Xǐng’ān fǎshī yǔlù 省菴法師語錄
Recorded Sayings of Master Xǐng’ān re-edited by 彭際清 (Péng Jìqīng, 重訂)
About the work
A two-juǎn recorded-sayings (yǔlù 語錄) collection of 實賢 Xǐng’ān Shíxián 省庵實賢 (1685–1734), the Eleventh Patriarch of the orthodox Chinese Pure Land lineage, re-edited (chóngdìng 重訂) by the most important late-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng 彭際清 (1740–1796) some six decades after Xǐng’ān’s death.
Abstract
Xǐng’ān’s recorded sayings had circulated in earlier recensions during the decades after his death; Péng Jìqīng’s chóngdìng edition of the late eighteenth century represents the consolidated and authoritatively edited form of the corpus. The two juǎn gather Xǐng’ān’s lectures, sermons, shàngtáng 上堂 (“ascending the hall”) teachings, shìzhòng 示眾 (“instructions to the assembly”) talks, prefaces and postfaces to other works, letters to disciples and lay supporters, and miscellaneous prose pieces. The collection includes Xǐng’ān’s most famous individual composition — the 《勸發菩提心文》 Quàn fā pútí xīn wén (“Essay Exhorting [the Generation of] Bodhicitta”), the foundational pastoral text of late-imperial Pure Land bodhicitta cultivation — alongside the substantial corpus of his other writings.
The collection is a principal document of the early-Qīng Pure Land tradition and was a central point of reference for the late-Qīng Pure Land lay revival under Péng Jìqīng and his successors. Péng’s editorial chóngdìng role illustrates the institutional pattern of late-imperial Buddhist textual transmission, in which master’s recorded sayings were preserved through successive generations of edited recensions, with the most authoritative form often produced by an editor working a generation or two after the master’s death.
The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1179). The dating bracket adopted (1734–1796) covers from Xǐng’ān’s death to Péng Jìqīng’s death (the latter being the terminus ante quem for Péng’s editorial work).
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — substantial discussion of Péng Jì-qīng and his late-Qīng Pure Land programme.
- Welch, Holmes. The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1968 — for the Republican-era reception of Xǐng’ān and Péng Jì-qīng.
- Pittman, Don. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.