Xuětáng Xíng shíyí lù 雪堂行拾遺錄
Gleanings from Xuě-táng Xíng [Dào-xíng]
compiled (posthumously, around the master’s life) under the name of 道行 (Dàoxíng / Xuětáng, 1089–1151, 編)
About the work
A 1-juan posthumous “gleanings” (shíyí 拾遺) compendium of sermon-fragments, yǔyào 語要 dialogue-extracts, occasional verses, and devotional-historical anecdote-material associated with the late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng LínjìYángqí master Xuětáng Dàoxíng 雪堂道行 (1089–1151), dharma-heir of Fóyǎn Qīngyuǎn 佛眼清遠 of Lóngménsì and abbot at Wūjùshān 烏巨山 and Jiànfúsì. The catalog meta records 道行 as the editor (biān 編), reflecting the canonical attribution; in fact the work is a posthumous compilation by his disciples on the model of the yǔlù — yǔyào — shíyí serial that was the standard Sòng Línjì publishing pattern. Composition window c. 1151–1180 (the master’s death and the active publishing period of his immediate disciples).
Abstract
The Shíyí lù contains material that did not fit into the master’s principal yǔlù (the 《雪堂行和尚語要》 Xuětáng Xíng héshàng yǔyào in 1 juan) but that the disciples judged worth preserving: occasional sermons given at minor abbacies, dialogues with visiting monks, verses composed for specific occasions, and anecdotes about Xuětáng’s life and conduct. The genre of the shíyí lù — “gleanings” — is itself a Sòng Línjì innovation: the principal yǔlù is the canonical sermon-collection, the yǔyào is its abridged didactic version, and the shíyí lù is the residual archive of materials too disparate or incidental for the principal collections.
The work is preserved in the Manji Xuzangjing (X83 no. 1576) on the basis of an early-Qīng print. The Sòng LínjìYángqí lineage that Xuětáng represented — through Fóyǎn Qīngyuǎn back to Wǔzǔ Fǎyǎn 五祖法演 (d. 1104) — is the parent of the great LínjìYángqí establishment of the Southern Sòng, and Xuětáng’s shíyí lù is therefore a small but useful documentary contribution to the prosopography of this dominant Chán sub-lineage.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located. Discussed in passing in:
- 阿部肇一, 《中國禪宗史の研究》 (Tokyo: Seishin shobō, 1963).
- Albert Welter, The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2008) — for the broader Línjì-Yáng-qí publishing programme.
Other points of interest
The publishing-pattern of the Sòng LínjìYángqí school — yǔlù + yǔyào + shíyí — is itself a distinctive bibliographic genre-system of the Sòng Chán establishment, with no precise equivalent in the prior Buddhist tradition. Each constituent has its own editorial conventions and target readership: the yǔlù is canonical, the yǔyào didactic, the shíyí archival. The system reflects the Sòng Línjì establishment’s deliberate cultivation of a school-internal documentary culture, parallel to and competitive with the Northern-Sòng court’s official publishing programme.
Links
- CBETA: X83n1576