DàSòng sēngshǐ lüè 大宋僧史略
Brief History of the Saṃgha [Compiled under] the Great Sòng
compiled by 贊寧 (Zànníng, 919–1001, 撰)
About the work
A 3-juan administrative-historical compendium of Chinese Buddhist monasticism — the earliest systematic institutional history of the Chinese saṃgha — composed by Zàn-níng under imperial commission of the early Sòng court. The text is a topical encyclopedia of c. 60 categorical entries covering the institutional history, ranks, vestments, ceremonial procedures, ordination platforms, monastic-administrative offices, and inter-religious relations of Chinese Buddhism from the Hàn introduction through the early Sòng. Composition is dated by internal references to Xián-píng 咸平 2–4 (999–1001) — i.e., to the closing years of Zàn-níng’s life, after the completion of KR6r0054 Sòng gāosēng zhuàn (988).
Abstract
The 3 juan are organised topically rather than chronologically. Juan 1 (29 entries) covers the introduction and material foundations of Chinese Buddhism: the arrival of the dharma at the Hàn court, the first translators, the establishment of the first temples, the first images, the first canonical seal, the first ordinations, and the first monastic regulations. Juan 2 (c. 19 entries) covers monastic ceremonial and discipline: the ordination platform, the uposatha recitation, the use of robes and bowls, the kaśāya (袈裟), the lectern, the rains-retreat, etc. Juan 3 (c. 12 entries) covers monastic administration and external relations: the imperial offices governing Buddhism (the Sēng-lù-sī 僧錄司 of which Zàn-níng himself was head), the relations of saṃgha to court ceremonial, monastic land-holdings and tax-immunity, the relation of Buddhism to Daoism and to the secular state.
The text is unique among Buddhist canonical works in its archival-bureaucratic orientation. Zànníng draws on his unparalleled access to the Sòng imperial library, on the WúYuè court archives that had passed to the Sòng in 978, and on his own institutional experience as the first zuǒjiē sēnglù 左街僧錄 of the unified Sòng to assemble a documentary history that has no real parallel in the prior canonical tradition. Each entry is supported by precise citations of imperial edicts, official memorials, and prior canonical authorities; the prose is dense, formal, and clearly modelled on the administrative zhì 志 of the official histories.
The work is the principal source for the dating of institutional firsts in Chinese Buddhism — the first ordinations, the first imperially-recognised monastic ranks, the first official Buddhist registers, the first state-funded monastic compilations — and is uniformly cited by all later Chinese Buddhist administrative writing and by modern social-historical scholarship on the medieval saṃgha. The Taishō text (T54n2126) follows the standard Sòng / Yuán / Míng / Gōng canon recensions; the Korean canon transmits a slightly different ordering of juan 3 entries.
Translations and research
- Albert Welter, Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu (Oxford, 2011) and The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2008) — both rely heavily on the Dà-Sòng sēngshǐ lüè for early-Sòng administrative context.
- Albert Welter, “A Buddhist Response to the Confucian Revival: Zanning’s Conception of Saṃgha Affairs in Early Song China,” in Buddhism in the Sung, ed. P. Gregory and D. Getz (Honolulu, 1999) — major Welter article on this work specifically.
- 富永孟達 (Tominaga Mōtatsu), various Japanese articles on Sòng monastic administration.
- 周叔迦, 《大宋僧史略補》 — modern Chinese critical-bibliographical study.
Other points of interest
The DàSòng sēngshǐ lüè is one of the very few Buddhist canonical texts in which a senior Buddhist official documents the state apparatus governing Buddhism from the inside. Zànníng’s account of the Sēnglùsī 僧錄司 — the imperial bureau responsible for the registration of monks, the regulation of ordinations, and the channelling of Buddhist memorials to the throne — and of his own role within it gives the work a unique status as administrative-archival source. It is the principal documentary basis for modern accounts of the institutional structure of the early-Sòng church (see Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China, 1964; Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang, 1987, which extends the analysis backward through the Táng).
Links
- CBETA: T54n2126
- Wikipedia: Da Song Senghi Lue