Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù xùbiān 淨土聖賢錄續編
Continuation of the Records of the Saints and Worthies of the Pure Land
compiled by 胡𤥻 (Hú Tǐng / Liánguī jūshì, b. 1821, 述)
About the work
A 4-juan continuation of KR6r0080 Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù, compiled by the late-Qīng lay-Pure-Land devotee Hú Tǐng 胡𤥻 (= 胡珽; hào Liánguī jūshì 蓮歸居士) from the Dàoguāng 道光 reign-period onwards. The work brings the Pure-Land hagiographical record forward from the death of 彭希涑 in 1793 through to Hú’s own time, c. 1830–1860, adding biographies of late-Qián-lóng / Jiāqìng / Dàoguāng / Xián-fēng-period monks and lay devotees omitted from or postdating the parent compilation.
Abstract
The 4-juan structure parallels the parent Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù: monks (juan 1), nuns (juan 2), lay-men (juan 3), lay-women and animals (juan 4). Hú Tǐng’s principal contribution is the documentation of the late-Qīng lay-Pure-Land establishment of the JiāngZhè region — the lay-devotional networks centred on Sūzhōu, Hángzhōu, Yángzhōu, and the lower Yangtze treaty-ports of the early-Opium-War period. Many of his subjects are personally known to him through the lay-Buddhist correspondence-network that he inherited from 彭希涑 and from Péng’s uncle Péng Shàoshēng 彭紹升.
The work is one of the principal documentary windows on late-Qīng / pre-Tāipíng-rebellion lay Buddhism, and its post-1830s biographical content gives a relatively rare canonical record of a period otherwise documented mainly in family memorial-tablets, local gazetteers, and scattered correspondence. The work was first printed in a Hú-family edition in the Xiánfēng / Tóngzhì period and was incorporated into the Manji Xuzangjing (X78 no. 1550). The bracket 1830–1860 represents the most defensible composition window.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located on this specific work. Treated in passing in Chinese-language studies of late-Qīng lay Buddhism.
- Daniel L. Overmyer, Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) — discusses the late-Qīng lay-Buddhist establishment that the work documents.
- 楊曾文, 《明清佛教史研究》 — Chinese-language survey.
- Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism: 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) — covers the late-Qīng / Republican-era Pure-Land continuation of the tradition.
Other points of interest
The continuity of the Jìngtǔ shèngxián lù genre across three generations of the Yíxīng / Sūzhōu lay-Buddhist establishment — Péng Shàoshēng (1740–1796), 彭希涑 (1761–1793), and Hú Tǐng (b. 1821) — is itself an important index to the inter-generational continuity of the late-imperial lay-Pure-Land subculture. The works should be read as a single inter-generational project documenting the same networked devotional community as it evolved across the late Qiánlóng to mid-Dào-guāng period.
Links
- CBETA: X78n1550