Jiǎohǔ jí 角虎集
The Anthology of the Horned Tiger by 濟能 (Èrléngān Jìnéng, 纂輯)
About the work
A two-juǎn hagiographical-doctrinal anthology focusing on the Chán-Pure Land integrative tradition (chánjìng shuāngxiū 禪淨雙修), compiled by the early-Qīng monk 濟能 Èrléngān Jìnéng 二楞庵濟能. The title — jiǎohǔ 角虎 (“horned tiger”) — borrows the famous metaphor attributed to 延壽 Yǒngmíng Yánshòu (904–975): the practitioner who combines Chán meditation (the natural strength of the tiger) with Pure Land devotion (the horns added on top) is as a tiger that has grown horns, doubly powerful and unbeatable. The metaphor became the standard late-imperial idiom for the integrated Chán-Pure Land practitioner.
Abstract
The anthology gathers hagiographical accounts and doctrinal excerpts of monks and lay-Buddhists across the Chinese tradition who exemplify the chánjìng shuāngxiū programme — beginning with Yánshòu himself (whose Wànshàn tóngguī jí 萬善同歸集 KR6q0094 is the foundational Chinese text on the integration), and continuing through 天如則 Tiānrú Wéizé (the Jìngtǔ huòwèn KR6p0053 author, the great Yuán Chán-Pure Land integrator), 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng (the late-Míng integrator par excellence), 行策 Jiéliú Xíngcè (the seventeenth-century Línjì-Pure Land master), and Jìnéng’s own seventeenth-century contemporaries. Each entry combines a brief biographical-doctrinal account with selected sayings and devotional material illustrating the subject’s chánjìng shuāngxiū practice.
The work is therefore a canonical history of the Chán-Pure Land integration tradition as Jìnéng saw it, organised hagiographically. It is one of the principal Qīng documents of the late-imperial integrative programme and is read alongside 宗本 Yīyuán Zōngběn’s Guīyuán zhízhǐ jí KR6p0061, Yuán Hóngdào’s Xīfāng hélùn KR6p0057, and Yúnqī’s various Pure Land writings as a key source for the doctrinal-historical self-understanding of the tradition.
The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1177). The dating bracket adopted (1670–1730) covers the late-seventeenth / early-eighteenth-century period during which Jìnéng was active.
Translations and research
- Sharf, Robert H. “On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an / Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China.” T’oung Pao 88 (2002): 282–331 — for the broader integrative tradition that the Jiǎo-hǔ jí documents.
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. New York: Columbia, 1981.
- Welter, Albert. Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu. New York: Oxford UP, 2011 — for Yánshòu and the foundational jiǎo-hǔ metaphor.