Wǔlín Xīhú gāosēng shìlüè 武林西湖高僧事略
Brief Sketches of the Lives of Eminent Monks of the West Lake at Wǔlín
co-compiled by 元敬 (Yuánjìng / Jiéān, fl. late Southern Sòng, 述) of the Mǎnǎoyuàn at Xīhú, together with 元復 (Yuánfù / Xiūān, fl. late Southern Sòng, 述) of Dōngjiā
About the work
A 1-juan local-Buddhist compendium of brief biographical sketches of 30 eminent monks associated with the temples of the West Lake at Hángzhōu (Wǔlín 武林). Each biography is paired with a zàn 頌 / sòng verse-eulogy. The work is the foundational gazetteer-style compendium for West-Lake Buddhism of the Southern Sòng — covering figures from the Eastern Jìn down to the late Sòng — and the first of the Chinese Buddhist regional/temple-centred biographical compendia.
Abstract
The 30 monks selected come from the great Xīhú establishments of medieval and Southern-Sòng Hángzhōu — Língyǐnsì 靈隱寺, Jìngcísì 淨慈寺, Tiānzhúsì 天竺寺, Mǎnǎoyuàn 瑪瑙院, Yǒngfúsì 永福寺, Cíyúnsì 慈雲寺 — and represent the Tiāntāi, Pure-Land, and Chán traditions of the West-Lake region. Some of the principal lives are: Huìlǐ 慧理 (legendary 4th-century founder of Língyǐnsì); Dàoyán 道琰 (WúYuè period); Yánshòu 延壽 of Yǒngmíngsì 永明寺 (904–975, foundational Pure-Land synthesist, see KR6c0001 Zōngjìng lù); Cíyún Zūnshì 慈雲遵式 (964–1032, Tiāntāi reformer, see KR6r0070 – not the same person but related); Yuánjìng Fǎzhì 圓淨法智 / Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (960–1028, Sànjiàoyuàn 山家派 leader); and major late-Northern-Sòng / Southern-Sòng figures.
The verse-eulogies appended to each biography are an unusual feature: they are short juéjù 絕句 in seven-syllable line, modelled on the yǒngshǐ 詠史 (“singing of history”) tradition of secular poetry, and were probably composed by Yuánjìng himself. The text’s preface (序) is by the Southern-Sòng poet-publisher 陳起 Chén Qǐ (the Liǔtáng wàijí compiler), placing the compilation in the milieu of the late-Southern-Sòng Hángzhōu literary establishment. The terminus a quo is set by the latest figures included (mid-13th century); the work was likely complete before the Mongol conquest of Hángzhōu in 1276. The bracket 1230–1280 represents the most defensible composition window.
The text was apparently never widely circulated in the SòngYuán period; it was preserved through Hángzhōu temple manuscript-tradition and printed only in the late Míng / Wànlì period. The Manji Xuzangjing (X77 no. 1526) takes the late-Míng print as base text, with an additional KR6r0065 XùWǔlínXīhú gāosēng shìlüè by 袾宏 supplementing it with a further set of late-Sòng / Yuán / Míng West-Lake monks.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located. Treated briefly in studies of West-Lake Buddhist topography and in modern Hángzhōu local-history scholarship.
- 黃啟江, 〈《武林西湖高僧事略》考〉, Hànxué yánjiū (various articles).
- 釋見曄, 《明代高僧叢林與佛教史學》 (Taipei, 2007), on the late-Míng reception.
- 西湖佛教研究會 (eds.), 《杭州佛教史》 — modern Chinese local-Buddhist history; uses the Shì-lüè extensively.
Other points of interest
The pairing of biography with verse-eulogy is a literary form usually associated with secular yǒngshǐ poetry — Hú Zēng 胡曾’s Yǒngshǐ shī 詠史詩 in the Táng, or the Hèlín shī huà 鶴林詩話 collection. Its application to a Buddhist biographical compendium is itself an act of literary cross-fertilisation, and reflects the porous boundary between elite Hángzhōu literary culture and the Buddhist establishment in the Southern Sòng. The work is therefore of interest both as Buddhist hagiography and as a document of late-Sòng literary-Buddhist sociability.
Links
- CBETA: X77n1526