Xīnxiū wǎngshēng zhuàn 新修往生傳
Newly Edited Lives of Rebirth
compiled by 王古 (Wáng Gǔ, fl. late Northern Sòng, 輯撰)
About the work
A 3-juan late-Northern-Sòng wǎngshēng zhuàn compilation by the lay-Buddhist scholar-official Wáng Gǔ 王古 — a Northern-Sòng Pure-Land lay-devotee, jìnshì 進士, and protégé of 蘇軾 Sū Shì in the late-Yuán-yòu / Shàoshèng 紹聖 reign-periods — building on and substantially extending KR6r0075 Jìngtǔ wǎngshēng zhuàn of 戒珠. The work is dated by internal references to the period roughly 1080–1100, with the bracket reflecting Wáng’s literary-political career.
Abstract
The work presents itself as a “newly edited” (xīnxiū 新修) version of the prior wǎngshēng zhuàn tradition, integrating material from KR6r0074, KR6r0075, and contemporary Northern-Sòng Pure-Land sources into a coherent 3-juan compendium. The principal additions over KR6r0075 are: (i) substantial coverage of lay-devotee rebirths from the Northern Sòng — including Wáng Gǔ’s own contemporaries and acquaintances among the jìnshì / scholar-official class who practised Pure-Land devotion; (ii) inclusion of female lay-devotees, with a much larger proportion of women’s biographies than in the earlier compilations; (iii) the inclusion of figures from the Northern-Sòng Tiāntāi establishment whose Pure-Land devotion was central to their religious identity, including disciples of 四明知禮 and 慈雲遵式.
Wáng Gǔ’s editorial sensibility is markedly literati-Buddhist: the prose is fluent and elegant, the citations of secular literary sources frequent, and the doctrinal apparatus light. The work was designed to circulate among the late-Northern-Sòng jìnshì class as a literary-devotional document, and it is one of the principal sources for the scholar-official Pure-Land that flourished under emperors Shénzōng 神宗 through Huīzōng 徽宗.
The text was preserved through Sòng-Pure-Land manuscript-tradition and printed only in the late Míng. The Manji Xuzangjing (X78 no. 1546) is the standard print witness. There is no Sòng-period print, and the work is not included in the canonical Sòng-Yuán-Míng-Korean recensions.
Translations and research
- Daniel A. Getz, “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate,” in Buddhism in the Sung, ed. P. Gregory and D. Getz (Honolulu, 1999), 477–523 — discusses Wáng Gǔ in the context of the Sòng wǎng-shēng zhuàn tradition.
- Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited (Honolulu, 1994) — treats the Sòng literati-Buddhist Pure-Land milieu in which Wáng Gǔ operated.
- 黃啟江, 〈宋代士人與淨土往生信仰〉, Hànxué yánjiū, various.
- 望月信亨, Chūgoku Jōdo kyōri-shi 《中國淨土教理史》 (Tokyo, 1942).
Other points of interest
Wáng Gǔ’s biographical compilation provides one of the principal documentary windows on the literati-Buddhist Pure-Land subculture of the late Northern Sòng — the network of jìnshì-class lay-devotees who combined civil-service careers with serious Pure-Land devotional practice. This subculture is otherwise documented mainly in the bǐjì anecdote literature and in scattered correspondence; the Xīnxiū wǎngshēng zhuàn assembles it into a coherent biographical collection.
Links
- CBETA: X78n1546