LOTUS SUTRA, translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA 鳩摩羅什 with commentary by JIEHUAN 戒環.

Myobŏp yŏnhwagyŏng 妙法蓮華經 [Ch. Miao fa lian hua jing; Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Dharma].

One single-page & one double-page woodcut. [2], 3, 2, 4, 51 folding leaves. Woodblock-printed. One kwŏn in one volume. Small folio (334 x 220 mm.), orig. patterned semi-stiff wrappers (with handwritten title as usual), new stitching. [Chuwangsan, Korea]: Taejŏnsa Temple, 1685.

Early and rare Korean woodblock edition of the Lotus Sutra, with the Preface by Daoxuan 道宣 (596-667) and line commentaries by Jiehuan 戒環 (fl. 1127) a Song-dynasty Chan monk. The woodblocks were carved in 1685 at the Taejŏnsa Temple, said to have been first constructed in the 7th century; it was destroyed during the Imjin War (1592) and subsequently rebuilt in the 17th century. Our copy includes the first two chapters (K. pum 品) in one kwŏn, preceded by a frontispiece and a double-page woodcut pyŏnsangdo 變相圖 depicting a scene from the sutra.

The original author of the sutra is not known, but we know it existed by 255 CE. It was translated into Chinese by the Central Asian scholar-monk Kumārajīva (344-413 CE) in 406 CE. This translation is thought to be the closest to the presumed original version. “The Lotus Sutra is one of the most important and influential of all the sutras or sacred scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, revered by almost all branches of the Mahayana teachings, and over many centuries the object of intense veneration among Buddhist believers throughout China, Korea, Japan, and other regions of eastern Asia.” It is “an important text of world literature” (Watson, The Lotus Sutra (SUNY: 1993), pp. ix-x).

The colophon printed at the end of Jiehuan’s Preface states that the woodblocks were carved in the spring of Kangxi 24 (1685) at the Taejŏnsa Temple and gives the list of donors and carvers.

Sutras printed in Korea before the 18th century are very rare today. We do not find any entries associated with the Taejŏnsa Temple in WorldCat or KORCIS, the Korean online union catalogue of rare books in Korea.

Nice, fresh copy, with some light and mostly marginal dampstaining towards end. Marginal annotations at beginning and end of the volume, and next to the colophon, state the place of printing (Taejŏnsa). A small circular red seal on the last folio, illegible.