Hùmìng fàngshēng guǐyí fǎ 護命放生軌儀法
A Method of Decorum for Protecting Lives and Releasing Living Beings by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 撰)
About the work
A short single-fascicle Vinaya-ritual manual on the protection of life and the practice of fàngshēng 放生 (releasing captive animals) by Yìjìng 義淨 (義淨, 635–713), the Tang Buddhist pilgrim, translator, and Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya specialist. Author signature: 唐三藏法師義淨撰 (Composed by the Tang Tripiṭaka-master Yìjìng).
Prefaces
The work opens with Yìjìng’s autograph xù: 夫以懷生者皆愛其生上通賢智有死者咸畏其死下洎蜫蟲 (“all that hold life love their life — from sages and the wise above to insects below; all that face death fear it — likewise”). The preface argues from the universality of the will-to-live to the foundational doctrine of non-injury (ahiṃsā) and the practice of compassionate restraint.
Abstract
The Hùmìng fàngshēng guǐyí fǎ is one of three short canonical Vinaya manuals by Yìjìng — alongside KR6k0189 Shòuyòng sānshuǐ yàoxíng fǎ (on the canonical handling of three kinds of water) and KR6k0190 Shuōzuì yàoxíng fǎ (on the canonical confession of offenses) — that together represent his application of Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya principles to operational Chinese monastic practice. The work formalises the fàngshēng practice — purchasing captured animals from market and releasing them — as a properly Buddhist ritual under the regulation of Vinaya rather than as folk-Buddhist piety. Yìjìng’s authority for the practice rests on his observation of South Asian Buddhist ahiṃsā during his Indian and Sumatran sojourn (671–695). Composition belongs to Yìjìng’s productive Luòyáng / Chángān decades after his return to China in 695, and is bracketed here by his return-date and his death.
Translations and research
- Heirman, Ann, and Tom De Rauw. “Offenders, Sinners and Criminals: The Consumption of Forbidden Food.” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59 (2006), 57–83 — for the Vinaya-context of food and life-protection.
- Smith, Joanna F. Handlin. The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (2009) — for the long-run Chinese reception of fàngshēng into late-imperial charitable practice.