Mùniú tú sòng 牧牛圖頌
Pictures of Ox-Herding, with Verses
An ambitious Kāngxī-era 康熙 synthesis (J23 B129) that combines both strands of the Chán ox-herding tradition — Pǔmíng’s 普明 ten-stage (black-to-white) cycle and Liángshān Kuò’ān Shīyuǎn’s 梁山廓庵師遠 ten-stage pursuit-and-return cycle KR6q0159 — into a single text, each with its own preface, verses, and accumulated harmonizing verses from multiple dharma-heirs across the Yuán, Míng, and Qīng. Principally compiled by Méng’ān Chāogé 夢菴超格 (hào Nánjiàn 南澗 of Wǔlín 武林 = Hángzhōu) with his 1705 preface, supplementarily edited by the Línjì Chán master Jiālíng Xìngyīn 迦陵性音, and sponsored for the Jiāxīng Canon printing by the lay patron Báishān Nà Xìn 白山納信 with his 1708 preface.
About the work
A one-juan Chán anthology, J23 B129. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. The text’s innovation is structural: where earlier compilations KR6q0161 / KR6q0163 had treated the Pǔmíng ox-herding tradition alone, Chāogé’s synthesis explicitly joins the Pǔmíng and Kuò’ān traditions into a single anthology — with a table of contents (目錄) divided into “Pǔmíng section” (普明目次) and “Liángshān section” (梁山目次) — recognising the two as parallel valid recensions of the same basic Chán didactic schema rather than rival claimants.
Catalog-vs-external discrepancy. The Kanripo catalog meta lists dynasty as 明 (Míng); however, the compilation is precisely dated to Kāngxī 44 (1705, Chāogé’s 又序 preface) through Kāngxī 47 (1708, Nà Xìn’s 刊序 publication preface), and its two principal modern contributors — Chāogé and Xìngyīn — are firmly Qīng figures. The Qīng attribution is followed here.
Contents. Pǔmíng section: preface by Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 (recycled from 1609, labelled 原序 or 原敘); second preface by Chāogé (1705); Pǔmíng’s ten verses; followed by eleven harmonizing-verse sets — Qìngshān Yuánxiū 磬山圓修 (= Tiānyǐn 天隱), Ruòān Tōngwèn 箬菴通問, Shāncí Tōngjì 山茨通際, Yùlín Tōngxiù 玉林通琇, Mùyún Tōngmén 牧雲通門, Wéngǔ Guǎngyìn 聞谷廣印, and Yán Dàcān 嚴𨍏轢居士 (the seven “original” harmonisers in the Pǔmíng tradition stream); then an explicit 迦陵音禪師續輯 (“Chán Master Jiālíng Yīn’s continuation-compilation”) addition of Chāogé’s own verses and Nàyǔnān jūshì’s 納允菴居士 verses — bringing the total to nine harmonisers for the Pǔmíng stream.
Liángshān section: Kuò’ān’s own preface and his ten verses (here labelled 梁山遠原唱, “Liángshān Yuǎn’s original verses”); followed by three Yuán / early-Míng harmonising sets — the SòngYuán transitional master Shígǔ Xīyí 石鼓希彝 (also called 靈隱希彝), Qiānyán Yuáncháng 千巖元長 (1284–1357), and Chǔshí Fànqí 楚石梵琦 (1296–1370); then the 迦陵音禪師續輯 continuation adding Chāogé’s verses and Nàyǔnān’s verses, again bringing the total to five harmonisers for the Kuò’ān stream.
Postface by Xìngyīn (跋), narrating how Chāogé had searched forty years for Kuò’ān’s original verses before recovering them from Huànzhōu 幻舟 héshàng, and explicitly appealing to the monastic community — “We humbly beg the various honoured elders of all directions, if they find excellent ox-herding verses in the old masters’ records, to please send them by post to Gǔjìng at Báimén [= Nánjīng], so that a continuation volume may be assembled” — evidencing the compilation’s self-conception as an open and extensible collection.
Abstract
The text is the most ambitious early-Qīng attempt to unify the entire Chán ox-herding literary tradition in a single compilation. Méng’ān Chāogé’s 1705 preface (yòu xù 又序, “second preface”) explicitly presents the work as a correction and completion of Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s 1609 preface, which had mentioned but not included the parallel Kuò’ān tradition; Chāogé’s innovation is to insist that both streams be transmitted together (“Pǔmíng’s original verses may be mighty, but later harmonising verses are never lacking in persons of achievement; their insight is outstanding, their voice-and-tone is elegant and clear. As for Xīyí, Qiānyán, and Chǔshí — these three alone command the upstream position. Those who harmonise Pǔmíng are indeed many, but as for striking their own machinery and producing short-syllabled staccato rhythms whose refined sense enters the spiritual, it is only Dàjué Pǔjì 大覺普濟禪師 [= Chǔshí Fànqí] who is supreme, truly beyond both ancients and moderns.”). The compilation’s historical significance is therefore threefold: (1) it preserves the classical Kuò’ān-tradition harmonising verses (Xīyí, Qiānyán, Chǔshí) that had circulated for three centuries in Chán monastic networks but had not previously been gathered for canonical printing; (2) it places the Pǔmíng and Kuò’ān traditions on an equal canonical footing; (3) it extends the received compilation with further early-Qīng contributions (Chāogé, Nàyǔnān) representing the ongoing vitality of the tradition.
Dating: notBefore 1705 (Chāogé’s 又序 dated 康熙四十四年佛誕日); notAfter 1708 (Nà Xìn’s 刊序 dated 康熙戊子年佛誕日 = Kāngxī 47 / Buddha’s birthday). The catalog meta’s note of a 乾隆四十九年 (1784) reprint by 了彙 is a later reissue of the same compilation, not represented in the base J23 witness.
Translations and research
- See parallel entries KR6q0161, KR6q0163 for general Pǔmíng-tradition secondary literature.
- Xìngyīn’s role as compiler places this text within the late Línjì-Yángqí publishing network; for context, see Jiang Wu. 2008. Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China. Oxford.
- No substantial secondary literature located specifically on J23 B129.
Other points of interest
The text is unique in the extant canonical corpus for preserving the three Yuán / early-Míng harmonising sets on Kuò’ān’s verses by Shígǔ Xīyí 石鼓希彝 (Línjì, Sòng–Yuán transition), Qiānyán Yuáncháng 千巖元長 (1284–1357, the famous Yuán Chán-Pure Land syncretist), and Chǔshí Fànqí 楚石梵琦 (1296–1370, also known as Dàjué Pǔjì 大覺普濟禪師 — one of the most influential YuánMíng transitional Chán masters, whose corpus was widely printed). The Kuò’ān tradition, as opposed to the Pǔmíng tradition, had developed within high-level monastic literary culture (rather than lay publishing) and had not previously been collected as a single anthology; this compilation thus preserves a distinct strand of Chán verse-culture that would otherwise survive only scattered across the individual Chán-master records (yǔlù 語錄).