維摩經略疏垂裕記 1.32

1.32

"Its Way is exceedingly prominent": the commentary explaining the sūtra's title comprises six fascicles titled *Xuan* ["Profound Meaning"], and the commentary explaining the sūtra's text comprises twenty-eight fascicles titled *Wen* ["Textual Explanation"], making thirty-four fascicles in all; hence it is said to be "exceedingly prominent." Another version reads "exceedingly vast," which also makes sense. "Exceedingly vast" is an expression from the *Zhouyi*; "exceedingly prominent" is an expression from the *Wenxuan*. Below "those fond of...", he points out the faults of the extensive commentary: *shi* means to covet; *jian* means brief. Below "I wish to...", he explains his wish to abridge it. "Build upon it" means composing the text based on the old commentary to expand the sūtra's teaching, not writing an entirely separate work. "Abridge and prune it" means excising and pruning verbose and cluttered wording to preserve its concise and essential explanations. Therefore Jingxi's own preface states: "What carries meaning must be preserved; where words are verbose, they are pruned." "What do you think?" poses the matter to ask whether it is acceptable. Below "the disciples...", since it suited the assembly's wishes, they joined in making the request. "Excised its extraneous words": "excising" (*xiao*) has two meanings: first, to excise and remove; second, to select by pruning. Here it means selecting from the extensive commentary its pure words to form an independent work. Although its text is abridged, the doctrinal classifications remain unchanged, hence it says "without deviating from the old rules." With the verbose words pruned away, the refined meanings become even clearer, hence it says "its meaning became solely luminous." Below "circulating alongside...", this clarifies that Jingxi merely selected its pure words without discarding the old commentary. When compared to the old, the names "extensive" and "abridged" arose. The intention was to let those who favor the extensive consult the old, and those who favor the abridged follow the new; hence it circulates alongside the previous work, each according to preference. *Xie* means together.