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The date of the Leng-chia shih-tzu chi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

T. H. Barrett
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Extract

Among the many manuscripts relating to Ch’an Buddhism included in the Tun-huang finds of the early years of this century, the Leng-chia shih-tzu chi has always been regarded by scholars as a discovery of unusual importance, since it presents an unrivalled picture of the early development of this type of Buddhism from the long-obscured viewpoint of the so-called Northern school of Ch’an. The text has been rendered into English lately by J. C. Cleary, but only in a translation intended for a non-scholarly audience. Fortunately, however, the new French-language translation and study by Bernard Faure is everything a scholar could wish for, a worthy product of many years of research, including several spent at the feet of Yanagida Seizan, Japan's outstanding authority on the early historiography of Ch’an. Faure's work, not surprisingly, shows a complete grasp of the complex issues of intellectual history raised by his text, and also provides copious commentary on its author, Ching-chüeh (683–c. 750), and his background.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1991 , pp. 255 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1991

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References

1 It was, for example, the news that Hu Shih possessed photographs of this text which alerted D. T. Suzuki to the importance of Hu's researches in Ch’an; see p. 117 of Barrett, T. H., “Arthur Waley, D. T. Suzuki and Hu Shih: new light on the ‘Zen and history’ controversy”, Buddhist Studies Review VI (1989), pp. 116–21Google Scholar; cf. also Suzuki's remarks in the introduction to his translation, The Lankavatara Sutra (London, 1932), pp. xlvi–xlviiGoogle Scholar.

2 In Cleary, J. C., Zen Dawn: Early Zen Texts from Tun Huang (Boston and London, 1986), pp. 17–78Google Scholar.

3 Faure, Bernard, Le bouddhisme Ch’an en mal d’histoire: genèse d’une tradition religieuse dans la Chine des T’ang (Publications de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Vol. CLVIII.) pp. xiv, 245, 6 pl. Paris, 1989Google Scholar. Quite apart from the annotations to his translation (Cleary provides none) Faure also supplies over eighty pages of introductory material, settling inter alia such complex questions as the relationship of the current Chinese versions of the text to two different Tibetan translations, one of which has wrongly been suspected an earlier form of the work. A companion study by Faure covering larger questions of Northern Ch’an history has already appeared: La volonté d’orthodoxie dans le bouddhisme chinois (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar.

4 Forte, Antonino, Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century (Naples, 1976)Google Scholar has shown how deeply the most eminent members of the Buddhist clergy were compromised by their support for the Empress Wu and how desperately later clerics sought to disown them once the T’ang was fully restored: see in particular his remarks on pp. 111–16 of his study.

5 Faure, , En mal d’histoire, pp. 9–16Google Scholar, describes the period from Ching-chüeh's point of view; Richard W. Guisso gives an overview of the immediate aftermath of the Empress Wu's reign in Twitchett, D. C. (ed.), Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3, Part I (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 321–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lu-tche, Lin, tr. des Rotours, R., La Règne de l’Empereur Hiuan-tsong (713–756) (Paris, 1981), pp. 60–96Google Scholar gives a fuller, but less critical account.

6 Guisso, , Cambridge History of China, pp. 326–8Google Scholar; Rotours, Lin/des, Hiuan-tsong, pp. 94–108Google Scholar. For the T’ai-p’ing Princess as a patron of religion, see Yoshitoyo, Yoshioka, Dō;kyō keitenshi ron (Tokyo, 1955), pp. 98–106Google Scholar.

7 The change in religious policy under Hsüan-tsung is dealt with by Faure, in Volonté d’orthodoxie, pp. 87–98Google Scholar; see also the sources listed in his p. 119 n. 2, and especially also a recent article by Mamoru, Tonami, “Policy towards the Buddhist church in the reign of T’ang Hsüan-tsung”, Acta Asiatica LV (1988), pp. 27–47Google Scholar.

8 See McMullen, D. L., “The death of Chou Li-chen: imperially ordered suicide or natural causes?” Asia Major (3rd series) 2.2 (1989), pp. 23–82Google Scholar; note the characterization of Hsüan-tsung's attitude on p. 69, but also that vendettas were clearly in progress. Note also that Ch’en Yin-k’o's assertion that the ruling group remained stable throughout this period has also come in for criticism: see Yung-nien, Huang, “K’ai-yüan T’ien-pao shih so-wei Wu-shih cheng-chih shih-li ti p’ou-hsi”, Shan-hsi shih-ta hsüeh-pao 1981.4, pp. 62–7, 77Google Scholar.

9 Hsiu, Ou-yang (comp.), Hsin T’ang shu 74A (Peking, 1975), p. 3140Google Scholar.

10 Hsin T’ang shu 119, pp. 4293–5.

11 Hsin T’ang shu 206, pp. 5834, 5839.

12 Hsin T’ang shu 152, p. 4835.

13 Hsü, Liu (comp.), Chiu T’ang shu 108 (Peking, 1975), p. 4159Google Scholar, which cross-refers to a non-existent biography.

14 See Seizan, Yanagida, Shoki Zenshū shisho no kenkyū (Kyoto, 1967), pp. 111, 116Google Scholar.

15 Faure, , Volonté d’orthodoxie, pp. 89–91Google Scholar, remarks on the eclipse of the “Northern” school of Ch’an at this time, with the exception of I-hsing (683?–727), whose abilities as an astronomer commended him to the emperor. Note that even the Taoist leader Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen was not summoned to the court by Hsüan-tsung until 721: see the biographical summary on p. 34 of Engelhardt, Ute, Die Klassische Tradition der Qi-Übungen {Qigong) (Stuttgart, 1987)Google Scholar. Almost the only religious figures well received by Hsüan-tsung at this point were newly-arrived Indian Tantric masters untainted by any political connections in China.

16 Yanagida, , Shoki Zenshū shisho, p. 611Google Scholar; cf. Faure, , En mal d’histoire, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

17 See, e.g., the diagrams on pp. 300, 302–3, 304 of Chikurō, Hiroike, Tōyō hōseishi kenkyū (Tokyo, 1983)Google Scholar, which, however, show no relationship further than three removes.

18 Hsin T’ang shu 70A, p. 1990. Name-patterning of this type, of course, remains common today: see Baker, H. D. R., Chinese Family and Kinship (London and Basingstoke, 1979), p. 30Google Scholar.

19 Shih, Hu, Hu Shih Ch’an hsüeh-an (Taipei, 1975), p. 291Google Scholar: the essay cited was first published in 1958.

20 Faure, , En mal d’histoire, p. 171Google Scholar (the full title for Chung-tsung has somehow dropped from the text); cf. his p. 73 n. 58, and Yampolsky, Philip B., The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York, 1967), p. 19Google Scholar n. 48, for some other attempts at dating.

21 Faure, , En mal d’histoire, p. 78Google Scholar.

22 Cleary, , Zen Dawn, p. 19Google Scholar, though he follows a text which has omitted the specific figure “ten”: cf. Seizan, Yanagida, Shoki no Zenshi, Vol. I (Tokyo, 1971), p. 61Google Scholar; Faure is in fact following Yanagida's reading of the passage (p. 58) which interpolates the words “sensei ni” to make the ten years of religious tutelage refer to Hsūan-tse as the master concerned.

23 Faure, , En mal d’histoire, p. 78 n. 86Google Scholar.

24 See Yanagida's notes on the metaphors mentioned by Faure on pp. 73, 211, 157 (and cf. Faure's own note, p. 126 n. 14), 238–9 respectively of Shoki no Zenshi, Vol. I; in some cases Yanagida's notes could easily be expanded. Ching-chüeh's commentary, for that matter (reprinted in Yanagida, , Shoki no Zenshū shisho, pp. 600–10)Google Scholar, does not always seem to apply the metaphors in quite the same way.

25 Ch’in-jo, Wang et al. (comp.), Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei (Peking, 1960), p. 30Google Scholar.7b, gives the precise date, 18 August, 716 (though this source is not always reliable); Jui-tsung died on 12 or 13 July, according to the best sources I have been able to discover. We must in any case assume that Ching-chüeh would not have known this immediately.

26 Tadao, Yoshikawa, “Hotoke wa kokoro ni ari”, in Mitsuji, Fukunaga (ed.), Chūgoku chūsei no shūkyō to bunka (Kyoto: Kyōto daigaku Jimbun kagaku kenkyūjo, 1982), pp. 47–101Google Scholar; note especially p. 86.

27 Yampolsky, , Platform Sutra, pp. 26–7Google Scholar, and cf. p. 155; Yoshikawa, , “Hotoke”, pp. 88–9Google Scholar.

28 To the references on p. 92 n. 31 of Barrett, T. H., “‘Kill the Patriarchs!’”, in Skorupski, T. (ed.), The Buddhist Forum, Vol. I (London, 1990), pp. 87–97Google Scholar, add Kao, Tung, et al. (comp.), Ch’üan T’ang wen (Peking, 1818), p. 611Google Scholar.11a, dated to 827, though this text of primarily Confucian inspiration varies the phrase slightly.

29 See Yanagida, 's edition of this piece in Shoki Zenshū shisho, p. 519Google Scholar.

30 See n. 26 above.

31 Chi-yün, Ch’en, T’ang-yin fo-chiao pien-ssu-lu (Shanghai, 1988), pp.54–5Google Scholar.

32 Yanagida, , Shoki Zenshū shisho, p. 530Google Scholar.

33 Chiu T’ang shu 95, pp. 3010, 3011Google Scholar.

34 Unfortunately a slight slip has somewhat obscured this in Faure's text: see n. 20 above.

35 See p. 319 of Ogawa, , “Shoki Zenshū keiseishi no ichi sokumen”, Komazawa daigaku Bukkyō gakubu ronshū XX (1989), pp. 310–25Google Scholar.