Source: Liefke and Plassen 2016

Liefke, Lena and Jörg Plassen. "Some New Light on an Old Authorship Problem in Huayan Studies: The Relationship between T.1867 and T.1877 from a Text-Critical and Linguistic Perspective." Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung 39 (2016): 103-136.

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T1867 and T1877 bear a close relationship to one another. Liefke and Plassen summarise earlier scholarship that questioned the ascription to Du Shun 杜順 of the Wu jiao zhiguan 五教止觀 T1867. They note that regardless of such doubts, it was always assumed that T1867 was nonetheless the earlier text. Yūki, for example, argued that both texts were by Fazang 法藏, with T1867 representing an earlier "draft" of a work polished in T1877. More recently, Nakanishi Toshihide has challenged the idea of Fazang's authorship, arguing that this whole group of texts date to a period after 740 and prior the "fading" of the Northern school of Chan. Nakanishi bases this argument on supposed N. Chan diction in the texts.

Liefke and Plassen argue, by contrast, that T1877 is earlier than T1867, and that the latter is a revision and abbreviation of the former. They base this argument on formal and structural criteria. They exclude the hypothesis of a common third source for material shared between the two texts, on the basis that the overlaps are too extensive. They also exclude the possibility of a common author, on the grounds that the style of the two texts is too different. Referring to work by Helbig on the reasons that authors can draw from or cite earlier works without explicitly acknowledging the source, they suggest that it is most likely that the author of T1867 deliberately concealed his reliance on T1877. The further characterise the work that was achieved to produce T1867 on the basis of T1877 as logical streamlining and textual simplification. Nonetheless, they do not claim that the identification of the direction of borrowing between the two texts yields any clear hypothesis about the identity of the author of either text.

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T1867 and T1877 bear a close relationship to one another. Liefke and Plassen summarise earlier scholarship that questioned the ascription to Du Shun 杜順 of the Wu jiao zhiguan 五教止觀 T1867. They note that regardless of such doubts, it was always assumed that T1867 was nonetheless the earlier text. Yuki, for example, argued that both texts were by Fazang 法藏, with T1867 representing an earlier "draft" of a work polished in T1877. More recently, Nakanishi Toshihide has challenged the idea of Fazang's authorship, arguing that this whole group of texts date to a period after 740 and prior the "fading" of the Northern school of Chan. Nakanishi bases this argument on supposed N. Chan diction in the texts. Liefke and Plassen argue, by contrast, that T1877 is earlier than T1867, and that the latter is a revision and abbreviation of the former. They base this argument on formal and structural criteria. They exclude the hypothesis of a common third source for material shared between the two texts, on the basis that the overlaps are too extensive. They also exclude the possibility of a common author, on the grounds that the style of the two texts is too different. Referring to work by Helbig on the reasons that authors can draw from or cite earlier works without explicitly acknowledging the source, they suggest that it is most likely that the author of T1867 deliberately concealed his reliance on T1877. The further characterise the work that was achieved to produce T1867 on the basis of T1877 as logical streamlining and textual simplification. Nonetheless, they do not claim that the identification of the direction of borrowing between the two texts yields any clear hypothesis about the identity of the author of either text. T1867; 華嚴五教止觀 T1877; 華嚴遊心法界記