Lèbāng yígǎo 樂邦遺稿
Remaining Fragments [for the Anthology] of the Land of Bliss by 宗曉 (Shízhī Zōngxiǎo, 編)
About the work
A two-juǎn supplement to 宗曉 Zōngxiǎo’s Lèbāng wénlèi KR6p0048, gathering further Pure Land textual material that came to the compiler’s attention after the completion of the parent anthology. The author’s preface explicitly invokes the Confucian shíyí 拾遺 (“gathering of remainders”) tradition: “I have followed the Confucian textual scholars’ principle of gathering remainders, and have set down whatever further fragments I have seen or heard which may be of benefit to those undertaking the Pure Land practice.” The preface is dated jiǎzǐ 甲子 spring (1204), suggesting that the Yígǎo was begun immediately after the Wénlèi’s completion and continued to expand until Zōngxiǎo’s death in 1214.
Abstract
The Yígǎo preserves the same thematic categorisation as the Wénlèi — scriptural passages, prefaces, biographies, doctrinal essays, liturgical fragments — but covers material the compiler had missed in the original work. Some of the most valuable items are: brief Pure Land biographical fragments otherwise unattested in surviving sources, miscellaneous prefaces to lost or partially preserved Pure Land works, and a number of personal letters and devotional verses by Sòng Pure Land practitioners. Like the parent Wénlèi, the Yígǎo is in places the only surviving witness to the texts it includes.
The Taishō text is collated against the Korean canon. Dating bracket: 1204 (the Yígǎo preface) to 1214 (Zōngxiǎo’s death). The two anthologies together — Wénlèi in five juǎn plus Yígǎo in two juǎn — constitute Zōngxiǎo’s single greatest contribution to Pure Land textual scholarship.
Translations and research
- Getz, Daniel A. “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate.” In Buddhism in the Sung. Hawai’i, 1999.
- Mochizuki Shinkō, Chūgoku jōdo kyōrishi. Kyoto, 1942/1964.