Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀
Record of the Three Jewels Through the Successive Dynasties
compiled by 費長房 (Fèi Chángfáng, fl. late 6th c., 撰), presented to the throne in 597
About the work
A pivotal early Chinese Buddhist scriptural catalog and dynastic history of the Sānbǎo 三寶 (“Three Jewels”) in fifteen juan, presented to Emperor Wén 文 of the Suí 隋 dynasty in 597 (Kāihuáng 開皇 17). 費長房 was a former Buddhist monk who had been laicised during the Northern Zhōu suppression of 574–578 and was retained in the early Suí translation bureau as a literary scholar (fānjīng xuéshì 翻經學士). His catalog is the principal source for early Chinese Buddhist bibliographic history before the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù of 智昇 in 730, and it has been the most influential — though also the most controversial — Chinese Buddhist catalog ever compiled.
Abstract
The structure of the Lìdài sānbǎo jì is unique among early Chinese Buddhist catalogs:
- Juan 1–3: a chronological frame (dàinián biǎo 帝年表) listing all dynasties and reigns from the Zhōu through the Suí, year by year, with Buddhist events (translations, monk arrivals, imperial edicts) inserted into the corresponding years. This is the “history” portion.
- Juan 4–12: a translator-by-translator catalog, in chronological order from the Hàn through the early Suí, listing all Chinese Buddhist translations under the name of each translator, with brief biographical notes on each.
- Juan 13–14: a classified catalog of extant (xiàncún 見存) translations.
- Juan 15: a colophon, list of consulted catalogs, and self-preface.
費長房’s catalog is famously over-attributive: it lists translations under early translators (especially 安世高, 支婁迦讖, 支謙, etc.) which were unattributed in the earlier Chū sānzàng jì jí of 僧祐. Modern philological scholarship — beginning with Hayashiya Tomojirō 林屋友次郎 (Yakkyō shi kenkyū, 1945) and continuing through Shi Senghua 釋僧化, Erik Zürcher, Antonello Palumbo, and Jonathan Silk — has demonstrated that many of these attributions are unreliable and that subsequent catalogs (notably the Kāiyuán lù of 智昇) inherited and propagated 費長房’s errors. The text nonetheless remains indispensable as the earliest comprehensive chronological frame for Chinese Buddhist history and as the unique source for several lost early translations.
The presentation date of 597 is given in the colophon. The text was incorporated into the canon in the early Táng and has been a continuous reference for Chinese Buddhist historiography. The frame chapters (juan 1–3) inspired the structure of the later universal Buddhist histories — most directly the Fózǔ tǒngjì of 志磐 (KR6r0012) and the Fózǔ lìdài tōngzài of 念常 (KR6r0013).
Translations and research
- Tan Zhihui 譚世寶, Hàn-Wèi liǎng Jìn Nán-běi-cháo Suí dài fójiào shǐliào yánjiū — uses the Lìdài sānbǎo jì as the primary frame for early Chinese Buddhist chronology.
- Antonello Palumbo, An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika-āgama (Dharma Drum Publishing, 2013) — extended discussion of 費長房’s reliability and his over-attribution of texts.
- Jonathan Silk, “What, If Anything, Is Mahāyāna Buddhism? Problems of Definitions and Classifications,” Numen 49 (2002): 355–405 — uses the Lìdài sānbǎo jì as a key witness for problematizing early Chinese translation attributions.
- Hayashiya Tomojirō 林屋友次郎, Yakkyō shi kenkyū 譯經史研究 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1945) — the foundational philological critique of 費長房’s attribution practices, still indispensable.
- Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959; rev. ed. 2007) — uses the Lìdài sānbǎo jì extensively while warning against its less critical attributions.
Other points of interest
The fifteen-juan format reflects 費長房’s position as a layman trained in the Confucian historiographical tradition: the chronological-table juan 1–3 are explicitly modelled on the chronological tables (nián biǎo 年表) of the standard histories, especially the Shǐjì 史記. This makes the Lìdài sānbǎo jì the first Chinese Buddhist work to wed the catalog form to the dynastic-history form. Its hybrid genre is the direct ancestor of all the later Buddhist universal histories.
Links
- CBETA: T49n2034
- Wikipedia: Lidai Sanbao Ji