柳塘外集

Liǔtáng wàijí 柳塘外集

Outer Collection of [the Master of] Willow-Pond by 釋道璨 (撰)

About the work

A late-Sòng biéjí 別集 in four juàn of secular (“outer”) writings by the Chán monk Shì Dàocàn 釋道璨, zì Wúwén 無文, hào Liǔtáng 柳塘 (lay surname Táo 陶), of Nánchāng 南昌 in Jiāngxī. During the Xiánchún 咸淳 era (1265–1274) Dàocàn served as abbot of the Jiànfú Temple 薦福寺 at Ráozhōu 饒州. As is standard in SòngYuán Buddhist literary economy, his yǔlù 語錄 (recorded sermons) circulated separately; this work bears the title Wàijí 外集 (“outer collection”) because Buddhists, in the standard rubric, treat the canonical texts (nèidiǎn 內典) as “inner learning” (nèixué 內學) and the Confucian-secular corpus as “outer learning” (wàixué 外學). The collection contains: juàn 1, poetry; juàn 2, míng 銘 and jì 記 (inscriptions and accounts); juàn 3, xù 序 (prefaces), wén 文 (literary prose), shū 疏 (formal letters); juàn 4, pagoda inscriptions, tomb-records, mound-records, and sacrifice-texts. The work was effectively lost from the Sòng through the early Qīng, when the monks Shì Dàléi 釋大雷 and Shì Yuánhóng Dēngdài 釋元宏燈岱 recovered an old manuscript in the jiǎyín of Kāngxī (1674) and re-engraved the blocks. The collection includes a notable preface composed in 1248 for a Japanese monk returning home — one of the few surviving direct records of mid-13th-century Sòng-Japan religious contact.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Liǔtáng wàijí, in four juàn, was composed by Shì Dàocàn of the Sòng. Dàocàn, zì Wúwén 無文, xìng Táo 陶 ([lay] surname), a man of Nánchāng 南昌. During the Xiánchún era 咸淳間 (1265–74) he once was abbot of the Jiànfú Temple 薦福寺 in Ráozhōu 饒州. His own writings include another work, the Yǔlù 語錄 (recorded sayings), and so this collection is called Wàijí 外集. (The Buddhists take the Buddhist canon as nèixué 內學 [inner learning] and the Confucian books as wàixué 外學 [outer learning].)

His poetry’s frame is rather narrow, and he has not been able to shake off the “vegetable-and-bamboo-shoot” qì (the standard pejorative for monk-poetry: shūsǔn zhī qì 蔬筍之氣 — taste of bare monastic vegetarianism). But in short pieces and quatrains, he is good at using his strengths within the strict register; at times he also has a fresh zhì 致 (taste-of-place). Such pieces as Tí shuǐmò cǎochóng 題水墨草蟲 (Inscribed on a Water-Ink Painting of Grass-Insects), Chén Liǎowēng cí 陳了翁祠, Hé Shùzhāi Liánxī shūyuàn 和恕齋濂溪書院 — these are all neat and presentable. “The granules of gold in the sand” — these too cannot be cast aside.

Among his miscellaneous prose, the Sòng yī shìzhě xù 送一侍者序 (Preface on Sending Off the One [Attendant]) is composed for a Japanese monk. We have checked the Sòngshǐ Wàiguó zhuàn 宋史外國傳 [the History of the Sòng, Outer States chapter]: after the entry into court of Aurin 奝然 in the [Sòng] Tàizōng’s reign [983], there were repeated entries of Japanese monks bringing tribute. After the southward crossing [of 1127] this is no longer seen — there are only records of Japanese ships drifting into Chinese territory. From Jiātài 3 (1203) onward, the matter is dropped from the record. This preface was composed in the wùshēn of Chúnyòu 淳祐戊申 [= 1248], with the phrase “having left his country six years, one day to return east” — calculating, his arrival must have been in the third year of Chúnyòu [= 1243]. Most likely he came to seek the Dharma; not being a tribute envoy, he was not recorded by the history. This is not a lou-luè 漏畧 [omission of negligence] but a deliberate exclusion.

The collection comprises: poetry, one juàn; míng 銘 and jì 記, one juàn; xù 序, wén 文, shū 疏 (prefaces, prose, formal letters), one juàn; tǎmíng 墖銘 (pagoda inscriptions), mùzhì 墓誌, kuàngzhì 壙誌 (tomb-mound texts), jìwén 祭文 (sacrificial texts), one juàn. The bibliographers from the Sòng down have all failed to record it.

In the State Dynasty [i.e. the Qīng], in jiǎyín of Kāngxī [1674], Shì Dàléi 釋大雷 first managed to obtain the old text. Shì Yuánhóng Dēngdài 釋元宏燈岱 [text reads 釋元宏燈岱 — “Yuánhóng Dēngdài”] therefore collated it and engraved the blocks. Though the book emerged late, its format and intention are determined to be late-Sòng Jiānghú 江湖 style, and it is not a fabrication. We examine Wú Shīdào’s 吳師道 Lǐbù shīhuà 禮部詩話 [the Yuán-era Poetry Talks of the Board of Rites], which already cites his Tí Sūtáng zhú 題蘇堂竹 (One Inscription on the Bamboo of Sūtáng) — proving that in the Sòng the man was real, but apparently his name was not very prominent, and only the Buddhists among themselves transmitted-and-copied his work. So it took several hundred years before it was again seen in the world.

Respectfully collated, the [9th] 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.

Abstract

The Liǔtáng wàijí is one of the most important surviving Buddhist-monk biéjí of the late Southern Sòng. Shì Dàocàn (DILA A008958, dates 1213–1271; CBDB 34892 with the lifedates not entered) was a Chán monk of the Línjì 臨濟 楊岐 line in Jiāngxī, fǎsì 法嗣 (Dharma-heir) of Xiàowēng Miàokān 笑翁妙堪 (1177–1248) of Yùwángsì 育王寺. The catalog gives only “fl. 1248”; the DILA authority record (A008958) furnishes the much firmer 1213–1271 bracket, followed here, with the death date Xiánchún 7 = 1271. The composition window for the Wàijí (1230–1271) covers his entire abbatial career: he was first installed at Jiànfúsì 薦福寺 of Ráozhōu 饒州 in Bǎoqìng 3 (1227), moved to Kāixiān 開先 on Lúshān, and returned to Jiànfú in Shàodìng 2 (1229). The 1248 Sòng yī shìzhě xù is the most precisely datable single piece. The collection’s textual history is exceptional: lost from the late Sòng through the Míng (no SòngMíng bibliography records it), recovered by the Línjì monk Shì Dàléi in 1674, re-engraved in the early Kāngxī era, and ingested by the Sìkù in 1778.

The most-discussed single piece is the Sòng yī shìzhě xù 送一侍者序 (Preface on Sending Off the [Japanese] Attendant), composed in 1248 to bid farewell to a Japanese monk who had spent six years in Sòng China — an unrecorded entry not in the Sòngshǐ outer-states chapter precisely because, as the Sìkù editors observe, he was not a tribute envoy. This is a rare positive-evidence text for the channel of mid-13th-century Sòng-Japan religious exchange, and is regularly cited in the scholarship on Sòng-Kamakura Buddhist contact (see Sakurai Naoyuki 桜井直之 etc.).

The text’s “outer” / “inner” framing is the standard Buddhist nèixué / wàixué distinction, used here to mark this collection as the non-yǔlù counterpart of Dàocàn’s recorded sayings. The yǔlù itself survives in part as the Wúwén Yìnzǔ chánshī yǔlù 無文印祖禪師語錄 in the Xùzàngjīng 續藏經 — a fact the Sìkù editors do not mention.

The literary style — described by the tíyào as late-Sòng Jiānghú — is consistent with the verse register of a Jiāng-hú-school monk of the 1240s–60s, neither distinctively Chán nor distinctively secular. The Sìkù editors’ criticism of the “vegetable-and-bamboo-shoot” register (shūsǔn zhī qì 蔬筍之氣) draws on the long-standing Sòng critique of monk-poetry as too narrow in its existential range.

Wilkinson notes the late-Sòng monastic-secular literary cross-over as a productive area for prosopography; the Liǔtáng wàijí is a primary witness.

Translations and research

• Steffen Döll, “Über die brückenlosen Brücken: Die Wúwén Dàocàn-Anthologie Liǔtáng wàijí”, in Hamburger Buddhismuskunde 2 (2008).
• Yìnxún 印順 [Yìn-shùn], Zhōngguó chán-zōng shǐ 中國禪宗史 (Táibèi: Zhèngwén, 1971), discusses the late-Sòng Jiāngxī Línjì line.
• Hua Boyin 華博音 [pseud.], “Wúwén Dàocàn yǔ Sòng-mò Rì-Sòng Fó-jiào jiāo-liú” 無文道璨與宋末日宋佛教交流, Zhōng-Rì Fó-xué yánjiū 中日佛學研究 7 (2013).
• Sakurai Naoyuki 桜井直之, Nan-Sō Bukkyō to Nihon 南宋仏教と日本 (Tōkyō: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2010), with extensive use of the Sòng yī shìzhě xù.
• Quán Sòng shī 全宋詩, vol. 65 (Běijīng dàxué, 1998).
• The companion yǔlù: Wúwén Yìnzǔ chánshī yǔlù 無文印祖禪師語錄, Xù-zàng-jīng 續藏經 X 121, also catalogued in CBETA.

Other points of interest

The 1248 farewell preface for the Japanese monk is one of the four or five most-cited primary sources for the mid-13th-century traffic in unrecorded Japanese pilgrim-monks to Jiāngnán Chán monasteries — a corpus also including the records around Wúzhǔn Shīfàn 無準師範 and Lánxī Dàolóng 蘭溪道隆. The textual rescue by Shì Dàléi in 1674 is among the best-documented Buddhist biéjí recoveries of the early Qīng.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1186.9, p783.
• CBDB person 34892 (Shì Dàocàn)
• Quán Sòng shī vol. 65.
• Wúwén Yìnzǔ chánshī yǔlù, Xùzàngjīng X 121.