北礀集

Běijiàn jí 北礀集

The Northern-Ravine Collection by 釋居簡 (撰)

About the work

The literary collection of the Chán monk Shì Jūjiǎn 釋居簡 (1164–1246), zì Jìngsǒu 敬叟, a Línjì-school Chán master and prolific man of letters who lived for many years in seclusion at the Běijiàn 北礀 (“Northern Ravine”) at Tiāntái 天台 — whence his sobriquet. The collection here is exclusively prose; an independent collection of his poetry circulated separately. The Sìkù tiyao places him in a triangle with two earlier Sòng monk-writers — Qìsōng 契嵩 of the Tánjīn jí 鐔津集 and Huìhóng 惠洪 (Juéfàn 覺範) of the Shímén wénzìchán 石門文字禪 — and finds Jūjiǎn’s prose neither as polemical as Qìsōng nor as light as Huìhóng, but rather “clear, pulled-up, and free of the vegetable-shoot odor” (qīngbá zì wú shūsǔn zhī qì 清拔自無蔬筍之氣), i.e., free of the cloying piety that the editors associated with most Buddhist literary prose. The collection is fronted by the yuánxù of Zhāng Zìmíng 張自明 zì Chéngzǐ 誠子 (1217), one of the principal contemporary literati-monk friendship documents of the JiāDìng era.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Běijiàn jí in ten juàn was composed by the [Buddhist] monk Jūjiǎn 居簡 of the Sòng. Jūjiǎn, zì Jìngsǒu 敬叟, was a son of the Wáng 王 family of Tóngchuān 潼川. In the Jiāxī 嘉熙 era he was given the imperial appointment to reside at the Jìngcíguāngxiàosì 淨慈光孝寺. He had lived for many years at the Běijiàn 北礀; thus the collection takes that name. His collection separates poetry and prose into two compilations; the present is all his miscellaneous prose.

Zhāng Chéngzǐ 張誠子, in his preface, says: “Reading his prose, one cannot tell whether he or Zōngmì 宗密 is the elder; reciting his poetry, one might combine Cānliáo 參寥 and Juéfàn 覺範 into a single man, and that man would still not match him.” Zōngmì 宗密 is the Chán master Guīfēng 圭峰 [Zōngmì, 780–841]; Péi Xiū 裴休 composed his stūpa-inscription. His collection is not recorded in the Tángshǐ [Jīngjí Zhì], and we have not seen a printed copy in transmission, so we cannot compare for skill or clumsiness.

If we are speaking only of Sòng-dynasty monk-writers, then those from the [so-called] Nine Monks (Jiǔsēng 九僧) downward generally have poetry but not prose. The two whose collections contain both are Qìsōng 契嵩 and Huìhóng 惠洪, both renowned. Qìsōng’s Tánjīn jí 鐔津集 strives to dispute right-and-wrong with the Confucians; its prose is broad and disputatious. Huìhóng’s Shímén wénzìchán 石門文字禪 [the Wénzìchán — “Letter-Chán”] mostly preaches the Buddhist doctrine while also expounding the talk of letters; its prose is light and graceful. Jūjiǎn’s collection does not gather up the language of the lineage records, yet its conception and style are clear and pulled up: it stands of itself free of the vegetable-shoot odor (shūsǔn zhī qì). Placed between the two [Qìsōng and Huìhóng], it would not at once be the “wasp-waist” (fēngyāo 蜂腰, the thin middle).

Respectfully collated, tenth month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778). Chief-Compiler Officers Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

(The collection also preserves the yuánxù by Zhāng Zìmíng 張自明 zì Chéngzǐ 誠子 of Xūjiāng 盱江, dated to the wàng 望-day of the tenth month of Jiādìng dīngchǒu 嘉定丁丑 [1217]. The preface narrates Zhāng’s acquaintance with Jūjiǎn from his Imperial Academy years through the persecution of “false-learning” (wěixué 偽學) under the Censor Hú Hóng 胡紘 and the Sìyè Gāo Wénhǔ 高文虎, including Jūjiǎn’s later refusals of major Chán-temple appointments — first the Tiāntái invitation, then the Yúnjū / Dōnglín offer from the Jiāngdōng intendant — preferring his Northern-Ravine retreat. The preface closes with the philological note that he is named Jūjiǎn 居簡, courtesy-named Jìngsǒu, born at Tóngchuān, and that “because of his long residence at Běijiàn, people no longer use his name or courtesy-name but call him Běijiàn”.)

Abstract

Shì Jūjiǎn (1164–1246) was one of the most cultivated Chán monk-literati of the southern Sòng. A son of the Wáng family of Tóngchuān 潼川 (modern Sānyuán in Sìchuān), he trained in the Línjì 臨濟 school of Chán and combined his religious vocation with extensive participation in literati culture — exchanging poems and letters with Yè Shì 葉適, the brothers Yuán Xiè 袁燮 and Yuán Mǐ 袁韺, Zhēn Déxiù 真德秀, Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁, and the Jiā-Dìng-era political reformers. The retreat at Běijiàn in the Tiāntái mountains was his principal residence, but in the Jiāxī era (1237–1240) he was given the imperial appointment to head the Jìngcíguāngxiàosì 淨慈光孝寺 at Lín’ān, one of the five great Hángzhōu Chán monasteries.

The collection here is exclusively his prose (an independent poetry collection circulated separately and was much admired). Modern editions of the Běijiàn corpus distinguish between the prose jí (the present 10 juàn), the Běijiàn shījí 北磵詩集 in nine or ten juàn (transmitted in Yuán print and Sòng manuscript through Japan), and the Běijiàn héshàng yǔlù 北磵和尚語錄 (his Chán recorded sayings, transmitted separately within the canon). The full corpus is one of the most extensive bodies of work surviving from any single Sòng monk.

The composition window (c. 1190–1246) reflects the span of Jūjiǎn’s mature productive years. The earliest contents post-date Zhāng Chéngzǐ’s account of their first meeting at the Imperial Academy in Qìngyuán 慶元 1 (1195) — when the wěixué 偽學 persecution was at its height. The latest pieces are from the early 1240s; Jūjiǎn died in 1246. The 1217 Zhāng Zìmíng preface, with its account of the “false-learning” persecution and of Jūjiǎn’s refusals to accept the major Chán abbatial appointments, is one of the more substantial documents of literati-Chán friendship in the period.

The Sìkù editors’ triangulated placement of Jūjiǎn between Qìsōng (more polemical) and Huìhóng (more openly Chán-doctrinal) is consistent with modern scholarly treatment: Jūjiǎn’s prose, dealing with monastery affairs, friendship, landscape, and occasional Buddhist instruction, is unusually free of the cloying yǔlù idiom — what the editors disparage as the “vegetable-shoot odor” (shūsǔnqì, the smell of monastic vegetarian cuisine). The judgment that he avoids becoming the “wasp-waist” of the trio is consistent with his standing in subsequent reception: he was much imitated by early-Yuán Chán monks (especially Wényǎn 文琰) and through YuánSòng transmission to Japan exercised an influence on the Gozan literary culture of the early Muromachi period.

Translations and research

• Jiāng Xiǎohuán 蔣小璜 (ed.), Běijiàn Jūjiǎn quán-jí 北磵居簡全集 (Shàoxīng: Zhōnghuá fó-jiào shū-jú, 2003) — the modern critical edition.
• Wáng Tóngrú 王宥茹, “Sòng-dài Chán-sēng wén-yì yánjiū: yǐ Běijiàn Jūjiǎn wéi zhōng-xīn” 宋代禪僧文藝研究：以北磵居簡為中心, PhD thesis, Fùdàn dàxué, 2009 — the most substantial modern study.
• Mark Halperin, Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960–1279 (Harvard, 2006), discusses Jūjiǎn briefly as an example of the literati-Chán intersection.
• Ishii Shūdō 石井修道, Sōdai Zenshū shi no kenkyū 宋代禪宗史の研究 (Tōkyō: Daitō shuppansha, 1987), treats Jūjiǎn within the southern Sòng Línjì school.
• Tamamuro Taijō 圭室諦成 et al., entries in Bukkyō daijiten 佛教大辭典.
• Kojima Tsuyoshi 小島毅, “Sō-dai Zen-rin to bunjin shakai” 宋代禪林と文人社会, Tōyō bunka kenkyūsho kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 122 (1993).

Other points of interest

The Zhāng Zìmíng preface’s autobiographical account of the wěixué 偽學 persecution at the Imperial Academy in Qìngyuán 1 (1195) — when Hú Hóng was Censor and Gāo Wénhǔ was Sìyè (Vice-Director of the Academy) — is a vivid first-person witness to one of the most consequential episodes of late-twelfth-century intellectual politics. The detail that Zhāng escaped the persecution by spending his free days hiking the north and south hills of Hángzhōu with the monk Jūjiǎn — and that this was where the friendship between them was formed — is a small but suggestive documentary corner of how the persecution actually impinged on individual lives.

Jūjiǎn’s monastic name-style — known by his retreat-place (Běijiàn) rather than by his religious name or his courtesy-name — was adopted by his contemporaries and even by the Sìkù editors (who use Běijiàn in the title), reflecting the way Chán abbots of his era preferred geographic sobriquets to formal religious names. This is a SòngYuán Línjì convention that persisted into the YuánMíng transition.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1183.1, p1.
• CBDB person 33275 (Shì Jūjiǎn)
• Wikidata