Kūyá mànlù 枯崖漫錄
Random Records of Kū-yá
compiled by 圓悟 (Kūyá Yuánwù, fl. late 13th c., 錄)
About the work
A 3-juan late-Southern-Sòng Línjì-school anecdote-anthology (the catalog meta records 3 juan but the canonical witnesses transmit it variously as 2 or 3 juan), composed by the Línjì master Kūyá Yuánwù 枯崖圓悟 (not the famous Yuánwù Kèqín 圓悟克勤 of the Bìyán lù, nor the late-Míng Mìyún Yuánwù) at Jìngshān Méngtáng 徑山蒙堂 in Jǐngdìng 景定 4 (1263), with editorial work continuing through to his abbacy-installation at Quánnán Xīngfúsì 興福寺 in Xiánchún 咸淳 8 (1272). The bracket 1263–1272 represents the composition window.
Abstract
The author’s preface explicitly identifies the work’s three principal categories of material: (i) biographical accounts of awakening-experiences (rùdào jīyuán 入道機緣) of senior Chán masters whose lives Yuánwù had encountered or studied; (ii) sermon-extracts and exhortations (shìzhòng fǎyǔ 示眾法語) of senior figures preserved in Yuánwù’s notes; and (iii) fragmentary inscriptional and bibliographic material (cánbiān duǎnjié 殘編短碣) of figures whose names had not been registered in the dēnglù lineage-records. The work is thus a deliberate supplement to the canonical dēnglù tradition — a mànlù 漫錄 (“random record”) of materials that the formal lineage-record genre had omitted.
The work is a principal source for the mid-Southern-Sòng Línjì establishment of the Línān (Hángzhōu) capital region, and for figures of the period c. 1200–1260 whose careers fell between the close of the major dēnglù compilations of the early Southern Sòng (the Jiātài pǔdēng lù 嘉泰普燈錄 of 1204 and the Jiātài jìdēng lù) and the fall of the Sòng to the Mongols (1276). For many of these figures the Kūyá mànlù is the only canonical source.
The text was preserved through Línjì-school manuscript-tradition and printed in the late Míng. The Manji Xuzangjing (X87 no. 1613) takes the late-Míng print as base text.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary monograph located on this specific text.
- 阿部肇一, 《中國禪宗史の研究》 (Tokyo, 1963).
- 西尾賢隆, 《中世禪宗史叢説》 (Tokyo, 1995).
- Albert Welter, various works on the Sòng Línjì tradition.
Other points of interest
The work’s terminus a quo of 1263 places it within a decade of the end of the Sòng dynasty (1276), and several of the figures whose biographies it records were swept up in the Mongol conquest of the south. Yuánwù’s documentation of the late-Sòng Linji establishment has thus an additional value as the last canonical Sòng witness to a Buddhist establishment that would be radically reorganised under Yuán rule.
Links
- CBETA: X87n1613