Lìdài fǎbǎo jì 曆代法寶記
Record of the Dharma-Jewel through Successive Generations
anonymous, compiled by disciples of 無住 (Wúzhù, 714–774) in the Bǎotáng 保唐 school of Chán, ca. 774–780
About the work
A single-juan early-Chán lineage record, compiled within the Sìchuān Bǎotáng 保唐 school shortly after the death of its founder Wúzhù 無住 (714–774). The text traces the transmission of the Dharma from the seven buddhas of the past through the Indian patriarchs, Bodhidharma, and the early Chinese patriarchs down to Wúzhù, identifying the Bǎotáng line as the true heirs of the tradition. Preserved in the Dūnhuáng 敦煌 cave library and rediscovered in multiple manuscript witnesses in the early twentieth century; the received text in the Taishō 大正 canon (T51 no. 2075) derives from Yanagida Seizan’s 柳田聖山 collation of the Dūnhuáng manuscripts.
Abstract
The opening of the received text itself gives three alternative titles: Shīzī zhòngmài zhuàn 師資眾脈傳 (“Record of the Many Lineage-Veins of Master and Disciple”), Dìng shìfēi cuīxié xiǎnzhèng pòhuài yīqiè xīn zhuàn 定是非摧邪顯正破壞一切心傳 (“Record Which Fixes True and False, Destroys Error, Manifests the Right, and Demolishes All Mind-Transmission”), and Zuìshàng shèng dùnwù fǎmén 最上乘頓悟法門 (“The Supreme-Vehicle Gate of Sudden Awakening”). No author is named; authorship is conventionally ascribed to the disciples of Wúzhù of the Bǎotáng school in the generation immediately following his death.
The work belongs to the cluster of eighth-century Chán histories that sought to legitimate a particular sub-lineage by constructing a patriarchal transmission narrative — the same genre as the Chuán fǎbǎo jì 傳法寶紀 (杜朏 Dù Fěi), the Léngqié shīzī jì 楞伽師資記 (淨覺 Jìngjué), and the Bǎolín zhuàn 寶林傳. Its distinctive claim is that the robe of Bodhidharma, after passing through the six Chinese patriarchs, descended to 智詵 Zhìshēn (609–702), 處寂 Chǔjí (665–732), 無相 Wúxiàng (684–762, the Korean monk Musang), and finally to Wúzhù — effectively rerouting the Chán transmission through Sìchuān and against the Shénhuì 神會-era southern-orthodox narrative. The text is famously hostile to the Shénxiù-Shénhuì competition it displaces.
Dating is set by internal evidence: the account closes with Wúzhù’s death and includes reign-era references consistent with composition in the Dàlì 大曆 era (766–779). A compilation window of 774–780 is the standard consensus.
Textual transmission: lost from Chinese scriptural transmission after the Táng, the work survived only in Dūnhuáng manuscripts. Known witnesses include Stein 516, Pelliot 2125, Pelliot 3717, and others. Yanagida Seizan reconstructed the text from these witnesses for his critical edition, and the Taishō editors incorporated his work as T51 no. 2075.
Translations and research
An authoritative English translation with substantial introductory study exists:
- Wendi L. Adamek, The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and Its Contexts (Columbia University Press, 2007) — a full annotated English translation of the Lìdài fǎbǎo jì together with a book-length study of its Bǎotáng-school context, textual history, and doctrinal programme. The standard Western-language treatment.
The foundational Sinophone / Japanese scholarship is:
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山, Shoki no zenshi II: Rekidai hōbō ki 初期の禪史 II 歷代法寶記 (Chikuma Shobō 筑摩書房, 1976) — critical edition, Japanese translation, and study, part of the Zen no goroku 禪の語錄 series. The anchoring Japanese scholarly edition.
- Yanagida’s earlier Shoki zenshū shisho no kenkyū 初期禪宗史書の研究 (Hōzōkan, 1967) situates the work in the broader early-Chán historiographical tradition.
Also substantive: Wendi Adamek’s earlier journal articles (e.g. “Robes Purple and Gold: Transmission of the Robe in the Lidai fabao ji”, History of Religions 40.1, 2000); Bernard Faure’s treatment in The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism (Stanford UP, 1997).
Other points of interest
The Lìdài fǎbǎo jì is one of the small handful of early-Chán historical sources preserved only at Dūnhuáng, and — alongside the Léngqié shīzī jì and the Shénhuì corpus — is a primary evidentiary source for the pre-Zǔtáng jí state of Chán lineage-construction. Its rhetorical strategy (rerouting the line through Sìchuān, attacking the competing lineage claims of both Northern and Southern Chán by name) makes it unusually polemical among early Chán transmission texts. The Bǎotáng school itself did not survive past the late Táng; the Lìdài fǎbǎo jì is its principal surviving historical self-representation.