Jìngtǔ wǔhuì niànfó sòngjīng guānxíng yí (juǎn zhōng / xià) 淨土五會念佛誦經觀行儀卷中．下
Ritual for the Five-Melody Niàn-fó*, Sūtra-Recitation, and Contemplative Practice in the Pure Land (middle and lower* juǎn*)* by 法照 (Nányuè shāmén Fǎzhào, 撰)
About the work
The surviving middle and lower juǎn of an originally three-juǎn ritual treatise composed by the Táng Pure Land master 法照 Fǎzhào 法照 (c. 747–821), founder of the wǔhuì niànfó 五會念佛 (“five-melody nianfo”) devotional system. The text complements (and is more extensive than) the better-preserved Jìngtǔ wǔhuì niànfó lüè fǎshì yízàn KR6p0078 (T1983, also by Fǎzhào). The two together constitute the principal documentary witness to the wǔhuì musically-elaborate Pure Land devotional system.
Abstract
The author identification is Nányuè shāmén Fǎzhào zhuàn 南岳沙門法照撰 — “Nányuè (Mount Héngshān) monk Fǎzhào composed [this].” Fǎzhào was active at Nányuè under the tutelage of Chéngyuǎn 承遠 (the disciple of 慧日 Címǐn sānzàng Huìrì) before moving to Wǔtáishān 五台山 where he received the imperial title Wǔhuì fǎshī 五會法師 (“Master of the Five Melodies”) under Dàizōng 代宗 (r. 762–779).
The middle juǎn opens with the full text of the Ē-mí-tuó jīng 阿彌陀經 (the Smaller Sukhāvatī-vyūha) in Kumārajīva’s recension — Yáo Qín Luó-shí fǎ-shī yì 後秦羅什法師譯 — supplemented with a parenthetical note that Guṇabhadra (求那跋陀羅) re-translated the text in the Sòng 嘉元年 (here understood as the Liú-Sòng 劉宋 Yuán-jiā 元嘉 era of the early 5th c.) under the title Ē-mí-tuó jīng. The middle and lower juǎn contain ritual prescriptions for the integrated wǔ-huì practice: the formal opening, the sūtra-recitation cadences for the Ē-mí-tuó jīng and selected Wú-liàng-shòu jīng and Guān-jīng passages, the five successively-intensifying melodic recitations of the Nā-mó ē-mí-tuó fó invocation, and the closing dedication. The accompanying guān-xíng yí 觀行儀 (contemplative-practice ritual) integrates visualisation of the xī-fāng jí-lè cosmology with the recitative cadences.
The upper juǎn of the work is not extant; only the middle and lower juǎn survive, transmitted through Taishō Vol. 85, No. 2827 — the Gǔyìbù 古逸部 ancient-lost-texts division — and ultimately deriving from the Dūnhuáng manuscript recoveries (where Fǎzhào’s works survived in multiple manuscript witnesses and partial fragments). The text is one of the two principal documentary sources for the wǔhuì musical system, which has otherwise left only fragmentary traces in the late-Táng / Sòng Buddhist musical tradition; the wǔhuì musical system was carried into Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (the go-e nenbutsu 五会念仏) through the early-Heian transmission and is partially reconstructable from Japanese liturgical sources.
The dating bracket adopted (766–821) covers from Fǎzhào’s mature Wǔtáishān period (post-766) through his death.
Translations and research
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆. 《唐中期の浄土教》(Mid-Táng Pure Land Buddhism). Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1933 — the foundational modern study of Fǎ-zhào and the wǔ-huì tradition.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “Visions of Mañjuśrī on Mount Wutai.” In Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996 — for Fǎ-zhào’s Wǔ-tái-shān encounters.
- Sharf, Robert H. “On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an / Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China.” T’oung Pao 88 (2002): 282–331.
- Schopen, Gregory and various authors on the Dūnhuáng wǔ-huì fragments.
Other points of interest
The Wǔhuì musical-Pure-Land tradition that this text documents was an unusually elaborate ritual programme by Chinese Buddhist standards, comparable in its musical-liturgical ambition only to the parallel Tantric (mìzōng 密宗) ritual programmes of the Táng. Its loss from the Chinese mainland Buddhist tradition, and its partial preservation only through the Dūnhuáng manuscript recoveries and the Japanese go-e nenbutsu transmission, makes the present text a key witness to the Táng-era richness of Chinese Pure Land devotional practice — a richness that was substantially attenuated in the late-imperial chímíng-only consolidation.