Cónglín shèngshì 叢林盛事
Flourishing Affairs of the Great Monasteries
compiled by 道融 (Dàoróng / Gǔyuè, fl. late 12th c., 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan Southern-Sòng Buddhist anecdote-anthology by Gǔyuè Dàoróng 古月道融, composed in retirement at the foot of Zhōngfēng 中峰 in Dānqiū 丹丘 (modern Tàizhōu 台州 region) and prefaced by the author in Qìngyuán 慶元 3 (1197). The title — Cónglín shèngshì, “flourishing affairs of the great monasteries” — frames the work as a celebration of the institutional vitality of the Southern-Sòng Buddhist establishment in the half-century since the Jiànyán 建炎 court-restoration.
Abstract
The compendium contains roughly 150 anecdote-entries in 2 juan, drawn from the major Chán monasteries of the Yangtze region — Jìngshān 徑山, Língyǐn 靈隱, Yùwáng 育王, Tiāntóng 天童, Tiānníng 天寧, etc. — and concerning the senior Chán masters of the early-to-mid Southern Sòng: Yuánwù Kèqín, Dàhuì Zōnggǎo, Hóngzhì Zhèngjué, Yīngān Tánhuá, and many others. Where Xiǎoyíng’s KR6r0092 / KR6r0093 focus on the LínjìYángqí lineage specifically, Dàoróng’s Cónglín shèngshì is trans-sectarian: it covers Cáodòng masters (Hóngzhì) alongside Línjì masters (Dàhuì) without polemical framing, presenting them as participants in a single institutional culture.
The work is notable for its anecdotal documentation of the administrative-monastic culture of the great Southern-Sòng monasteries: appointments, transfers, dharma-transmissions, abbacy-installations, monastery-financial affairs, and the legal-political relations of the great houses with the Sòng court. Many of these anecdotes are not preserved in the formal yǔlù or dēnglù literature and are unique to Dàoróng’s compendium. The work is therefore an important documentary supplement to the more orthodox sources for Southern-Sòng Chán institutional history.
The text was preserved through Tiāntāi / Tàizhōu manuscript-tradition and printed only in the late Míng. The Manji Xuzangjing (X86 no. 1611) takes the late-Míng print as base text.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located.
- 阿部肇一, 《中國禪宗史の研究》 (Tokyo, 1963).
- Albert Welter, The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2008) — discusses the broader Sòng anecdote-collection genre.
- Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen (Honolulu, 2008) — uses the Cóng-lín shèng-shì as a source for Cáo-dòng-Línjì interaction.
- 西尾賢隆, 《中世禪宗史叢説》 (Tokyo, 1995).
Other points of interest
The work’s trans-sectarian orientation is particularly striking against the polemical LínjìCáodòng disputes that dominated mid-Southern-Sòng Chán publishing. Dàoróng, writing in retirement and from a regional Tiāntāi base rather than from a partisan Línjì or Cáodòng centre, presents a picture of the Southern-Sòng Chán establishment as a unified institutional culture that the more partisan sources tend to obscure. Modern scholarship has increasingly used the Cónglín shèngshì as a corrective on the polemical yǔlù and dēnglù tradition.
Links
- CBETA: X86n1611