Zhūjīng rìsòng jíyào 諸經日誦集要
Anthology of Daily-Recitation Essentials from the Various Sūtras anonymous compiler (佚名, 集)
About the work
A 3-fascicle anthological liturgy preserved in the Jiāxīngzàng 嘉興藏 (Jiāxīng Canon, J19 B044), compiling the principal short Mahāyāna scriptures, dhāraṇī, hymns, and ritual chants that constitute the standard Chinese Buddhist rìsòng 日誦 (“daily-recitation”) liturgy. The table of contents lists the canonical morning-and-evening sequence: the Bōrě bōluómìduō xīnjīng 般若波羅蜜多心經 (Heart Sūtra), the Jīn’gāng bānruò bōluómì jīng 金剛般若波羅蜜經 (Vajracchedikā), the Fóshuō Ēmítuó jīng 佛說阿彌陀經 (Amitābha Sūtra) for evening recitation, the Guānshìyīn púsà pǔmén pǐn 觀世音菩薩普門品 (the universal-gate chapter from the Lotus Sūtra), and an extensive series of further short sūtras, dhāraṇīs, hymns of praise (zàn 讚), repentance liturgies, and dedicatory verses. The anthology represents the standardised liturgical-curricular core of late-imperial Chinese-Buddhist practice and constitutes one of the principal sources for the daily-recitation textual tradition that remains in use today throughout East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.
Abstract
The catalog meta lists no individual editor; the work is anonymously compiled (佚名 “lost-name”). Its authorship can be partly reconstructed: the Jiāxīngzàng, edited principally at Lèngyán-sì 楞嚴寺 outside Sūzhōu by 道開 Mìzàng Dàokāi (1573–1635), 真可 Zǐbǎi Zhēnkě (1543–1603), and others, and continued under their disciples through the seventeenth century, was the major Buddhist publishing project of the late Míng and early Qīng. The Zhūjīng rìsòng jíyào is one of the Jiāxīngzàng supplementary-collection items and dates most plausibly from the early-to-mid seventeenth century — the period of greatest activity in the Jiāxīngzàng publishing program. The composition window 1600–1700 brackets this. The text has analogues in many late-Míng and Qīng-period independently printed daily-liturgy collections; the Jíyào form preserved in the Jiāxīngzàng is one of the earliest substantively complete textual witnesses.
The anthology has been continuously revised and expanded throughout the late-imperial and modern Chinese Buddhist tradition; the present Jiāxīngzàng form should be understood as one fixed snapshot of a continuously evolving liturgical corpus. Modern Chinese-Buddhist zǎowǎn kèsòng 早晚課誦 (“morning-and-evening recitation”) liturgical books descend in direct genealogical line from this and similar late-Míng anthologies.
Translations and research
- Welch, Holmes. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. — Treats the rìsòng tradition as it survived into twentieth-century practice.
- Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1993. — On the late-Míng monastic-publishing networks that produced the Jiāxīngzàng.
- Wu, Jiang. Enlightenment in Dispute. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. — On the Jiāxīngzàng publishing project.
Other points of interest
The rìsòng anthology genre exemplified by this text is the principal vehicle through which the late-medieval Chinese Buddhist canon has been transmitted to ordinary practitioners (both monastic and lay) for the past four centuries: it is much more directly the lived scriptural inheritance of the East Asian Buddhist tradition than the much larger formal canon. The contemporary near-universality of the Heart Sūtra and the Pǔmén pǐn in East Asian Buddhist devotion is in significant measure due to their fixed place in the rìsòng sequence canonised by texts like the present anthology.