Hōtan 鳳潭 (1659–1738) — Edo-period Japanese Kegon 華嚴 (Avataṃsaka) scholar, the most learned Kegon-school scholastic of the Tokugawa period and the leading 18th-century critic of the Hui-yuan / Jìng-fǎ-yuàn 慧苑/靜法苑 splinter-tradition that had departed from Fa-zang’s orthodox positions. Religious name Sōshun 僧濬; Hōtan is a sobriquet.
Hōtan was a Yamato Province native who studied at multiple Edo Buddhist institutions before becoming the principal proponent of the Tōdaiji-Kōzan-ji Fa-zang orthodoxy in late-Tokugawa Kegon scholarship. His mature work integrated Kegon, Yogācāra, Tathāgatagarbha, and Esoteric positions in a comprehensive synthesis; he was also active in Buddhist-Christian polemics (he wrote the anti-Christian Sānjiào dìnghéng 三教定衡 in 1714) and in the broader Edo Buddhist scholastic-revival movement.
His principal canonical Kegon work is Huāyán wǔjiào zhāng kuāngzhēn chāo 華嚴五教章匡眞鈔 (KR6t0040, T73n2344), a ten-fascicle sub-commentary on Fa-zang’s Wǔ jiào zhāng completed in Kyōhō 16 = 1731 in its second redaction. The work is a polemical defence of the orthodox Du-shùn-Zhì-yǎn-Fa-zang-Chéng-guān line against the Hui-yuan splinter-tradition. The imprint lists six major Kyōto Buddhist publishers — Izumo-ji, Kuntoku-dō, Bundai-ken, Heiraku-ji, Inoue-saijitsu-shi, Zuishō-kaku — confirming the work’s reception as a major late-Edo publication.
DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001645; Wikidata Q11173821.
Works:
- KR6t0040 Huāyán wǔjiào zhāng kuāngzhēn chāo 華嚴五教章匡眞鈔 (T73n2344), 10 fasc., second collation 1731.
Western reference: Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism; Erik Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism.