DàTáng Xīyù qiúfǎ gāosēng zhuàn 大唐西域求法高僧傳
Lives of Eminent Monks of the Great Táng [Who Travelled to] the Western Regions in Search of the Dharma
compiled by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 635–713, 撰) at Śrīvijaya in 691 during his return-journey from India
About the work
A 2-juan biographical compendium of Chinese (and a few Korean) Buddhist pilgrims to India during the seventh century, composed by Yìjìng in Tiānshòu 天授 2 (691) at the Śrīvijaya court on Sumatra, where he stayed for several years on his return-journey from Nālandā. Together with Yìjìng’s own Nánhǎi jìguī nèifǎ zhuàn 南海寄歸內法傳 KR6t0001 (also 691, also from Śrīvijaya), it is the principal Chinese-language source for the seventh-century Indian Buddhist pilgrim-tradition and an indispensable supplement to the Dà Táng Xīyù jì of 玄奘 KR6r0090.
Abstract
The text contains brief biographies of 56 named pilgrims — Chinese, Korean, and a few Vietnamese / Centro-Asian — who travelled to India and Southeast Asia between c. 645 and 691 in search of the Dharma, plus brief autobiographical material on Yì-jìng himself. Among the most important biographies are: Xuán-zhào 玄照 (the first major post-Xuán-zàng pilgrim, 7th c., who travelled with the Indian master Tān-mò-mò-tí 曇摩末提); Dào-shēng 道生 of Bīng-zhōu (in India 7th c., d. there); Cháng-mín 常愍 (drowned crossing the South China Sea); Mò-tí-sēng-hē 末底僧訶 (i.e., Manojña-siṃha); the Korean monk Hyech’o 慧超 / Hyeryun 慧輪 (active in India in the 670s–680s); Wú-xíng 無行 (Yì-jìng’s principal travelling-companion, who died in Tibet on the return-journey); and Yì-jìng himself, who provides a brief autobiographical sketch in juan 2.
The work is invaluable for several reasons. First, it is one of the very few sources for the names and itineraries of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims of the 7th century: many of the 56 are otherwise undocumented. Second, the descriptive geography of the Indian Buddhist establishments — Nālandā, Vikramaśilā, Bodh-gayā, Tāmraliptī, the Śrīvijaya court — is contemporary eyewitness reporting and the principal western-Indian-Ocean source for the period. Third, the biographies record the deaths of pilgrims at specific locations and from specific causes (drowning, fever, banditry), giving the work a sober, almost actuarial tone unusual in the gāosēng zhuàn genre.
The composition is securely dated to 691 at Śrīvijaya, where Yìjìng forwarded the manuscript along with KR6t0001 Nánhǎi jìguī and a complete set of Sanskrit manuscripts to the Táng court via the merchant Dàjīn 大津 in Yǒngchāng 永昌 1 (689) — actually the catalog meta gives 691 as the date of completion proper, with the Yǒngchāng date being the date of an earlier provisional dispatch. Yìjìng himself returned to Luòyáng in 695. The text is preserved in the Taishō (T2066) on the basis of the Sòng-Yuán-Míng-Korean canonical recensions, all of which are in close agreement.
Translations and research
- Édouard Chavannes, Mémoire composé à l’époque de la grande dynastie T’ang sur les religieux éminents qui allèrent chercher la loi dans les pays d’Occident (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1894) — pioneering complete French translation, still indispensable for its historical apparatus.
- Latika Lahiri, Chinese Monks in India: Biography of Eminent Monks Who Went to the Western World in Search of the Law during the Great T’ang Dynasty (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986) — complete English translation.
- 王邦維 (Wáng Bāngwéi), 《大唐西域求法高僧傳校注》 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988; rev. ed. 2009) — the standard modern Chinese critical edition with extensive annotation; the principal scholarly text for current research.
- 足立喜六 (Adachi Kiroku), Daitō Saiiki guhō kōsō den no kenkyū 《大唐西域求法高僧傳の研究》 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1942) — pre-war Japanese geographical-historical study, still useful.
- 桑山正進 (Kuwayama Shōshin), various articles on the prosopography and the Hyech’o material.
Other points of interest
Yìjìng’s biographies are the principal source for the maritime Silk Road as it functioned in the seventh century, with extensive material on the Śrīvijaya kingdom (modern Palembang) and its Buddhist establishment, and on the South China Sea trading-network linking Guǎngzhōu, the Malay archipelago, Tāmraliptī, and Sri Lanka. The work has been heavily used by historians of pre-modern Indian-Ocean trade and Southeast-Asian Buddhism, including O. W. Wolters and George Cœdès. Yìjìng’s catalogue of Indian Buddhist establishments at Nālandā in the 670s–680s is a critical source for the late-Gupta / early-Pāla Buddhist scholastic system.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2066
- Wikipedia: The Buddhist Monks Pilgrimage of the Tang Dynasty