頌古合響集

Sòng gǔ hé xiǎng jí 頌古合響集

Collection of Harmonizing-Response Verses on Ancient Cases

A one-juan mid-17th-century Chán sòng gǔ 頌古 (verse-commentary on classical cases) collection by two Míng-Qīng transitional Buddhist nuns. A rare document of Chinese Buddhist nuns’ literary practice within the canonical corpus. Compiled and prefaced by the layman Zhāng Yǒuyù 張有譽 (hào Dàyuán jūshì 大圓居士, Jìnghán 靜涵; 1589–1669); the verses are by two nuns:

• Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén 玅湛總道人 (“Wondrous-Deep Principal-Daoist”), catalog-name 徹 徹 (nun). Widow of a Míng xú 徐-family whose father-in-law died in the 1644 collapse of Míng authority at Suízhōu 隨州 (posthumously granted the title Tàipú qīng 太僕卿 “Chief Gentleman-Usher of Equipage”). Her grandfather-in-law had served as Shǎo sīmǎ 少司馬 (Vice-Minister of War).
• Língruì Fúānzhǔ 靈瑞符菴主 (“Spirit-Auspicious Fú-Hermitage-Master”), catalog-name 符 符 (nun).

Both were disciples of Língyán lǎorén 靈嵒老人 = Tuìwēng Hóngchú 退翁弘儲 (1605–1672), the major Línjì-lineage master and dharma-heir of Hànyuè Fǎzàng 漢月法藏.

About the work

A one-juan Chán sòng gǔ collection, J28 B215. Non-commentary (a verse-composition work responding to existing cases); commentedTextid omitted.

The sòng gǔ genre: the composer takes classical Chán-encounter cases (gōng’àn 公案) from historical masters and composes poetic verses (typically four-line regulated forms) responding to each. Here, the two nuns (Zhèng and Fú) each contribute their own harmonizing-verse in response to the classical cases — producing a “dual-voice harmonizing verse” form in which each case receives two different poetic responses.

Zhāng Yǒuyù’s preface identifies the principal sòng gǔ model the two nuns were responding to: the classical Sòng-era sòng gǔ of Wúzhù Wénxǐ 無著文喜 (820–899) and the Bì yán lù 碧巖錄 / Cóngróng lù 從容錄 commentarial tradition. The nuns’ position is explicitly that of continuers of Wúzhù’s voice after five hundred years: “After Dàhuì’s death by five hundred years, with its disorderly-sound noisy-flourishing, Master Língyán emerged and returned it to correctness. From his teaching-couch two harmonising-heirs of Wúzhù emerged: one is Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén, one is Língruì Fúānzhǔ.”

The preface then gives a detailed pre-monastic biography for Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén: daughter of a prominent family, married into the Xú 徐 family; her father-in-law died xùn jié (martyrdom) at Suízhōu; after her husband’s death she took tonsure and went to Língyánshān 靈巖山 (i.e., Sūzhōu Língyánsì 靈巖寺, where Hóngchú was abbot) to receive full precepts and undertake Chán practice under him. She meditated intensively, giving up sleep and food, until she “suddenly struck through the up-turn-critical-point” (mò dì bō zhe xiàng shàng guān liè 驀地撥著向上關捩), at which point she and her Fúānzhǔ co-practitioner “sang back-and-forth in unison, two mouths without a single tongue” (chàng pāi xiāng suí, liǎng kǒu wú yī shé 唱拍相隨兩口無一舌). Hóngchú then instructed the pair to compose their own harmonizing verses on Wúzhù’s cases — producing the present collection.

Abstract

Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén 玅湛總道人 (catalog-name 徹 nun). Lay name not preserved beyond the family-association with the Xú family and the martyrdom-narrative. Active at Língyánsì 靈巖寺 in the mid-17th century.

Língruì Fúānzhǔ 靈瑞符菴主 (catalog-name 符 nun). Co-practitioner with Miàozhàn; dharma-heir of Hóngchú alongside her.

Zhāng Yǒuyù 張有譽 (1589–1669/10/24). Hào Dàyuán jūshì 大圓居士, Jìnghán 靜涵. Late-Míng / early-Qīng layman. His 1669 death is shortly before the probable publication-date of the present text. Preface-writer and compilation-editor.

Dating: notBefore c. 1650 (the two nuns’ mature Chán-training period, following the Míng collapse in 1644 and Miàozhàn’s entry to the monastic community); notAfter 1669 (Zhāng Yǒuyù’s death; the collection-publication presumably happened in the mid-to-late 1660s).

Translations and research

• Grant, Beata. 2008. Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China. University of Hawai’i Press. The definitive monographic study of seventeenth-century Chinese Chán women, including extensive treatment of Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén and Língruì Fúānzhǔ within the Hóngchú teaching-community.
• Zhao, Shaoyuan 趙曉園. Various doctoral-level studies on women’s Chán practice.
• The best secondary treatment of this text is Grant 2008, chapters 6–8.

Other points of interest

The Sòng gǔ hé xiǎng jí is one of the most significant surviving documents of women’s Chán literary practice in seventeenth-century China. The Línjì master Tuìwēng Hóngchú 退翁弘儲 at Sūzhōu Língyánsì cultivated a remarkable community of women disciples in the 1650s–1660s, several of whom — including Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén and Língruì Fúānzhǔ represented here — produced substantial Chán literary output that was later preserved in canonical collections. Hóngchú’s relatively unusual willingness to train and certify women as dharma-heirs contrasts with the more limited practice of most monastic lineages of the period.

The two nuns’ specific rhetorical positioning — as five-hundred-year continuers of Wúzhù Wénxǐ’s sòng gǔ tradition — claims a substantial genealogical authority. Their composition of “dual-voice harmonizing verses” is distinctively feminine in its collaborative-dialogical form, though the individual verses themselves follow classical Chán poetic conventions.

Miàozhàn Zǒngdàorén’s Míng-loyalist biographical background — her father-in-law’s martyrdom at Suízhōu, her subsequent ordination — connects the collection to the broader patterns of late-Míng women entering the monastic life following dynastic collapse, a phenomenon documented extensively in Grant (2008).

Links

• CBETA J28nB215
• Kanseki DB
• Grant, Beata. 2008. Eminent Nuns.
• The teacher Tuìwēng Hóngchú 退翁弘儲 was a dharma-heir of Hànyuè Fǎzàng 漢月法藏 (see KR6q0167).