Chuánfǎ zhèngzōng lùn 傳法正宗論
Treatise on the Orthodox Transmission of the Dharma
written by 契嵩 (Qìsōng / Míngjiào, 1007–1072, 著)
About the work
A 2-juan polemical-discursive treatise by the Northern-Sòng Yúnmén Chán master and apologist 契嵩 Qìsōng, transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2080. The Lùn is the third and most argumentatively concentrated of Qìsōng’s three coordinated lineage-historical works submitted to Sòng Rénzōng 仁宗 in Zhìpíng 治平 1 (1064) — together with the chronicle KR6r0100 Chuánfǎ zhèngzōng jì (9 juan, T2078) and the lineage-table KR6r0101 Chuánfǎ zhèngzōng dìngzǔ tú (1 juan, T2079). Where the Jì narrates and the Dìngzǔ tú tabulates, the Lùn argues: it is a sustained piece of historical-philological reasoning in defence of the 28-Indian-patriarch lineage of the Chán school.
Abstract
The treatise opens by stating the controversy directly: since the rise of the Bodhidharma-school (達磨之宗) in the Suí-Táng, scholastic Buddhists have attacked it on the basis of the 《付法藏因緣傳》 Fù-fǎ-zàng yīn-yuán zhuàn (KR6r0051, T2058), which lists only twenty-four Indian patriarchs ending at Siṃha-bhikṣu. On this basis the critics claim that the Bodhidharma-lineage’s twenty-eight-patriarch list is a fabrication of later Buddhists, and that the Chán partisans’ counter-citation of the 《寶林傳》 Bǎo-lín zhuàn (which gives 28) is circular, since the Bǎo-lín zhuàn is itself a Chán-school text.
Qì-sōng’s argumentative strategy is historical-philological: he attacks the Fù-fǎ-zàng zhuàn on the grounds of (i) circumstances of composition (compiled in the Northern Wèi by Jí-jiā-yè 吉迦夜 in the wake of Tài-wǔ’s 太武 great proscription of 446, with consequent loss and reconstruction of materials), (ii) internal incoherence (the relations of master-and-disciple, place-of-origin, clan, and other historiographical particulars are absent or garbled, and certain patriarchs — Buddhanandi, Hè-lè-nuó, Siṃha — are radically underdocumented), and (iii) doctrinal incoherence (the closure at Siṃha contradicts the Buddha’s own injunction to Mahākāśyapa that the dharma must not be allowed to perish, and the Fù-fǎ-zàng itself elsewhere portrays patriarchs delaying their parinirvāṇa to ensure transmission). The 28-patriarch scheme, by contrast, can be reconstructed from the Tripitaka itself (sānzàng zhū-bù 三藏諸部) using fragments preserved in scholastic sources, and represents the genuine Indian succession.
The work is intended to make the lineage-defence withstand scholastic criticism on its own terms, by showing that the Chán partisans can play the historical-philological game more competently than their critics. It is the most theoretically self-conscious of Qìsōng’s three companion works.
The text was incorporated into the standard Sòng-Yuán-Míng-Korean canonical recensions and into the Taishō (T2080); the CANWWW notice records a Nanjio number N1528 and witnesses in the Suōzàng 縮藏 9 and the Wànzì 卍 31.2 collections.
Translations and research
- Elizabeth Morrison, The Power of Patriarchs: Qisong and Lineage in Chinese Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 2010) — the principal Western-language analysis of the Lùn in conjunction with its companion volumes.
- Stuart H. Young, Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015) — extended treatment of Qì-sōng’s reading of the Indian lineage.
- Albert Welter, Monks, Rulers, and Literati: The Political Ascendancy of Chan Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- John R. McRae, Seeing through Zen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Other points of interest
The Lùn’s argumentative style — a scholastic-historical defence of a school-doctrinal tenet against rival scholastic-historical attack — is one of the principal models for the Sòng-Buddhist genre of doctrinal-historical apologetics. Qìsōng’s mode of attacking the Fùfǎzàng zhuàn (treating it as a historically conditioned and philologically reconstructable text rather than an inviolable canonical witness) is one of the formative gestures of Sòng-Chinese Buddhist text-critical thought.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2080