Fózǔ gāngmù 佛祖綱目
Outline and Particulars of the Buddhas and Patriarchs
written by 朱時恩 (Zhū Shí’ēn / Xīnkōng jūshì 心空居士, fl. early 17th c., 著)
About the work
A 41-juan late-Míng comprehensive Buddhist universal history compiled by the lay Buddhist scholar 朱時恩 Zhū Shí’ēn, zì Xīnkōng jūshì 心空居士. Transmitted in the Jiāxìng 嘉興 canon and reprinted in the Xùzàngjīng (X85 No. 1594). The author’s autographic colophon dates completion to Chóngzhēn 6 / 10 崇禎癸酉孟冬 = late 1633, and the principal preface, by the great Míng calligrapher and grand secretary Dǒng Qíchāng 董其昌 (1555–1636), is dated Chóngzhēn 7 / 8 崇禎甲戌仲秋 = autumn 1634. The author reports thirty years’ labour on the project — placing inception ca. 1603. The dating bracket is therefore 1603 – 1634.
Abstract
The Fózǔ gāngmù is structured on the gāngmù 綱目 (“outline and particulars”) principle of SòngMíng historiography — entries are organised under sequenced annal headings (years given in 60-cycle and dynastic-reign form) with each entry consisting of a brief gāng (“outline”) clause followed by a longer mù (“particulars”) narrative. The historiographical model is explicitly the Zhū Xī 朱熹 Zīzhì tōngjiàn gāngmù — but applied to Buddhist rather than dynastic-political history.
Coverage runs from the seven Buddhas of antiquity through Śākyamuni and the Indian patriarchs, the introduction of Buddhism into China in the Hàn, the Six-Dynasties translators and exegetes, the founding of the major schools in the SuíTáng, the formation of the five Chán houses in the late Táng, and on through the Sòng, Yuán, and Míng up to the author’s own day. Within the Buddhist subject-matter, the work treats the Chán lineage as the principal narrative spine, but integrates Tiāntái, Pure Land, Huáyán, and Vinaya materials along the chronological axis.
Dǒng Qíchāng’s preface places the Gāngmù in a self-conscious historiographical genealogy: the 王儉 Qīzhì 七志 of the LiúSòng appended Buddhist works only at the rear of its bibliography; the 任昉 Liáng book-cataloguing project segregated Buddhist from secular books; 阮孝緒 Qīlù 七錄 dignified Buddhism with its own register but treated it as an outsider’s curiosity. The Jǐngdé chuándēng lù and Wǔdēng literature gave the Chán lineage a continuous narrative; the Fózǔ tǒngjì 佛祖統紀 of KR6s0017 Zhìpán 志磐 organised the field on Tiāntái principles; the Yuán Fózǔ tǒngzǎi 佛祖統載 (KR6s0019) of Niàncháng 念常 first applied annal-historiography to Buddhism. Dǒng identifies the Fózǔ gāngmù as the synthesis of these earlier projects on the ZhūXī gāngmù model. He also identifies Zhū Shí’ēn polemically as a “rebirth of 契嵩 Qìsōng,” whose Chuánfǎ zhèngzōng trilogy (KR6r0100, KR6r0101, KR6r0102) the present work explicitly extends.
The work is one of the principal late-Míng laymen-scholar Buddhist historical compilations and one of the most important sources for the early-Míng monk biographies that fall in the gap between 慧皎 Liáng gāosēng zhuàn tradition (which is closed at the Sònggāosēng zhuàn of 988) and the modern era.
Translations and research
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) — treats the Fó-zǔ gāng-mù in the context of late-Míng Buddhist historiography.
- 陳玉女, “明代佛教史學的展開：以朱時恩《佛祖綱目》為中心” (Chén Yùnǚ, on the historiographical structure of the work).
- The work is also treated in standard surveys of Chinese Buddhist historiography (Cáo Shìbāng 曹仕邦 et al.).
Other points of interest
The work’s incorporation into the Jiāxìng zàng 嘉興藏 (the great late-Míng laymen-funded printed canon) is one of the principal cases of lay-Buddhist patronage of large-scale Buddhist historiography. The colophon mentions one Wáng Xīnxiù 王心岫 jūshì who funded the cutting of the first and last fǎn of the work and contributed an additional 20 liǎng of silver — a typical late-Míng lay-Buddhist donor record.
Links
- CBETA: X85n1594