Lóngshū zēngguǎng jìngtǔ wén 龍舒增廣淨土文
The Lóngshū Expanded Pure Land Text by 王日休 (Wáng Rìxiū, 撰)
About the work
The twelve-juǎn magnum opus of the senior Southern-Sòng lay-Buddhist scholar 王日休 Wáng Rìxiū (d. 1173), styled Lóngshū jūshì 龍舒居士. The full title — “Expanded” (zēngguǎng) — reflects an expanded recension of an earlier shorter version of the text; the work circulated in multiple recensions in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries before stabilising in the standard twelve-juǎn form preserved in the canon. The Jìngtǔ wén is the most widely circulated and influential lay-Buddhist Pure Land treatise of pre-Yuán China, and remained one of the principal Pure Land popularising works through the late-imperial period.
Abstract
Wáng Rìxiū writes as a Confucian-trained scholar (he held the jìnshì degree) who has resigned from official service to dedicate himself to Pure Land cultivation. The Jìngtǔ wén is structured for the lay reader — without specialist Buddhist doctrinal jargon, with extensive narrative and practical-devotional material, and with a clear organising structure that walks the reader through (a) the doctrinal rationale for Pure Land devotion, (b) practical instructions for daily niànfó, (c) hagiographies of Pure Land practitioners, (d) responses to common doubts and objections, (e) verse and devotional material for daily recitation. The combination of doctrinal-popularising prose, abundant biographical material, and direct lay-practical guidance is the formula that made the work so successful.
The Jìngtǔ wén draws extensively on the canonical Pure Land sūtras, on 道綽 Dàochuò’s Ānlè jí KR6p0037, on 懷感 Huáigǎn’s Qúnyí lùn KR6p0039, and on the post-Sòng Tiāntái-Pure Land synthesis associated with 知禮 Sìmíng Zhīlǐ and 遵式 Cíyún Zūnshì. Wáng Rìxiū is also distinctively engaged with classical Confucian literature — he draws explicit analogies between Buddhist and Confucian moral teaching, and his Pure Land recommendations are presented in a register accessible to literati readers.
The work also contains the famous synthetic recension of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūma — the Dà ēmítuó jīng 大阿彌陀經 KR6f0064 — that Wáng Rìxiū compiled by collating four of the five extant Chinese translations of the larger sūtra into a single coherent text. This recension is the principal precedent for 魏源 Wèi Yuán’s Huìyì KR6p0001 of the late Qīng. The Jìngtǔ wén preserves Wáng Rìxiū’s editorial discussion of the recension; the recension itself circulates separately as KR6f0064.
The Taishō text is collated against the Korean canon, original (原), and the Yuan canon. Dating: c. 1160–1173 covers Wáng Rìxiū’s mature period and the period of his death.
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 — discusses Wáng Rì-xiū as the principal twelfth-century Pure Land lay scholar.
- Halperin, Mark. Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960–1279. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006 — for the literati Pure Land context.
- Welter, Albert. Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu. Oxford UP, 2011 — for the Sòng Chán-Pure Land synthesis.
- Sharf, Robert H. “On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an / Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China.” T’oung Pao 88 (2002): 282–331.
Other points of interest
Wáng Rìxiū’s death in Qiándào 9 (1173) is reported in Pure Land hagiography as an auspicious passing (ruì xiāng 瑞相): he is said to have stood in the Xīfāng 西方 (West-facing) posture, recited Amitābha three times, and died standing. This narrative — recorded in 宗曉 Zōngxiǎo’s Lèbāng wénlèi KR6p0048 — became one of the principal hagiographic exempla of Pure Land devotional success and is repeatedly cited in subsequent popular literature.