Chuán fǎ bǎo jì 傳法寶紀
Precious Record of the Transmission of the Dharma
The earliest surviving coherent early-Chán lineage-history, compiled in the early 8th century by the Jīngzhào 京兆 literatus and lay Buddhist practitioner Dù Fěi 杜朏, zì Fāngmíng 方明; a principal primary source for Northern-School Chán lineage-thinking prior to the Shénhuì polemical campaign, surviving only through Dūnhuáng manuscript witnesses
About the work
A one-juan early-Chán lineage-history text, Taishō T85 n2838, preserved only through Dūnhuáng manuscript witnesses (principally Pelliot 2634). Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Together with the KR6q0109 Lèngjiā shī zī jì by Jìngjué, the Chuán fǎ bǎo jì is one of the two major early-8th-century Northern-School lineage-histories, with each presenting a slightly different canonical transmission.
Dù Fěi presents a seven-generation lineage: Bodhidharma 菩提達摩 → Huìkě 慧可 → Sēngcàn 僧璨 → Dàoxìn 道信 → Hóngrěn 弘忍 → Fǎrú 法如 (638–689) and Shénxiù 神秀 (606?–706) as joint fifth-generation successors, with Fǎrú presented as senior and Pǔjì 普寂 (651–739) as a sixth-generation descendant. The elevation of Fǎrú — a relatively minor figure in the later Chán tradition — to principal-heir status is the distinctive feature of the Chuán fǎ bǎo jì and distinguishes it from both Jìngjué’s Xuánzé-lineage construction and from the mature Northern-School position that placed Shénxiù as the principal fifth-generation heir.
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists. The work opens with a verse-and-prose preface: “Jī shǒu shànzhīshí, néng lìng hù běn xīn, yóu rú zhuó shuǐ zhōng, zhū lì dùn qīngxiàn 稽首善知識，能令護本心，猶如濁水中，珠力頓清現” (“Prostrating before the shànzhīshí, who can have me guard the original mind; just as in muddy water, the pearl’s power suddenly produces clarity”). The preface then develops the doctrinal framing — the zhēnrú 真如 (suchness) as direct mind-transmission beyond words — and places the subsequent biographical-genealogical section in context. Signature line Jīngzhào Dù Fěi zì Fāngmíng zhuàn 京兆杜朏字方明撰 (“composed by Dù Fěi of Jīngzhào, zì Fāngmíng”).
Abstract
Dù Fěi (DILA A000524) is otherwise unknown beyond his authorship of this text. Native of Jīngzhào 京兆 (the Chāng’ān region); a literatus-shìdàfū rather than monk (DILA records monk = fǒu 否). The Chuán fǎ bǎo jì was composed at some point early in Xuánzōng’s reign, with the conventional dating placing composition between 712 (the year after Shénxiù’s death’s documentary consolidation) and 716 (the year before the composition is securely referenced in a contemporary text).
The text’s distinctive doctrinal-historical features:
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Fǎrú 法如-centric lineage. Fǎrú (638–689), a dharma-heir of Hóngrěn who held the abbacy at Sōngyuè 嵩岳 Shàolín sì 少林寺 from ca. 681 until his death in 689, is positioned as senior to Shénxiù in the succession from Hóngrěn. This elevation of Fǎrú appears only in the Chuán fǎ bǎo jì and in a small cluster of cognate early-8th-century texts; the mature Northern-School tradition displaced Fǎrú into secondary-heir status and the Southern-School tradition largely erased him. The Chuán fǎ bǎo jì’s preservation of the Fǎrú-centric construction is thus a key witness to an alternative early-8th-century lineage-historical position.
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Critique of “Dámó lùn” 達摩論 literature. Dù Fěi explicitly states that contemporary circulating texts called Dámó lùn (treatises attributed to Bodhidharma) are mostly spurious — the author acknowledging that the already-active 8th-century practice of producing new Bodhidharma-attributed texts (KR6q0084, KR6q0103, KR6q0104, KR6q0112–KR6q0115) was creating doubtful transmissional claims. This is the earliest surviving internal-critical comment on the Chán pseudepigraphic practice.
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Doctrinal framing through Laṅkāvatāra and Awakening-of-Faith. Dù Fěi extensively cites the Lèngjiā jīng 楞伽經 and the Dàshèng qǐ xìn lùn 大乘起信論 as scriptural and doctrinal foundation for the lineage-claim, establishing the Laṅkāvatāra-centric doctrinal orientation characteristic of Northern-School Chán prior to the Southern-School’s displacement of that scriptural base with the Jīn’gāng jīng.
Dating bracket: notBefore 712 (working terminus post quem based on the text’s references to Shénxiù-lineage events), notAfter 716 (working terminus ante quem — the text is referenced in documents datable to around this period). The probably Kāi-yuán-early period of composition. Catalog dynasty 唐.
Translations and research
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山 1971. 《初期の禪史 I》. Chikuma Shobō. Critical edition and annotated Japanese translation — the foundational modern scholarship.
- McRae, John R. 1986. The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism. Hawai’i. Extensive treatment including translated excerpts.
- Adamek, Wendi L. 2007. The Mystique of Transmission. Columbia. Extended monograph treatment.
- Faure, Bernard. 1997. The Will to Orthodoxy. Stanford.
- Jorgensen, John. 2005. Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch. Brill.
Other points of interest
The Chuán fǎ bǎo jì and the Lèngjiā shī zī jì KR6q0109 together constitute the two principal pre-Shénhuì Northern-School lineage-histories. The differences between them — the Chuán fǎ bǎo jì’s Fǎrú-centric construction vs. Jìngjué’s Xuánzé-centric construction, their divergent first-patriarch positions (Bodhidharma in Dù Fěi vs. Guṇabhadra in Jìngjué), their different doctrinal emphases — illustrate the multi-vocal and unfixed state of early-8th-century Chán lineage-discourse before the Shénhuì polemical campaign’s imposition of the Huìnéng-centric Southern-School canonical narrative.
The loss of the text from the mainstream canonical tradition and its survival only through a single Pelliot Dūnhuáng manuscript (P. 2634) is characteristic of the broader fate of pre-Shénhuì Northern-School primary sources. The rediscovery of the manuscript in the early 20th century and its critical edition by Yanagida in the 1970s has been instrumental in the modern reshaping of early-Chán historiography.