Jǐnjiāng chándēng 錦江禪燈
Chán Lamp of the Brocade River
compiled by 通醉 Tōngzuì, preface dated 1672 (Qīng Kāngxī 11)
About the work
A 20-juan regional Chán lamp record covering Chán masters of Sìchuān 四川 — the Jǐnjiāng 錦江 (“Brocade River”) is the river at Chéngdū 成都, and the title gestures at the whole Sìchuān Chán tradition. Compiled by the Línjì-line monk Zhàngxuě Tōngzuì 丈雪通醉 (1610–1695) in the early Kāngxī era. (Earlier versions of this entry gave the hào as 蒼雪 Cāngxuě, conflating Tōngzuì with the different Huáyán master 蒼雪讀徹 Cāngxuě Dútǐ; corrected here per the KR6q0415 xíngshí and the Báitùtíng naming-verse.)
Abstract
The work is a regional counterpart to the larger national lamp records, documenting the Chán tradition as it developed in Sìchuān from the Táng (the Bǎotáng-school figures including Wúxiàng 無相 and 無住 Wúzhù) through the late Míng and into the early Qīng. Useful for regional Chán history and for recovering figures that the national lamp records treat only briefly or omit. Circulated in the Jiāxīng canon.
Translations and research
No English translation. Regional Chán lamp records of this type are discussed collectively in studies of late-imperial Chinese Buddhist regional history but have received no dedicated Western monograph.
Other points of interest
Sìchuān occupies an unusual place in Chán history because of the eighth-century Bǎotáng school that the Lìdài fǎbǎo jì (KR6q0001) celebrates; the Jǐnjiāng chándēng is useful as a late-imperial witness to how Sìchuān Chán remembered its own regional genealogy after the Bǎotáng-school disappearance.