Fǎzàng suìjīn lù 法藏碎金錄
Record of Crumbs of Gold from the Dharma Treasury by 晁迥 (撰)
About the work
Fǎzàng suìjīn lù 法藏碎金錄 is a 10-juǎn late-life bǐjì by the Northern-Sòng Hànlín xuéshì chéngzhǐ and lay Buddhist devotee Cháo Jiǒng 晁迥 (951–1034, zì Míngyuǎn 明遠), composed in his retirement at the Zhāodé fāng 昭德坊 in Kāifēng. The title — borrowed from the Shìshuō xīnyǔ anecdote of Xiè Ān describing scattered insights as “crumbs of gold” — announces the work’s character as a notebook-style harmonization of Chán doctrine with ZhuāngLǎo Daoism and Confucian ethics, written in the syncretic mode characteristic of the Sòng jiāyòu / zhìpíng generation just before Chéng 程 lǐxué established its dominance. Note that the Sìkù classifies the work in 子部·釋家類 (Masters: Buddhists) — the catalog meta records this under KR3m0006 (corresponding to Cháo Jiǒng’s source position) but the file is logged here under KR4d for the personal-collection sequence, since Cháo Gōngwǔ in Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì appended it after Cháo Jiǒng’s Dàoyuàn jí and treated it as a biéjí appendage; the Sìkù corrected this and restored it to the Buddhist class.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: the Fǎzàng suìjīn lù in 10 juǎn was composed by Cháo Jiǒng of the Sòng. Jiǒng, zì Míngyuǎn, was a man of Chánzhōu Qīngfēng 澶州清豐; his father had moved the family to Péngmén 彭門. Jìnshì of Tàipíng xīngguó 5 / 980. By the end of Zhìdào he was advanced to Yòuzhèngyán and Zhí Shǐguǎn and Zhīzhìgào; soon after became Hànlín xuéshì, then chéngzhǐ; in Tiānxǐ he was pàn Xījīng liúsī yùshǐtái, retired with the title Tàizǐ shàobǎo, and posthumously canonized Wényuán 文元. Jiǒng received his learning from Wáng Yǔchēng 王禹偁: he was famous for his elegant prose, but his nature inclined to Chán delight, and he loved to plumb the inner classics. The present work was composed in Tiānshèng 5 (1027) when he had retired to the Zhāodé lane; everything in it harmonizes Chán doctrine with random bǐjì observations, in the manner of a school yǔlù. The title “Crumbs of Gold” derives from the Shìshuō xīnyǔ phrase about Xiè Ān’s “crumbs of gold” sayings. Sūn Dí 孫覿 said that Jiǒng “took the Buddhist vehicle as his goal and harmonized it with ZhuāngLǎo and Confucian books into a single whole” — which is to say that before Jiāyòu / Zhìpíng the LiánLuò school of Confucianism had not yet flourished, and Confucian scholars by old Tang habit mostly turned in heart to Buddhism. Even so principled a worthy as Fàn Zhòngyān 范仲淹 personally drafted a shū wén requesting Master Dàogǔ to open the dharma seat and preach — much else can be inferred. So that Cháo Jiǒng wrote this book is not at all surprising. In the early Southern Sòng his fifth-generation descendant Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 in his Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì attached this book after his ancestor’s Dàoyuàn jí and listed it in the biéjí gate — quite incongruous; this was probably because by the post-Erchéng generation Confucian distinctions were getting clearer, Gōngwǔ being unwilling to expunge his ancestor’s writing from the catalog yet equally unwilling to list it in the Buddhist class lest it furnish opponents with material — caught between two horns, he simply attached it. If you look at his entry, it merely narrates Cháo Jiǒng’s official career and prose style without one word about the present book — his subtle reservation can be seen. But ever since Ruǎn Xiàoxù’s Qī lù 七錄, Buddhist books have long been their own class, and successive dynastic Yìwén records have all done the same; there is no need to twist things in flattery and no need to hide the matter cleverly. Now we follow Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí and place it in the Shìjiā class, preserving the truth. Transmissions of this book are quite scarce; in Jiājìng 24 (1545) Jiǒng’s descendant Cháo Lǐ 晁瑮 (Hànlínyuàn jiǎntǎo) first copied it from the inner palace and cut blocks for circulation, but changed its name to Jiātán 迦談 — quite without point. We here keep Jiǒng’s original title. Qiánlóng 42 (1777) 5th month, respectfully collated. — Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Cháo Jiǒng’s own preface (Fǎzàng suìjīn lù yuán xù, dated Tiānshèng 5 / 1027 9th month, with a postscript dated Tiānshèng 9 / 1031 11th month noting the book’s later division into 10 juǎn) declares the work the harvest of his retirement — composed at the Jìngzhāi 静齋 in Zhāodé lane, where, as he says, “my hand never left the scroll, my brush never paused at the line.” It is a zájì-style notebook of ChánLǎo reflections, cross-citations of Buddhist sūtras (especially the Yuánjué jīng and Língyán jīng) with the Zhuāngzǐ and Lǐjì, and small autobiographical notices of the kind common in late-Tang Buddhist gentlemen-poetry. The Sìkù tíyào treats the work as a key witness for the Sòng pre-Erchéng intellectual atmosphere — a moment when Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist categories had not yet been sharply rebuilt by the LiánLuò school. The collection’s later transmission was complicated by the family’s own ambivalence: Cháo Gōngwǔ would not list it openly under Buddhism, and the Míng descendant Cháo Lǐ 晁瑮 (1545) renamed it Jiātán 迦談 in his palace-archive print — a renaming the Sìkù compilers reverted.
The dating bracket is set tightly to the original composition window: 1027 (preface) to 1031 (10-juǎn arrangement); Cháo Jiǒng died in 1034.
Translations and research
- Halperin, Mark. 2006. Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960–1279. Harvard UP. Treats Cháo Jiǒng among the early-Sòng lay-Buddhist literati harmonizers.
- Schlütter, Morten. 2008. How Zen Became Zen. Hawai’i. Mentions Cháo Jiǒng in the early-Sòng Chán milieu.
- Zhāng Guó-gāng 張國剛, ed. 2010. Sòng dài fó-jiào yǔ shì-zú 宋代佛教與士族. The standard recent treatment.
Other points of interest
The historical interest of Cháo Jiǒng is two-fold: his pupil-relationship with Wáng Yǔchēng (a key thread in early-Sòng gǔwén affiliation) and his founding role in the Cháo 晁 lineage of Northern-Sòng scholarship — the family that produced his fifth-generation descendant Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 (the Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì bibliographer, KR3a0029 tradition) and Cháo Bǔzhī 晁補之, the Sū mén poet.
Links
- Chao Jiong (Wikidata)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Sòng Buddhist-Confucian relations).