Sìmíng zūnzhě jiàoxíng lù 四明尊者教行錄
Record of the Teaching-and-Practice of the Venerable of Sì-míng [Zhīlǐ] edited by 宗曉 (Zōngxiǎo / Shízhī Zōngxiǎo, 編)
About the work
A seven-juan compilation by Shízhī Zōngxiǎo 石芝宗曉 (1151–1214) of the surviving correspondence, doctrinal essays, biographical materials, and stele inscriptions concerning Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (知禮, 960–1028), the seventeenth Tiāntái patriarch and central figure of the Northern-Sòng shānjiā tradition. The work is the principal documentary source for the modern reconstruction of Zhīlǐ’s life and the broader shānjiā tradition’s institutional history. Body attribution: Sìmíng Shízhī shāmén Zōngxiǎo biān 四明石芝沙門宗曉編.
Prefaces
The text opens with Zōng-xiǎo’s editorial framing: “The Chén-Suí two states’ national-master, the Tiāntái Zhì-zhě [Zhìyǐ], awakened to the Lotus Sūtra’s revolving-dhāraṇī, succeeded the dharma-nature lineage. With unobstructed eloquence, [he] divided-and-judged the three-time Buddha-vehicle, opened-and-cleared one school’s doctrine-and-contemplation; persons up to the present uphold him. Outside there are various repentance-systems and dharma two…”
Abstract
The Jiàoxíng lù contains the most extensive surviving documentation of any Sòng Tiāntái figure: it preserves Zhīlǐ’s correspondence (the principal source for the shānjiā / shānwài polemic), his administrative-monastic records, biographical materials by his disciples, and the major stele inscriptions composed in his honour. The work is consequently of substantial historiographical importance both as a documentary source for Zhīlǐ specifically and as evidence for the broader Northern-Sòng Tiāntái institutional culture.
The composition is bracketed within Zōngxiǎo’s productive period c. 1180–1214.
Translations and research
See KR6d0158 for the bibliography on Zhīlǐ.
- Getz, Daniel A. “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate.” In Buddhism in the Sung, eds. Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, 477–523. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999.
- Brose, Benjamin. Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.
Other points of interest
The Jiàoxíng lù is one of the few yǔlù-style compilations in pre-modern Chinese Buddhism focused on a single Sòng-period scholastic figure. Its institutional standing — as the principal Sòng-period documentary record of the most influential Sòng Tiāntái master — ensured its continued canonical preservation and remains the principal documentary source for modern Tiāntái historical scholarship.