Xiānjué zōngshèng (xuǎnlù “Dìwáng wèndào lù”) 先覺宗乘（選錄「帝王問道錄」）
Lineage Vehicle of the Formerly-Awakened (Selection: Record of Emperors Inquiring after the Way)
compiled (biān 編) by 郭凝之 Guō Níngzhī, late Míng / early Qīng; this fascicle reviewed for print by Shuāngjì Shì 頓讓 Dùnràng.
About the work
A one-juan excerpt (xuǎnlù 選錄) drawn from the first portion of Guō Níngzhī and 圓信 Yuánxìn’s five-juan Xiānjué zōngshèng (KR6q0050). It consists of the “Dìwáng wèndào lù” 帝王問道錄 — a register of encounter-dialogues between emperors and eminent Chán masters, from Liáng Wǔdì’s exchange with Bodhidharma through the Sòng emperor Xiàozōng’s (Shòuhuáng 壽皇) conversations with Fózhào 德光 Déguāng. Published separately in the Jiāxīng canon (Jiāxīng zàng 嘉興藏), parallel to the full recension in the Xuzangjing.
Abstract
The 帝王問道錄 is the opening section of Xiānjué zōngshèng, reframed here as a stand-alone Chán anthology of imperial encounter-dialogue. Arranged chronologically, it moves from the familiar Liáng Wǔdì / 寶誌 Bǎozhì and Liáng Wǔdì / Bodhidharma exchanges, through Táng Zhōngzōng’s dispatch of 薛簡 Xuē Jiǎn to the Sixth Patriarch 惠能 Huìnéng (a reworking of material found in the Liùzǔ tán jīng), Táng Xuánzōng’s audience with 司空淨 Sīkōng Jìng chánshī, and on to several Sòng imperial exchanges, closing with an extended dialogue between Sòng Xiàozōng and Fózhào Déguāng dated Shàoxī 1 (紹熙元年 = 1190). Each dialogue is annotated with earlier Chán masters’ brief judgements or alternative responses — the standard commentarial apparatus of gōng’àn literature (e.g. Fényáng 善昭 Shànzhāo, Xuědòu 重顯 Chóngxiǎn, Báiyún 守端 Shǒuduān, Wǔzǔ 戒 Jiè).
The postface colophon gives the compiler’s full name as Guō Zhèngzhōng 郭正中 (original personal name Níngzhī 凝之, courtesy name Líméi 黎眉), a layman of Hǎiníng 海寧 county in Zhèjiāng (self-styled 無地地主人 “master of the no-land land”). It records that his grandson 時願 Guō Shíyuàn donated the printing blocks to the Gǔméi’ān 古梅菴 at Jìngshān 徑山 for inclusion in the canon. The colophon is dated Kāngxī yǐsì 乙巳 winter, i.e. the twelfth lunar month of Kāngxī 4 = early 1666 CE — so the terminus ante quem for this excerpt fascicle is 1665/1666. The catalog meta lists the dynasty as 明; the selection was in fact compiled under Míng but its Jiāxīng-canon printing is securely Qīng (1665), hence 清 here. For the parent work the notBefore / notAfter window of 1640–1670 is retained; the 1665 date marks this selection’s publication, not the compilation of the full five-juan work.
Translations and research
No dedicated English translation of the Dìwáng wèndào lù as such. Individual dialogues it collects (Liáng Wǔdì / Bodhidharma, Xuē Jiǎn / Huìnéng, Fózhào / Xiàozōng) are translated in the standard sources for those dialogues — e.g. Red Pine, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma (1987); Philip Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Columbia, 1967); Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen (Kuroda, 2008), which treats the Sòng imperial-Chán nexus in detail — but the selection as a whole has no scholarly treatment independent of studies of its parent work.
Other points of interest
The selection’s framing is characteristic of late-imperial Chán editing: a sub-anthology is lifted out of a larger compilation and given separate circulation for a distinct readership — here, presumably, educated lay readers who found the imperial-audience dialogues more immediately accessible than the bulk of Xiānjué zōngshèng’s lay-practitioner biographies.