《大乘义章》与北朝佛教释义学

The Explanatory Notes on Mahayana and Buddhist Hermeneutics in the Northern Dynasties

北朝晚期,在东魏、北齐的邺城,佛教义学兴盛,出现了一批以“义章”或“论”为题的解经文献,尤以净影慧远《大乘义章》最著名。“义章”与“义”是同一文体,属于“义”的汇编,是真正的中国文体,就其内容的组织结构而言,则是对印度佛教论义传统的继承,有两种基本形态:通论形态的“义章”,主要是对名相的分类与阐释;释论形态的“义章”,直接表现了当时的解经活动。属于后者的“义章”并不多,渐与“义疏”融为一体.常被统称为“章疏”;“义章”主要是指前者,是北朝晚期佛教释义学的主体部分.通常•借用印度论典的组织结构,以当时传译的唯识思想诠释中国佛教的重要概念。

In the late Northern Dynasties(北朝),Buddhist hermeneutics flourished in Yecheng(邺城)which was the capital of the Eastern Wei(东魏)and later of the Northern Qi(北齐),and there appeared a number of Buddhist scripture-interpreted literatures under the title of"explanatory notes"(义章)or"commentaries"(论),among which the most famous one was the Explanatory Notes on Mahayana(《大乘义章》)by Huiyuan of the Jingying Temple(净影慧远).Explanatory notes belonged to the category of exegeses(义),which were a typical Chinese genre to interpret important notions.So far as the organization and structure of their contents are concerned,Chinese explanatory notes inherited the tradition of the exegeses of Indian Buddhist hermeneutics.Explanatory notes included two basic forms:the general commentaries and the interpretive commentaries.The former form of explanatory notes was mainly the classification and interpretation of terms or notions,while the latter directly presented the activities of Buddhist scripture interpretation at that time.Actually,there were very few explanatory notes in the form of interpretive commentaries,which were gradually integrated with annotational notes(义疏)under the title of explanatory and annotational notes(章疏).As a result,the explanatory notes in the form of general commentaries constituted the main part of Buddhist Hermeneutics in the late Northern Dynasties,which explicated the important notions of Chinese Buddhism by means of the organization and structure of Hinayina(小乘)doctrine,mostly in the frame of Yogacra Buddhism that had just been introduced into China.