng’s KR6m0039 Zhàolùn shū.
Huìdá is also credited (in some pre-modern catalog references and in the modern Xù zàngjīng tradition) with a sub-commentary on the Zhàolùn preserved as KR6m0041 Zhàolùn shū X54n0866 and as the xù of KR6m0043 Jiākē Zhàolùn xù zhù X54n0869. The attribution is generally accepted in the Chinese commentarial tradition, although the work as we have it appears to incorporate material from later commentators.
The Sòng gāosēng zhuàn notes that Huìdá was active as a doctrinal commentator in the lower-Yangtze Buddhist establishment of the LiúSòng (420–479) period; his Xiǎozhāotísì 小招提寺 was located in the Jīngkǒu 京口 / Jiāngníng 江寧 region, near the political and cultural centre of the southern dynastic establishments.
Works in the Kanripo corpus: preface to KR6m0038 Zhào lùn (T1858); attributed authorship of KR6m0041 Zhàolùn shū (X866).