Yì-yún Fǎ-jīn-gāng 義雲法金剛 (= “Yì-yún the Dharma-Vajra”; fl. c. 730–770) — Chinese disciple-scribe of the Indian master Bodhiseṇa (菩提仙, 704–760) at Cháng-ān during the Kāi-yuán / Tiān-bǎo years.
His name appears in two interlocking colophons:
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In the colophon of KR6j0409 (T1184), Bodhiseṇa’s translation of the Eight-Syllable Mañjuśrī Maṇḍala-Vidhi, which gives the lineage-line: 「中天竺國大那爛陀寺戒行沙門菩提㗚使(二合)淨智金剛譯親承筆授僧義雲傳流」 — “Yì-yún, the disciple-scribe (筆授) and transmitter (傳流) [of the text]“. Here the name is the bare 義雲 (Yì-yún).
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In the colophon of KR6j0425 (X181), the parallel re-edition of the same Eight-Syllable Maṇḍala-Vidhi preserved in the Manji Zokuzōkyō, the name appears in the expanded form 義雲法金剛 (“Yì-yún the Dharma-Vajra”), reflecting a later Esoteric initiation-name (法金剛 = Dharma-vajra) reflecting his place in an Esoteric abhiṣeka-lineage.
He should not be confused with the late-Tang Chán master 義雲 義雲 of the Cáo-dòng (Sōtō) tradition. The two are unrelated; the present figure is purely the Tang-Esoteric scribe-disciple of Bodhiseṇa, not a Chán figure. He is a representative example of the Chinese disciple-scribes who served as crucial intermediaries between Indian visiting masters and the Chinese reading public — and whose own redactions and re-editions of master-translations accumulated into the Esoteric corpus over generations.