Jìdēng lù 繼燈錄
Continuing-Lamp Record
compiled by 元賢 Yuánxián (sobriquet Yǒngjué 永覺, 1578–1657), late Míng / early Qīng
About the work
A six-juan late-Míng / early-Qīng Cáodòng-line Chán lamp record by Yǒngjué Yuánxián, supplementing the existing Wǔdēng huìyuán (KR6q0011) and Xù chuándēng lù (KR6q0015) traditions with expanded coverage of the Cáodòng line through the Yuán and Míng. Title — “Continuing-Lamp Record” — frames it as continuation rather than revision.
Abstract
Yuánxián was one of the two most important seventeenth-century Cáodòng-line masters (alongside 無異元來 Wúyì Yuánlái, 1575–1630), and his Jìdēng lù is the principal Cáodòng-side late-Míng contribution to the lamp-record literature, distinct from and in a certain counterpoint to the contemporary Línjì-line works by 費隱通容 Fèiyǐn Tōngróng. Unlike Tōngróng’s polemical Wǔdēng yántǒng (KR6q0018), Yuánxián’s compilation is restrained and scholarly; it restores the Cáodòng-line attributions while avoiding direct polemic against the Línjì.
Translations and research
No English translation. Yǒngjué Yuánxián has received substantial Western scholarly attention: Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (OUP, 2008), treats him and his Jǔngū-shān 鼓山 monastic community at length; see also 廖肇亨 Liào Zhàohēng’s Chinese-language work on seventeenth-century Cáodòng Chán.
Other points of interest
Yuánxián’s Jìdēng lù and the contemporary Línjì-side works together document the seventeenth-century intensification of Chán lineage consciousness that Jiang Wu calls “the reinvention of Chan Buddhism.”