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Perspectives in the study of Chinese Buddhism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

E. Zürcher
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Extract

If I, first of all, may express my gratitude to the Royal Asiatic Society for its decision to institute this lecture in memory of Paul Demiéville, please believe that this is more than a ritual gesture. He, indeed, was a person to be remembered both as a man and as a scholar. I shall not speak about his human qualities, for it is impossible to do justice to them in a few words. As a scholar, he was a man of astonishing breadth of vision, as is shown by the many different fields which he covered: Chinese philosophy, Chinese literature; historiography; Sino-Indian studies; the history of Chinese Buddhism, to mention only his main fields of interest, all of which were based on a truly stupendous erudition. For in his case breadth was always combined with depth, accuracy, and utter reliability; with the patient and painstaking labour of philology. Needless to say that, faced with the task of giving a lecture that bears his name, I feel both honoured and embarrassed, for I know that I, at best, can only do justice to one of the fields he covered, the study of Chinese Buddhism – an area in which he made bis most outstanding contributions. It is true that in doing so he worked in line with a great tradition in French sinology, alive ever since the heroic times of Stanislas Julien, that had also been carried on by his teacher Édouard Chavannes and his elder colleagues Paul Pelliot and Henri Maspero. However, it remains true that, also in this field, no other scholar has equalled Paul Demiéville in scope and depth, for his studies cover almost the whole field, from the earliest treatises on dhyāna to late Chinese Buddhist iconography; from the most sophisticated products of Buddhist philosophy to popular Buddhist literature, and from the most rational type of scholasticism to the utter irrationality of those early Ch‘an masters that were so dear to him. His works constitute a vantage-point from which we can overlook the field, and plan future inroads; and if to-day we see some new perspectives, we can only do so by standing on his shoulders.

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Articles
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 114 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 161 - 176
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Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1982

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References

2 cf. Wright, Arthur F., Buddhism in Chinese History, Stanford, 1959, ch. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

3 I use this term of what in Chinese Buddhist bibliography is called denoting Chinese versions produced before the introduction of a more sophisticated translation idiom and the elaboration of a much more diversified technical vocabulary in the last quarter of the 4th century.

4 According to his biography (Ch‘u san-tsang chi-chi Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (= T) 2145, ch. 14, p. 101b, reproduced in Kao-sêng chuan T 2059, ch. 2, p. 332b), Kumārajīva was lodged in the Hsi-ming Pavilion in the imperial Hsiao-yao Park “in order (there) to translate and produce the scriptures”; this is confirmed by colophons and introductions to versions made by Kumārajīva and his team, 17 of which are stated to have been translated “in the Hsiao-yao Park”.

5 In the territory of the Northern by the Hsiung-nu house of Chü-ch‘ü: Both Chü-ch‘ü Mêng-sun (r. 401–433) and his son and successor Chü-ch‘ü Mu-chien (r. 433–439) sponsored the activities of various translators, the most important among whom was Dharmakṣema who at the request of Chü-ch‘ü Mêng-sun produced, inter alia, the so-called “Northern version” of the Mahā-parinirvāṇa-sūtra in A.D. 414–419 (cf. preface and colophon reproduced in CSTCC, T 2145, ch. 8, p. 59c and p. 60a).

6 Guṇavarman was invited by the Liu Sung emperor Wên all the way from Java; after his arrival at Chien-k‘ang in A.D. 431 he was lodged in the Jetavana Monastery Ch‘i-huan ssŭ in the capital (cf. CSTCC, T 2145, ch. 14, p. 104b; KSC, T 2059, ch. 341a). This was also where, in A.D. 435, Guṇabhadra was made to stay after he had been escorted from Canton by a special imperial emissary (CSTCC, ch. 14, p. 105c; KSC, ch. 3, p. 344a). The Jetavana Monastery had been founded by the courtier Fan T‘ai in A.D. 420 (cf. KSC, ch. 7, p. 368c and Sung-shu ch. 60, biography of Fan T‘ai, p. 1623) for the priest Hui-yi who only a few years earlier had supported the dynastic claims of the future founder of the Liu Sung, Liu Yü, by providing the latter with “auspicious objects” revealed to Hiu-yi by the “spirit of Mt. Sung” sung-kao ling-shên (in A.D. 417; for this curious story cf.KSC, loc. cit.). It was Hui-yi himself who had designed the lay-out of the Jetavana monastery, which under the Liu Sung flourished as an important centre of Buddhist activities. The status of Hui-yi, and the fact that after the Liu Sung the monastery is hardly ever mentioned any more, suggest that this institution had a special relation with the ruling family.

7 Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 1, p. 428a. Cf. the analogous treatment given by the Northern Ch‘i emperor Wên-hsüan to Narendrayaśas when the latter arrived at the capital Yeh in A.D. 556 (ibid., ch. 2, p. 432c).

8 In A.D. 515, Sêng-shao had compiled a ”Catalogue of scriptures kept in the Buddha-hall in the Hua-lin Park“ Hua-lin fo-tien chung-ching mu-lu at the order of emperor Wu. Since the emperor was not satisfied with Sêng-shao's work, he again commissioned the famous scholar-monk Pao-ch‘ang to produce a better catalogue. Pao-ch‘ang thereupon compiled his Li-tai chung-ching mu-lu which he submitted to the throne in A.D. 518 (Cf. Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 1, p. 426c; Li-tai san-pao chi T 2034, ch. 11, p. 94b; Pelliot, P. in T‘oung Pao, XXII, 1923, 257ff.). Throughout the Six Dynasties period, the Hua-lin yüan was a famous imperial park in the northern outskirts of the capital. It originally had been a hunting-park of the rulers of Wu. Since the late 5th century it had housed a court-sponsored Buddhist temple that especially under the Liang emperor Wu became the most prestigious centre of upper-class Buddhism. It was here that the pious ruler organized the gorgeous Buddhist rituals and preaching-sessions in which he himself took part, and that were attended by thousands of monks and laymen.Google Scholar

9 The first Buddhist catalogue made in the north by imperial order was a (now lost) Chung-ching mu-lu compiled between 500 and 534 by the layman Li K‘uo (cf. Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 1, p. 428c). The work appears to have been a list of the imperial collection of Buddhist texts that existed before the Wei capital was moved from Lo-yang to Yeh in A.D. 534.

10 No less than 25 out of the 33 known foreign and Chinese translators of Sui and T‘ang times are explicitly stated to have worked under imperial sponsorship. Among them we find all the more prominent and productive translators of that period: Amoghavajra, Bodhiruci, Jinagupta, Narendrayaśas, Prabhākaramitra, Śīkṣānanda, Subhākarasiṁha, Vajrabodhi, Hsüan-tsang, and I-ching. In a number of cases such masters were expressly summoned to the capital in order to engage in translation activities (e.g. Narendrayaśas and Jinagupta in 582; Prabhākaramitra in 627; Bodhiruci in 693, and Śīkṣānanda in 695).

11 In Sui and T‘ang times, the bulk of Buddhist translations was produced in only a few centres. In Ch‘ang-an, translation activities were virtually concentrated in three famous court-sponspred temples: the Ta hsing-shan ssŭ founded by the Sui emperor Wên in 582, and of paramount importance throughout Sui and T‘ang times; the Ta tz‘ŭ-ên ssŭ established in 646 and made famous by the activities of Hsüan-tsang and his translation team, and the Hsi-ming ssŭ founded in 657 by emperor Kao-tsung. In Lo-yang there had been a short period of translation activities in the early 7th century. After the Sui emperor Yang had moved the capital from Ta-hsing to Lo-yang, he ordered the establisment of a translation bureau (fan-ching kuan ) with a clerical staff of foreign and Chinese experts; it was here that the Indian master Dharmagupta produced a number of Chinese versions. The second period of large-scale translation activities in Lo-yang covers the last years of the 7th and the early 8th century, notably under the reign of empress Wu. At that time the most important centre of translation was one of empress Wu's favourite Buddhist institutions, the Fo shou-chi ssŭ

12 e.g. the translation team that was set up by imperial order in A.D. 629, and which, apart from 19 monks with specialized tasks in the actual work of translation, also included three high officials charged with final editing and general supervision (cf. Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 3, p.440a-b).

13 For a survey of texts officially “admitted to the Canon”, and the lists of such texts(ju tsang lu ) that form part of almost all Buddhist catalogues since early Sui times, see Gemmyō, OnoBussho kaisetsu daijiten betsu-kan Tokyo, 1936, 423ff.Google Scholar

14 For our purpose it may suffice to point out that in the formative phase of the school-traditions (tsung ) in Chinese Buddhism the leading masters all belonged to the clerical élite. Without exception they operated at the highest social level and enjoyed imperial patronage. This holds good for all the “founding fathers” and their most illustrious successors: Chi-tsang (549–623) and Fa-lang (507–581) of the Three Treatises (san-lun ) School; Chih-i (538–598), Kuan-ting (561–632) and Chanjan (711–782) of the T'ien-t'ai School; the Hua-yen “patriarchs” Chih-yen (606–668), Fa-tsang (643–712) and Ch'eng-kuan (737–838); Hsüan-tsang (602–664) and K'ui-chi (602–682) who established the Fa-hsiang School; Tao-hsüan (596–667) of the Disciplinary School, and the Pure Land (ching-t'u ) masters T'an-luan (476–542), Tao-cho (562–645) and Shan-tao (d. 662, var. 681). In spite of its alleged “popular” or “anti-conventional” character, the earliest propagators of Ch'an Buddhism in its northern and southern variants, the masters Shen-hsiu (600–706) and Shen-hui (668–760), clearly belong to the same clerical élite. The social and political background of the school-traditions would deserve a detailed study, along the lines indicated by S. Weinstein in his important article “Imperial patronage in the formation of T'ang Buddhism”, in Wright, A. F. and Twitchett, D. (ed.), Perspectives on the T'ang, New Haven, 1973, 265–306.Google Scholar

15 CSTCC, T 2145, ch. 5, p. 40b.

16 CSTCC, loc. cit., lists 21 titles of works totalling 35 chüan. Some titles are identical with those of certain well-known Mahāyāna scriptures such as the Lotus sūtra, Fa-hua ching the Śrīmālā-devī-simhanāda-sūtra, Shêng-man ching and the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa, wei-mo ching In most cases the titles do not correspond to any known authentic scriptures, but they clearly are patterned after Buddhist examples, making use of conventional Buddhist terms like “Pure Land” ching-t'u “Prajnā” pan-jo “Anāgāmin” a-na-han “Lion's Roar” shih-tzŭ hou etc.

17 CSTCC, T 2145, loc. cit.

18 Ming-hsiang chi by Wang Yen quoted in Fa-yüan chu-lin T 2122, ch. 18, p.417a.

19 Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 25, p. 650c–651a.

20 ibid., p. 649b-c.

21 CSTCC, T 2145, ch. 5, p. 40b-c.

22 T 1331, wrongly attributed to the 4th-century dhāraṇī-specialist Śsrīmitra.

23 T 1331, ch. 1, p. 497c–498a.

24 ibid., p. 501b.

25 The best general survey of Chinese Buddhist apocryphal literature is to be found in the introductory part of Makita Tairyō Gikyō no kenkyū Kyōto, , 1977, 1–95.Google Scholar

26 For a more detailed treatment of the subject cf. my article “Prince Moonlight – messianism and eschatology in early medieval Chinese Buddhism” in the forthcoming T'oung Pao, and, for a shorter outline, “Eschatology and messianism in early Chinese Buddhism”, in Leyden Studies in Sinology, Leiden, 1981, 34–56.Google Scholar

27 KSC, T 2059, ch. 10, pp. 390b–393b.

28 ibid., p. 394c–395a.

29 ibid., ch. 11, p. 385b.

30 For some other early examples, cf. my Buddhist conquest of China, 145–6.Google Scholar

31 Hsü KSC, T 2060, ch. 25, p. 650c.

32 “Buddhist influence on early Taoism: a survey of scriptural evidence”, T'oung Pao, LXVI, 1980, 84–147.Google Scholar