Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù 淨土聖賢錄
Records of the Saints and Worthies of the Pure Land
compiled by 彭希涑 (Péng Xīsù / Lèyuán, 1761–1793, 述)
About the work
A 9-juan late-Qīng comprehensive Pure-Land biographical compendium, the standard Qīng-period reference work for the Pure-Land hagiographical tradition. According to the editorial colophon of KR6r0081 Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù xùbiān (the continuation), Péng Xīsù compiled this text together with his wife Gùshì 顧氏 by lamplight (gōudēng chāoxiě 篝燈鈔寫). Composition dates from the early to mid-1780s; Péng’s own preface is dated Qiánlóng 乾隆 48 (1783), with editorial additions through to his death at age 33 in Qiánlóng 58 / 10 / 13 (16 November 1793). The bracket 1783–1793 represents the composition window.
Abstract
The work follows and substantially expands the earlier wǎngshēng zhuàn tradition (KR6r0074 – KR6r0078 and KR6r0076), bringing the Pure-Land hagiographical record up to the late-eighteenth century with the addition of c. 500 biographies drawn from late-Míng / Qīng sources. The 9 juan are organised by status:
- Juan 1: Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and the Indian Pure-Land patriarchs;
- Juan 2–3: Chinese monk-patriarchs of the Pure-Land lineage from Huìyuǎn through to the Sòng;
- Juan 4: Yuán and Míng monks;
- Juan 5: Qīng monks (the principal Qīng documentary contribution);
- Juan 6: nuns;
- Juan 7–8: lay-men, organised by social status (the jìnshì-class first, then xiùcái 秀才, then commoners);
- Juan 9: lay-women (the Wǎngshēng nǚ 往生女 section), the largest single category of biographies and the most original component of the work; and rebirth-narratives for animals.
Péng’s principal innovation is the sociological depth of his Qīng material: drawing on temple gazetteers, family memorial-records, and his uncle 彭紹升 Péng Shàoshēng’s extensive late-Qīng correspondence-network of lay-Pure-Land devotees, the work documents the Yíxīng / Sūzhōu lay-Pure-Land subculture of the QiánlóngJiāqìng period in unprecedented detail. The work is one of the principal documentary sources for gender history of late-imperial Chinese Buddhism, with extensive coverage of women’s Pure-Land devotion, household-altar regimes, and women’s rebirth-omens.
The work was first printed by Péng’s family at Yuánhé 元和 immediately after Péng’s death, and was incorporated into the Manji Xuzangjing (X78 no. 1549). The continuation KR6r0081 by Hú Tǐng 胡𤥻 was prepared in the late-Qīng / early-Republic period and brings the record forward into the 19th century.
Translations and research
- Charles B. Jones, Pure Land: History, Tradition, and Practice (Boulder: Shambhala, 2021).
- Halvor Eifring (ed.), Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2004) — chapter on Qīng women’s Pure-Land devotion uses the Jìng-tǔ shèng-xián lù.
- Beverley Foulks McGuire, Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) — discusses the Qīng Pure-Land establishment.
- 黃啟江, 《因果, 淨土與晚明憲政》 — Chinese-language monograph on late-Míng / Qīng Pure-Land ideology.
Other points of interest
The collaborative authorship by Péng Xīsù and his wife Gùshì is itself a distinctive feature of this work: the canonical-Buddhist tradition contains few works of explicit husband-wife co-authorship, and the colophon’s straightforward record of their joint editorial labour is a small but striking testimony to the lay-Buddhist household as a unit of religious-literary production in late-imperial China. The work has been intensively used by modern scholars of Chinese women’s religious history precisely for this reason: it is one of the principal compendia of women’s Pure-Land biography in the entire canonical corpus.
Links
- CBETA: X78n1549