Jìngtǔ zhǐguī jí 淨土指歸集
Anthology of [Texts] Pointing the Way Home to the Pure Land by 大佑 (Qú’ān Dàyòu, 集)
About the work
A two-juǎn anthology of Pure Land doctrinal extracts, devotional verse, hagiographical material, and exhortation pieces compiled by the early-Míng Tiāntái master 大佑 Qú’ān Dàyòu 蘧菴大佑 (1334–1407), abbot of Bào’ēnsì 報恩寺 in Sūzhōu 蘇州. The anthology is one of the principal early-Míng intermediary texts between the SòngYuán Pure Land scholasticism (the Lèbāng wénlèi KR6p0048 of Zōngxiǎo, the Lúshān liánzōng bǎojiàn KR6p0054 of Pǔdù) and the late-Míng Yúnqī Zhūhóng synthesis.
Abstract
The Zhǐguī jí is the smaller and less ambitious of Dàyòu’s two principal Pure Land works (the larger and more influential being the Ēmítuó jīng lüèjiě KR6p0017, his standard early-Míng abbreviated commentary on the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha). It is structured as a thematic anthology rather than a doctrinal-systematic treatise: scriptural extracts on the merits of niànfó; doctrinal passages from major Pure Land authors (Tánluán 曇鸞, Dàochuò 道綽, Shàndǎo 善導, Yánshòu 延壽, the Sìmíng Tiāntái line); biographical exempla of Pure Land devotees and their ruìxiāng 瑞相 (auspicious deathbed signs); devotional verse and jié 偈; practical instructions on the daily yíguǐ of niànfó. The arrangement is practical-pastoral — designed to provide a single accessible volume of Pure Land devotional material for monastic and lay readers in early-Míng Sūzhōu — rather than systematic-doctrinal.
The work is thus a late-medieval analogue of the Lóngshū jìngtǔ wén KR6p0050 genre — a popularising Pure Land collection — but produced from within Tiāntái monastic scholasticism rather than (as with Wáng Rìxiū’s text) from a literati-Confucian register. Its characteristic Tiāntái orientation is visible in the doctrinal extracts that anchor each section: Dàyòu draws systematically on the Sìmíng 四明 line of Sòng Tiāntái Pure Land, and the Zhǐguī jí effectively transmits this Tiāntái Pure Land doctrinal apparatus to the early-Míng monastic readership.
The text survives only in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1154); it does not appear in the main SòngYuánMíng canonical sequences. The dating bracket adopted (1380–1407) covers Dàyòu’s mature period at Bào’ēnsì up to his death.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia, 1981 — frames Dàyòu’s Pure Land work as the principal early-Míng Tiāntái antecedent of Yúnqī Zhūhóng.
- Shengyan 聖嚴. Míng-mò Fójiào yán-jiū 明末佛教研究. Taipei: Dōng-chū, 1987.
- Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. Chūgoku jōdo kyōrishi 中國淨土教理史. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1942/1964 — for Dàyòu’s place in the Tiāntái Pure Land tradition.