Liùzǔ dàshī fǎbǎo Tánjīng 六祖大師法寶壇經
The Platform Sūtra of the Great Master, Sixth Patriarch, Dharma-Treasure
the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch, Dharma-Treasure of the Great Master — the Yuán-dynasty Zōngbǎo 宗寶 recension of 1291: the canonical Tánjīng of later East-Asian Buddhism, editorially distinct from and substantially later than the Dūnhuáng recension (KR6q0082, T48 n2007) by about five centuries; collated and re-edited (biān 編) by Zōngbǎo of the Fēngfān Bào’ēn Guāngxiào chánsì 風旛報恩光孝禪寺 in Sháozhōu 韶州 in Zhìyuán 28 (1291), from three divergent circulating recensions whose blocks had decayed; fronted by the preface of Gǔjūn bǐqiū 德異 Déyì 古筠比丘德異 of the Xiūxiū chán’ān 休休禪庵 at Wúzhōng 吳中 dated Zhìyuán 27 (1290); closed by Zōngbǎo’s own postface of summer 1291
About the work
The received Tánjīng 壇經 of later East-Asian Buddhist tradition. Taishō T48 n2008. Editorially distinct from the Dūnhuáng recension (KR6q0082, T48 n2007): Zōngbǎo’s 1291 recension is substantially longer, organised into ten explicit pǐn 品 (“chapters”: Xíngyóu 行由, Bōrě 般若, Yíwèn 疑問, Dìnghuì 定慧, Zuòchán 坐禪, Chànhuǐ 懺悔, Jīyuán 機緣, Dùnjiàn 頓漸, Xuānzhào 宣詔, Fùzhǔ 付囑), and supplemented with biographical and hagiographic material absent from the Dūnhuáng form. The front and rear matter — Déyì’s preface, Qìsōng’s zàn, the appended Yuánqǐ wàijì 緣起外紀, Lìcháo chóng fèng shìjī 歷朝崇奉事蹟, the two Dàjiàn chánshī stele inscriptions (one anonymous, one Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元), the Fóyī míng 佛衣銘, and Zōngbǎo’s postface — together frame the sutra as a major editorial-philological project of Yuán-period Southern Chán. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted.
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists.
The front-matter preface Liùzǔ dàshī fǎbǎo Tánjīng xù 六祖大師法寶壇經序 is signed Gǔjūn bǐqiū Déyì 古筠比丘德異, dated Zhìyuán 27 gēngyín zhōngchūn rì 至元二十七年庚寅歲中春日 (1290 mid-spring). Déyì’s preface establishes the text as the Ur-source of the five-house Chán genealogy: “the doctrinal essentials of the Five Houses [wǔ jiā gāngyào 五家綱要] all come from the Tánjīng” — after tracing the transmission line from 慧可 Huìkě through Huángméi to Huìnéng, and onward to the subsequent Five Houses. Déyì further gives the crucial textual-critical statement: “Alas, the Tánjīng has been excessively abridged by later generations; one no longer sees the complete purport of the Sixth Patriarch. In my youth I once saw an old version, and in the thirty-odd years since I have sought it ubiquitously. Recently, with the help of Master Tōng 通, I have found the complete text, and have now cut blocks at the Xiūxiū chánān at Wúzhōng.” Déyì’s recovered long-recension constitutes the textual base that Zōngbǎo the following year edited and re-issued.
The Liùzǔ dàshī fǎbǎo Tánjīng zàn 六祖大師法寶壇經贊 is by Sòng Míngjiào dàshī 契嵩 Qìsōng 宋明教大師契嵩 (1007–1072) — himself the author of a significant earlier recension of the text (the Qìsōng recension, 1056, now lost as an independent text but preserved in later citation). Qìsōng’s zàn emphasises the identification of the Tánjīng with the Buddha’s own mind-to-mind transmission.
Zōngbǎo’s own bá 跋 dated Zhìyuán xīnmǎo xià 至元辛卯夏 (1291 summer), signed Nánhǎi shì Zōngbǎo 南海釋宗寶, records the editorial method: Zōngbǎo saw three extant recensions “each with its own gains and losses,” found the blocks “already corrupted,” took the best base text, corrected errors, filled in abridgements, added dìzǐ qǐngyì jīyuán 弟子請益機緣 (“disciple request-for-instruction encounters”), and produced the received form with the patronage of the àncháshǐ 雲從龍 Yún Cónglóng. Zōngbǎo’s closing anticipatory dialogue — “Did not Bodhidharma refuse to set up words? Why then do you need this text?” / “This text is itself the ‘direct pointing’ of Bodhidharma” — frames the editorial project as an orthodox defence of wénzì chán 文字禪 against anti-textualist objections.
Abstract
Zōngbǎo (DILA A000609, lifedates unrecorded, ji of the Fēngfān Bào’ēn Guāngxiào chánsì in Sháozhōu) completed the received recension in the summer of Zhìyuán 28 (1291) under the patronage of the Yuán àncháshǐ 雲從龍 Yún Cónglóng and by way of a base text provided the previous year by Déyì’s 1290 Wúzhōng printing. The Zōngbǎo recension subsequently displaced all prior circulating Tánjīng forms in East Asian Buddhist tradition: it is the version transmitted into Japan (where it becomes the base for Sōtō and Rinzai versions), Korea (where it anchors the Jogye-order’s foundational textual curriculum), and Vietnam. The Dūnhuáng recension (KR6q0082) was entirely lost from the living Buddhist tradition from the mid-Táng onward and was recovered only through the Stein 5475 manuscript in the early twentieth century — a textual-historical discovery that precipitated the Hú Shì / Yanagida Seizan recension-critical debate of the twentieth century.
The ten-pǐn structural division — Xíngyóu (personal narrative), Bōrě (the prajñā teaching proper), Yíwèn (questions resolved), Dìnghuì (samādhi and wisdom as one), Zuòchán (seated meditation), Chànhuǐ (repentance), Jīyuán (encounter dialogues), Dùnjiàn (sudden and gradual), Xuānzhào (imperial edicts), Fùzhǔ (final instructions) — is Zōngbǎo’s editorial creation and is absent from the Dūnhuáng form. The appended Fùlù 附錄 (“appendix”) preserves the crucial later-Táng hagiographic materials (notably the stele inscriptions by 王維 Wáng Wéi Shàngshū, 柳宗元 Liǔ Zōngyuán cìshǐ, and 劉禹錫 Liú Yǔxí cìshǐ; the 722 attempt to steal Huìnéng’s head by the Korean monk 金大悲 Jīn Dàbēi’s agent 張淨滿 Zhāng Jìngmǎn; the recovery of the head; the Sùzōng-era 上元元年 (760) imperial requisition of the robe-and-bowl for palace-worship; the Dàizōng-era 永泰元年 (765) dream-vision return of the robe-and-bowl to Cáoxī; the 815 posthumous title conferral), making the Zōngbǎo recension the most richly-apparatused single witness to the Huìnéng hagiographic tradition.
Dating bracket: notBefore 1290 (Déyì’s preface), notAfter 1291 (Zōngbǎo’s postface). Dynasty 元 per catalog meta; the Huìnéng-era material is of course 8th century in origin but its editorial form in this recension is Yuán.
Translations and research
- A. F. Price and Wong Mou-lam. 1969. The Diamond Sūtra and the Sūtra of Hui-neng. Shambhala. Early influential English translation of the Zōngbǎo recension.
- John McRae. 2000. The Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch. Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK English Tripiṭaka series). Scholarly English translation of the Zōngbǎo recension, with extensive apparatus; the standard reference for the long recension in English.
- Cleary, Thomas. 1998. The Sūtra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen. Shambhala. Alternative English version.
- Heng Yin. 1977. The Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra. Buddhist Text Translation Society. Translation with Xuānhuà’s 宣化 (1918–1995) commentary.
- Schlütter, Morten, and Stephen F. Teiser (eds.). 2012. Readings of the Platform Sūtra. Columbia. The essential volume for the recensional debate, with essays by Schlütter on the Yuán-Míng editorial history specifically.
- Jorgensen, John. 2005. Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch’an. Brill. Detailed study of the mutually-constitutive relationship between the hagiographic narrative and the lineage construction.
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山 1976. 《六祖壇經諸本集成》. Chūmon Shuppansha. Critical edition collating all major recensions.
- 印順. 1971. 《中國禪宗史》. Zhèngwén Chūbǎnshè.
- Foulk, T. Griffith. 2012. “Ritual in Japanese Zen.” In Zen Ritual, ed. Heine & Wright. Situates the Zōngbǎo Tánjīng in the later East-Asian liturgical-textual inheritance.
Other points of interest
The Zōngbǎo recension’s introduction of pǐn-divisions and its consolidation of hagiographic appendices set the pattern for all subsequent East-Asian Tánjīng editions. The Yuán printing at Sháozhōu was particularly well-placed: it located the canonical Platform Sutra at Cáoxī itself, the geographic site of Huìnéng’s abbacy, and secured political patronage from the Yuán àncháshǐ bureaucracy administering southern China — an arrangement that combined monastic, literary, and state endorsement in a way the Dūnhuáng recension, produced in the contested north, had lacked.
The Hú Shì / Yanagida Seizan twentieth-century textual-critical rediscovery of the Dūnhuáng recension transformed the scholarly understanding of the Tánjīng but had little effect on the liturgical tradition, where the Zōngbǎo recension continues as the living sūtra — read aloud in monasteries, memorised by lay devotees, and serving as the central devotional and doctrinal text for the identification of Chán lineage. The split between critical-historical scholarship (privileging the Dūnhuáng) and living tradition (centred on the Zōngbǎo) is among the sharpest such splits in East Asian Buddhist studies.
Qìsōng’s Northern-Sòng zàn preserved in the front matter is the last surviving substantial trace of the 1056 Qìsōng recension (itself a revision of the Huìxīn 惠昕 1031 recension, the second-oldest datable Tánjīng form after the Dūnhuáng). The Zōngbǎo recension thus embeds a Northern-Sòng stratum as editorial framing for a text whose core Déyì had received as a late-Sòng / early-Yuán “complete” recension.