Bǐqiūní zhuàn 比丘尼傳
Lives of [Eminent] Bhikṣuṇīs
compiled by 寶唱 (Bǎochàng, fl. ca. 495–528, 撰), Liáng-dynasty monk-bibliographer at Xīn’ānsì 新安寺
About the work
A 4-juan collection of biographies of Chinese Buddhist nuns from the introduction of the bhikṣuṇī-saṃgha into China through to the early sixth century — the earliest extant collection of its kind in any Buddhist tradition, and a uniquely valuable source for the social, institutional, and devotional history of women’s monasticism in early-medieval China. The work contains 65 principal biographies with a small number of supplementary notices, organised by dynasty: 13 lives in the Eastern Jìn 東晉, 23 in the Sòng 宋, 15 in the Qí 齊, and 14 in the Liáng 梁 — i.e. a chronological rather than typological scheme, in deliberate contrast to 慧皎’s typological KR6r0052 Gāosēng zhuàn.
Abstract
The earliest of the great Liáng-period bibliographic-historical works produced under direct imperial commission of Wǔdì 武帝, the Bǐqiū-ní zhuàn draws on the Wǎng-shēng zhuàn 往生傳 of Liú Qiú 劉虬, on temple records, and — for the Liáng entries — on the editor’s personal acquaintance with the senior nuns of Jiànkāng 建康. The preface (序) records that the materials were assembled out of grief at the imminent loss of the previous generations’ biographies and out of admiration for the achievements of Chinese bhikṣuṇīs in mastering the vinaya, undertaking ascetic regimens, and exemplifying the canonical virtues. Composition is dated approximately to Tiānjiān 天監 15–18 (516–519), within the same broader Liáng monastic-bibliographic project that produced 寶唱’s Jīng-lǜ yì-xiàng KR6s0001 (516) and 慧皎’s Gāosēng zhuàn KR6r0052 (519).
Among the most influential biographies are: (i) Jìng-jiǎn 淨檢 (j. 1) — the first ordained Chinese nun, who received full ordination from the Indian master Tánmódāojié 曇摩竭多 in 357 CE, with the authority of the Saṅghavarman lineage; (ii) Sēng-guǒ 僧果 — leader of the early-fifth-century vinaya reform that brought a senior Sinhalese delegation of nuns to Jiàn-yè in 433 to give the bhikṣuṇī full ordination by the dual ordination procedure required by the Mahīśāsaka and Dharmaguptaka canonical rule; (iii) Pǔ-zhào 普照 — exemplar of the meditation tradition; (iv) Sēng-jǐng 僧敬 — Liáng-imperial preceptress to empress-consort. Modern social history of Chinese women’s monasticism takes the Bǐqiū-ní zhuàn as its foundational document; the canonical-vinaya legitimisation of the female saṃgha through the 433 ordination is one of its principal narrative arcs.
The work survives in the Korean canon (高麗藏), in the Sòng / Yuán / Míng / Gōng editions, and as T2063 in the Taishō. A short late-Míng 補遺 expansion exists but is not part of the canonical text. The transmission is exceptionally clean — there are no major textual cruxes — though the dynasty-by-dynasty division of the juan and the precise figure of “65 lives” varies by recension.
Translations and research
- Kathryn Ann Tsai, Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994) — complete English translation with substantial historical introduction; the standard Western-language edition.
- 王孺童, 《比丘尼傳校註》 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2006) — modern Chinese critical edition with annotation, the standard scholarly text.
- Ann Heirman, “Chinese Nuns and their Ordination in Fifth Century China,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 24.2 (2001), 275–304.
- Kūkō Watanabe 渡辺空華, “Biku-ni-den no kenkyū”, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (various) — Japanese-language source-critical work.
Other points of interest
The 433 dual-ordination event recorded in the biography of Sēng-guǒ is the foundation-narrative for the Dharmaguptaka lineage of Chinese bhikṣuṇī-ordination, and remains current in twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates over the revival of the bhikṣuṇī lineage in Theravāda and Tibetan Buddhism — both traditions having lost their continuous female monastic ordination but able to draw on the unbroken Chinese line as an alternative source of canonical legitimacy. The political pertinence of the Bǐqiū-ní zhuàn is therefore very much alive.
Links
- CBETA: T50n2063
- Wikipedia: Biqiuni Zhuan