Chóngdìng Xīfāng gōngjù 重訂西方公據
Re-edited [Anthology of] Documents on the Western [Pure Land] by 彭際清 (Èrlín jūshì Péng Jìqīng, 集)
About the work
A two-juǎn re-edited (chóngdìng 重訂) Pure Land documentary anthology compiled by 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng 彭際清 (1740–1796) — the most important late-Qīng lay-Buddhist intellectual and the principal architect of the late-Qīng Pure Land revival. The title — xīfāng gōngjù 西方公據 (“documents on the Western [Pure Land]”) — uses the Confucian-legal idiom gōngjù 公據 (“documentary authority / authoritative records”) to characterise the work as a collection of authoritative source-documents on Pure Land doctrine and practice, drawn from across the Chinese tradition.
Abstract
The anthology gathers Pure Land documentary material organised into thematic categories: scriptural extracts from the canonical Pure Land sūtras with brief doctrinal commentary; zhāoyào 招要 / jǐngyǔ 警語 type pastoral instructions on niànfó practice; wǎngshēng 往生 hagiographical accounts of Pure Land devotees with their ruìxiāng 瑞相 (auspicious deathbed signs); selected devotional verse and zàn; and material on the Pure Land lineage and patriarchate. Péng’s chóngdìng designation indicates this is a re-edited compilation; the underlying earlier anthology (the Xīfāng gōngjù in its first form) had circulated in the early Qīng but was substantially revised and expanded by Péng for the late-Qīng readership.
The work belongs to Péng Jìqīng’s larger late-Qīng Pure Land lay-Buddhist programme, which also includes the Jūshì zhuàn 居士傳 (his celebrated 56-fascicle compilation of lay-Buddhist biographies), the Wúliángshòu jīng qǐxìn lùn 無量壽經起信論 (his commentary on the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha), the Huáyán niànfó sānmèi lùn KR6e0148 (his treatise integrating Huáyán metaphysics with Pure Land devotion), and the Niànfó jǐngcè KR6p0100 (his zhāoyào / admonitory anthology on niànfó). Together these works constitute the definitive late-Qīng synthesis of lay-Buddhist Pure Land scholarship, and they decisively shaped the Pure Land tradition transmitted into the Republican-era revival under Yìnguāng 印光 and his contemporaries.
The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1180). The dating bracket adopted (1770–1796) covers Péng Jìqīng’s mature lay-Buddhist period from the establishment of his lay-Buddhist circle around 1770 to his death.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — the principal English-language treatment of Péng Jì-qīng’s lay-Buddhist programme.
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. New York: Columbia, 1981 — for the broader late-imperial Pure Land context.
- Welch, Holmes. The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1968 — for the Republican-era successors to Péng’s programme.
- Pittman, Don. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.