Xīnxiū kēfēn liùxué sēng zhuàn 新修科分六學僧傳
Newly Edited Lives of Eminent Monks Categorised under the Six Disciplines
compiled by 曇噩 (Tánè / Mèngtáng, 1285–1373, 述)
About the work
A 30-juan re-organisation of the entire prior Lives of Eminent Monks tradition under a fundamentally new typological scheme: not the ten kē of the four canonical gāosēng zhuàn, but the six disciplines (liùxué 六學) of the Buddhist curriculum. The work is the most ambitious late-Yuán Buddhist-historiographical project, completed by Tánè at Tiāntāi Guóqīngsì 國清寺 around Zhìzhèng 至正 26 (1366). It draws principally on KR6r0052, KR6r0053, KR6r0054, and the Chán dēnglù literature, organised under a scheme that Tánè himself proposes is more theologically coherent than the prior decennial scheme.
Abstract
The “six disciplines” under which Tán-è organises his biographies are: (1) Yì-xué 譯學 (the discipline of translation), (2) Jiè-xué 戒學 (the discipline of vinaya-precepts), (3) Dìng-xué 定學 (the discipline of meditative concentration), (4) Huì-xué 慧學 (the discipline of doctrinal wisdom), (5) Wàng-xué / Hù-jiào-xué 護教學 (the discipline of dharma-defence), (6) Pǔ-xué / Tōng-shàn-xué 通善學 (the universal-good discipline, covering the diffuse meritorious activities — chanting, hymnody, alms-giving, image-making, etc.). The first five categories are deliberately mapped on the Buddhist scholastic triśikṣā 三學 of śīla-samādhi-prajñā — jiè-dìng-huì 戒定慧 — with the additional yì 譯 prefacing them (since translation makes the dharma transmissible) and hù-jiào + tōng-shàn extending them outward. This is a scheme borrowed in part from Tán-è’s contemporary the Tiāntāi master Méng-rùn 蒙潤 (1275–1342) and his didactic re-organisation of Tiāntāi doctrine.
The biographical content is largely derivative: Tán-è collates the lives from his three predecessors and from the Chán dēng-lù into the new typological framework, supplementing them with notices on figures of the Sòng and Yuán down to his own teacher 行端 Xíng-duān (1255–1341) and his own time. He adds short zàn 贊 verses to many biographies in the manner of a literary anthology. The reorganisation makes the work less useful as a primary source than its three predecessors, but it is the principal Yuán-dynasty witness to the canonical hagiographical tradition and the only one to apply a triśikṣā-derived schema to the genre.
The text was first printed in the Jiāxìng 嘉興 canon (J) of the Wànlì period and later included in the Manji Xuzangjing (X77 no. 1522). The Jiāxìng print is the basis of all surviving witnesses; no pre-Míng manuscript survives. The opening of the text in the Manji Xuzangjing transmits both a 1179 (淳熙 6) preface by an imperial prince — actually a 跋 to the Jǐngdé chuándēng lù KR6q0001 of Dàoyuán 道原 — that has been bound into the textual head of the present work, presumably as a printer’s accident.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located. Treated in passing in John Kieschnick, The Eminent Monk (1997), and in Chinese-language Yuán-Buddhist surveys.
- 釋見曄 (Shì Jiàn-yè), 《明代高僧叢林與佛教史學》 (Taipei, 2007) — discusses the reception of Tán-è’s typological scheme in the late-Míng establishment.
- 黃啟江, 〈曇噩《新修科分六學僧傳》研究〉, in 《漢學研究》 — Chinese-language source-critical article.
Other points of interest
The “six disciplines” framework, while neat, does not survive Tán-è. The four canonical gāosēng zhuàn (Liáng / Táng / Sòng / Míng) all retain Huìjiǎo’s ten-category scheme; Tán-è’s triśikṣā-based reorganisation remains a one-off experiment. As such the work is principally of interest to historians of Buddhist historiography rather than to users of the biographical material itself, who will normally go directly to Huìjiǎo, Dào-xuān, or Zàn-níng.
Links
- CBETA: X77n1522