Dàoān fǎshī niànfó zànwén 道安法師念佛讚文
The Niàn-fó Encomium-Text of Master Dào-ān attributed to 道安 (anonymous Dūnhuáng manuscript)
About the work
A second Dūnhuáng-recovered devotional zànwén 讚文 (encomium-text) on Pure Land and Wǔtáishān 五台山 themes, pseudepigraphically attributed to 道安 Dàoān fǎshī 道安法師. Preserved in the Taishō Gǔyìbù of Vol. 85 as No. 2830B — a companion piece to No. 2830A KR6p0139 under the same Dàoān attribution but with distinct content focusing on the Wǔtáishān sacred-mountain pilgrimage tradition.
Abstract
The text is a sequence of Wǔ-tái-shān pilgrimage poems, each describing one of the wǔ tái 五台 (“five terraces” — the five peaks of Mount Wǔ-tái: north, east, south, west, central) with its characteristic landscape, miraculous manifestations of Mañjuśrī, and devotional imagery. Sample opening of the Wǔ shǒu 第五首 (Fifth Verse) on the North Terrace (Běi-tái 北臺):
Shàng Běitái dēng xiǎn dào, shí jìng jùn céng huǎn bù xíng, duō shǎo biàn dì méitái wéi ruǎn cǎo 上北臺登險道，石涇峻層緩步行，多少遍地莓苔唯軟草 (“Climbing the North Terrace by the perilous road, the rocky path’s steep tiers I tread slowly; everywhere the ground is mossy with only soft grass”)
dìngshuǐ qián liú yī lǐ sān huí, dào luòtuó wù fēng niǎoniǎo 定水潛流一里三迴，倒駱駝塢風裊裊 (“the dhyāna-water silently flows; in one li it returns three times around the Inverted-Camel Glen, the wind softly stirring”)
Luóhàn yántóu guān nài hǎo, bù gǎn jiǔ tíng yān, yǒu lóngshén cāo 羅漢嵒頭觀奈好，不敢久停焉，有龍神操 (“at Arhat-Cliff one gazes how rapt — but [I] do not dare linger; the dragon-spirit’s discipline holds”)
The sequence continues with the East Terrace (Dōng-tái 東臺, where one looks toward the Běi-dǒu Big Dipper and sees the dragon-spirits warring over the sea, with the Wén-shū 文殊 invocation rescuing the practitioner from the storm); the Dà-shèng-táng 大聖堂 (“Great Sage Hall,” the central Mañjuśrī shrine) “non-mundane place, with dragons coiled left and right”; and further pilgrimage stations.
The zànwén belongs to the substantial Dūnhuáng-period Wǔtáishān pilgrimage-poetry corpus, which includes the famous Wǔtáishān zàn 五台山讚 fragments and the Dūnhuáng paintings depicting the sacred topography. The pseudepigraphic Dàoān attribution is consistent with the device used in No. 2830A: the prestige of the Eastern Jìn master is borrowed to authenticate devotional compositions that are in fact products of the late-Táng / Five-Dynasties Wǔtáishān cultic milieu.
The dating bracket adopted (700–1000) covers the broad Táng / Five-Dynasties manuscript-tradition horizon.
Translations and research
- Cartelli, Mary Anne. The Five-Coloured Clouds of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang. Leiden: Brill, 2013 — the standard English-language treatment of the Dūnhuáng Wǔ-tái-shān pilgrimage-poetry corpus.
- 杜斗城 Dù Dǒu-chéng. 《敦煌五臺山文獻校錄研究》. Tàiyuán: Shānxī rénmín chūbǎnshè, 1991.
Other points of interest
The two Dào-ān-attributed zàn texts (T2830A KR6p0139 and T2830B = the present text) are the principal Dūnhuáng-recovered Pure Land + Wǔ-tái-shān pseudepigraphic devotional cluster. They are particularly important for documenting the integration of Wǔ-tái-shān (Mañjuśrī) cultic devotion with Pure Land (Amitābha) devotion in late-Táng popular Buddhism — an integration that the orthodox late-imperial Pure Land tradition (which prioritised Amitābha alone) substantially attenuated.