Hānshān lǎorén mèngyóu jí 憨山老人夢遊集
Collected Dream Journey of the Old Man Hānshān by 福善 (錄), 通炯 (編輯)
About the work
Fifty-two-juan collected works of Hānshān Déqīng 德清 (1546–1623), one of the WǎnMíng sì dàshī 晚明四大師, as recorded by his shìzhě 侍者 Fúshàn 福善 and edited by his ménrén 門人 Tōngjiōng 通炯, subsequently collated and expanded by Qián Qiānyì 錢謙益 (1582–1664) and published at Máo Jìn’s 毛晉 Jígǔgé 汲古閣 press in 1660. Xùzàngjīng X73 no. 1456. The title, “Dream Journey,” is Déqīng’s own conceit: life is a dream and what is set down here are the accumulated “travels” of that dream.
Abstract
Provenance and transmission. Qián Qiānyì’s 1660 preface — the principal source for the text’s editorial history — recounts that Fúshàn had recorded and Tōngjiōng had arranged Déqīng’s writings, but that the Jiāxīng Canon (嘉興藏, 嘉興大藏經) had originally printed only five juan of the fǎyǔ 法語. In bǐngshēn 丙申 = 1656, Gōng Xiàoshēng 龔孝升 travelled south to Guǎngdōng, where Hǎichuáng Huáshǒu héshàng 海幢華首和尚 of Canton, acting on a letter from Qián, rang the qiánchuí 楗椎 and assembled his monks to search for the complete manuscript — which was eventually recovered from the archive of Qīhè chánshī 棲壑禪師 of Dǐnghúshān 鼎湖山. Cáo Qiūyuè 曹秋岳 and others had copies made and took them north to Wú, where Qián Qiānyì collated the material into forty juan; it was then further expanded by additional materials from Cáoxī fǎróng 曹溪法融, Hǎichuáng yuèchí 海幢月池, and Huáshǒu’s attendants Jīnzhǒng, Jīnzhào, Jīnguāng 今種、今照、今光 to reach the final 52 juan. Máo Jìn 毛晉 (Zǐjìn 子晉) undertook the block-carving at Yúshān; after Máo’s death in 1659 his three sons Bāo 褒, Biǎo 表, Yù 扆 saw the project through. Qián’s preface is dated “year shàngzhāng kùndùn = gēngzǐ = 1660, middle-winter winter-solstice day”; Juélàng Dàoshèng 覺浪道盛 of Tiānjièsì also contributed a promotional shū 疏.
Contents. The 52 juan are organised roughly as follows:
- Juan 1–20 — fǎyǔ 法語: dharma discourses, letters of instruction, replies to disciples and lay patrons, responses on specific meditation problems, and Déqīng’s classic short treatises (on the Bānruò xīnjīng, on seated Chán practice, on the Pure-Land method).
- Juan 21–30 — xù, jì, shū, bá 序記書跋: prefaces and postfaces to works including his own commentaries on the Léngyán, Yuánjué, Léngjiā, Zhàolùn, and his Guān LǎoZhuāng yǐngxiǎng lùn 觀老莊影響論.
- Juan 31–40 — wén, míng, zàn, jìsòng 文銘讚偈頌: pagoda inscriptions, biographies of fellow monks (notably Zǐbǎi Zhēnkě 真可), funerary eulogies, and the famous bāshíbā zǔ dàoyǐng zàn (versions of material that ultimately circulated as KR6q0045).
- Juan 41–48 — shī, cí 詩詞: Déqīng’s substantial output as a poet, including his Cáoxī shíyǒng 曹溪十詠, his exile poems from Léizhōu 雷州, and his shānjū shī 山居詩.
- Juan 49–53 — Déqīng’s own zìxù niánpǔ 自序年譜, a year-by-year autobiographical chronicle from his birth (Jiājìng 25 / 1546) through his writings of 1594 (where the received text breaks off, Déqīng’s later life having been completed by his disciples from his own draft and other sources). This niánpǔ is one of the most important Míng-Buddhist autobiographies and includes Déqīng’s own account of his 1595 prosecution, his exile in Léizhōu, his restoration of Bǎolínsì 寶林寺 at Cáoxī 曹溪, and his extensive engagements with gōngàn 公案 practice and with lay patrons including the Empress Dowager.
Dating. Composition spans the whole of Déqīng’s career, c. 1571 (when his earliest surviving letters begin) through his death in 1623. Editorial compilation was essentially complete in 1624 but printing was delayed: the Jiāxīng Canon’s partial printing was issued in the 1630s; the complete 52-juan version was only printed in 1660. The notBefore 1571 / notAfter 1660 bracket covers the span from earliest-datable piece through final printing.
Translations and research
Translations. Partial English selections: Charles Luk, Practical Buddhism (1971, contains Déqīng’s “Essentials of Practice and Enlightenment” from fǎ-yǔ). Reginald Pepper, “Han-shan Te-ch’ing’s autobiography” (dissertation). A French translation of parts of the nián-pǔ by Catherine Despeux, L’autobiographie du maître bouddhiste Hānshān (partial). The nián-pǔ and selected fǎ-yǔ passages are translated in Chün-fang Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism in China (1981, partial) and in her later work on Guānyīn.
Studies. The foundational English-language monograph is Sung-peng Hsu, A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Te-ch’ing (Penn State, 1979). Also: Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (2008) — places Déqīng’s career in the broader Chán renewal; Beverley Foulks McGuire on Déqīng’s engagement with Huáyán; the recent work of Liao Chao-heng 廖肇亨 and Chen Yunü 陳玉女 on Déqīng’s nián-pǔ and Qián Qiān-yì’s editorial role.
Other points of interest
- Qián Qiānyì’s preface is itself a document of considerable importance for late-Míng / early-Qīng literary history: Qián positions Déqīng and Zǐbǎi Zhēnkě (真可) as “one cart with two wheels” — the salvific twin of late-Míng Buddhism — and provides a compact history of Chinese Buddhist belles-lettres from Huìyuǎn and Dàoān through Téngjīn, Shímén, and Jìngshān.
- The text’s circulation faced the same obstacle as Qián’s own corpus: both were placed under the Qiánlóng jìnshū ban of the 1770s, because of Qián’s yímín 遺民 associations. The Mèngyóu jí’s identification as a Buddhist-canonical text is the principal reason it survived the ban.
- The title mèngyóu 夢遊 both signals Déqīng’s own humility (his life as “only a dream”) and echoes a specific anecdote from his niánpǔ (vision of Maitreya in a dream).
- Cross-reference: see also Déqīng’s biographical portrait series KR6q0045 Bāshíbā zǔ dàoyǐng zhuànzàn; and KR6q0383 Qián Qiānyì’s editorial work for Zǐbǎi’s biéjí.