This article examines the self-imposed textual organization (or kepan) of the sixth century Buddhist treatise entitled the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (or Qixinlun in its popular Chinese abbreviation). While the treatise is generally acknowledged as a well-organized text, its practice of kepan (i.e. the practice, rather than the content, of kepan) has not been examined in a comprehensive and systematic manner: how, or in what forms, does the treatise organize itself? In what scope are such kepans applied? And to what extent are such forms of kepan effective in charting out the structural relationship of the treatise? Responding to these questions, this article proposes to address this neglected issue of the kepan practice in the Qixinlun. More specifically, it seeks to identify and outline some of the major forms of the Qixinlun kepan and, where necessary, to discuss a few possible problems in such kepan systems.
This article examines the self-imposed textual organization (or kepan) of the sixth century Buddhist treatise entitled the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (or Qixinlun in its popular Chinese abbreviation). While the treatise is generally acknowledged as a well-organized text, its practice of kepan (i.e. the practice, rather than the content, of kepan) has not been examined in a comprehensive and systematic manner: how, or in what forms, does the treatise organize itself? In what scope are such kepans applied? And to what extent are such forms of kepan effective in charting out the structural relationship of the treatise? Responding to these questions, this article proposes to address this neglected issue of the kepan practice in the Qixinlun. More specifically, it seeks to identify and outline some of the major forms of the Qixinlun kepan and, where necessary, to discuss a few possible problems in such kepan systems.