From the tenth century to the twelfth century beginnig, the Liao 遼dynasty (916–1125) governed the northeastern China. The successive emperors believed in Buddhism deeply, and the Buddhism culture of Liao developed very much. Liao Buddhism produced a large number of monks. One of them was Xianyan 鮮演(?–1118), who was known as a scholar of Huayan thought. Xianyan’s Huayan jing tanxuan jueze 華厳経談玄決択, which is a commentary on Chengguan’s 澄観(738–839) Huayan jing shu 華厳経疏and Suishu yanyi chao 随疏演義 鈔, occupies the important position as a work showing the high level of Liao Buddhism. And the manuscript is kept in Kanazawabunko 金沢文庫in Japan. As a characteristic of Xianyan overlooked in a precedent study, we can point out his overuse of a metaphor. When some contradiction occurs in an argument about a doctrine, he tends to try cancellation of it with a unique metaphor. On that occasion, he often pushes forward proof while comparing a metaphor and teaching one by one. Such a tendency of Xianyan lets us recall Zongmi 宗密(780–841). He also overuses metaphors and compares a metaphor and teaching. He suggests that one should refer to the footnote at which teaching is written in after understanding a sentence of a metaphor completely. In this article, we hypothesize that there is the influence of Zongmi in a background of Xianyan’s overuse of a metaphor. Secondly, we examine an example of the Huayan jing tanxuan jueze concretely in order to verify the above-mentioned hypothesis and elucidate that Xianyan succeeds to Zongmi’s style of a description.
