Qīngzhū jí 清珠集
The Anthology of the Clear-Water Pearl by 治兆 (Shì Zhìzhào, 輯)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land devotional anthology compiled (jí 輯) by the late-Qīng monk 治兆 Shì Zhìzhào 釋治兆. The title qīngzhū 清珠 (“clear-water pearl”) borrows the standard Pure Land idiom — qīngzhū tóu yú zhuóshuǐ 清珠投於濁水, “casting a clear-water pearl into turbid water” — for the purifying effect of niànfó recitation upon the polluted cíxīn of the practitioner: as the pearl draws turbid water clear by its mere presence, so the niànfó invocation purifies the recitative consciousness.
Abstract
The Qīngzhū jí xù 清珠集序 by Zhào Chéngxià 趙成夏 (hào Shǎohé jūshì 少荷居士, Qǐshùlóu zhǔrén 綺樹樓主人), dated gēngwǔ zhòngqiū 庚午仲秋, identifies Zhìzhào as a Pure Land society master who had observed the summer retreat (jiéxià 結夏) for thirty years before compiling this anthology — therefore active across roughly three decades of mid-to-late-nineteenth-century practice. The gēngwǔ sexagenary year of the preface most plausibly corresponds to Tóngzhì 9 (1870) given the mid-to-late Qīng register and concerns of the text. (The earlier gēngwǔ of Dàoguāng 30 (1850) cannot be definitively excluded; the dating bracket adopted, 1840–1870, accommodates the uncertainty.)
The body of the text is organised as a thematic Pure Land anthology drawing on the Confucian-Buddhist conciliation tradition — Zhào’s preface explicitly invokes Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元’s argument that Buddhism is “compatible with Confucius” (不背孔子) — together with the standard Pure Land patristic and pastoral materials. The anthology is concerned with the doctrinal-pastoral defence of Pure Land devotion against contemporary Chán literalism (the “wandering off course” of public-case Chán represented in the Chányuè 禪悅 imagery of the preface). The zìxù (preface by Zhìzhào) frames the work as a collection of “transmitted secrets” (dānchuán mìfù 單傳密付) of the Pure Land patriarchs that he has gathered (huìcuǐ zhū jiā 會稡諸家) for the salvation of all sentient beings.
Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1192; the Jiāxīng 嘉興 collection (catalogued in the editions field) also transmits a version.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.