Yōupóyí zhì 優婆夷志
Record of Female Lay Buddhists
compiled (huìbiān 彙編) by 郭凝之 Guō Níngzhī; corrected (jiàodìng 較定) by 圓信 Yuánxìn, late Míng / early Qīng
About the work
A one-juan late-Míng / early-Qīng compilation of biographical notices of Buddhist laywomen — upāsikā 優婆夷, the Sanskrit term rendered in Chinese transliteration — drawn from earlier Chán and Pure Land sources. Companion volume to the same editors’ Xiānjué zōngshèng (KR6q0050), which treats lay practitioners more generally.
Abstract
One of the small number of pre-modern Chinese Buddhist compilations devoted specifically to women practitioners, and a central primary source for modern scholarship on late-imperial Chinese Buddhist women. The compilers draw on earlier lamp records, biographical anthologies, and miscellaneous notices to produce a compact register of Buddhist laywomen from the Táng through the Míng.
Translations and research
No complete English translation. Beata Grant, Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China (UH Press, 2009), treats the broader genre of which this is a late-Míng example; her Daughters of Emptiness (Wisdom, 2003) and other articles use comparable material. The Yōupóyí zhì itself has no dedicated monograph.
Other points of interest
The pairing of Xiānjué zōngshèng + Yōupóyí zhì — lay practitioners in general, with laywomen singled out — is an unusual editorial structure and testifies to a degree of late-imperial Buddhist attention to women’s practice that is often understated in modern narrative.