불교의 주석 전통과 과문(科文)의 발달

Abstract

As Buddhist texts were translated to Classical Chinese in East Asia, a rich tradition of commentary and analysis developed. These commentaries analyze the sūtra’s structure and classify them according to their meaning. They also comprehensively dissect a scripture’s phraseology and wording. Gwamun in Korean or Kewen in Chinese 科文 is a methodology and structure that effectively captures this commentarial tradition of analysis and classification. In simple terms, a gwamun is an analysis of a commentary or scripture in the form of a multi-level, hierarchical tree diagram of topics connected by complicated lines, which reduces a multi-dimensional network of texts, commentaries, and sub-commentaries into a two dimensional visual form. Gwamun have served as an important tool to read, study, and compare the enormous amount of commentarial literature that accompanied the development of the many doctrinal sects in East Asia. As the culture of gwamun developed and their structure became codified, a standard, systematic methodology of scriptural analysis unique to East Asian Buddhism developed around the principles of gwamun structural organization beginning in the 6th Century CE. Gwamun and commentary shared a close interrelationship–the systematization of commentary structure led to a standardization of gwamun, and vice versa. Now commentary was a way of re-producing the scripture while also being able to introduce original thought. It seems that gwamun were first used to analyze the body of the text as detailed exegesis. As the addition of the interpretive essay became standardized, gwamun expanded its focus to cover the entirety of the commentary, including the author’s interpretation. Gwamun became a major insightful tool to understand the entirety of not only a commentary’s form but also its content. In this paper we will showcase the results of our project to analyze over 150 gwamun texts, examine their characteristic forms, and argue that the Buddhist scholars’ efforts to codify and standardize the tradition of commentarial literature were one aspect of a broader intent to intellectually and logically systematize the entire scope of East Asian Buddhism, its texts, and the theories contained within. At a time when many different texts and thought competed with each other, their structural coherence, complexity, and completeness of logical organization could demonstrate the superiority and legitimacy of their doctrine. Through this culture of commentary and gwamun organization, scholastic Buddhism in East Asia reached a new level of development.