Dìngyìng dàshī Bùdài héshàng zhuàn 定應大師布袋和尚傳
Biography of the Hempen-Bag Monk, the Great Master Dìng-yìng (i.e., the historical Maitreya-incarnation Bù-dài)
written by 曇噩 (Tánè / Mèngtáng 夢堂, 1285–1373, 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan late-Yuán / early-Míng biographical-hagiographical compilation on Bùdài Héshàng 布袋和尚 (“the Hempen-Bag monk”) — the eccentric Língyúnyán 凌雲嚴 Chán figure of Liáng-Sòng-period Sìmíng 四明 (Níngbō region) who in Liáng Zhēnmíng 3 / 3 梁貞明三年三月 (= 917) revealed himself, in the death-verse, to be the earthly incarnation of Maitreya (“Maitreya, true Maitreya, divides his body into hundreds of millions of forms; from time to time he shows himself to people of the time, but the people of the time do not know him themselves”) — and was thereby established as the canonical iconographic prototype for the fat, smiling, sack-carrying Maitreya of East-Asian Buddhist visual culture.
The compiler is Tánè 曇噩 (字 Mèngtáng 夢堂 / Wúmèng 無夢; 號 Yǒuān 酉庵; 1285–1373 = YuánYányòu 11 / 12 to MíngHóngwǔ 6 / 2 / 12), a LínjìYángqí monk of the Yuánshǒu Xíngduān 元叟行端 line (himself a senior figure in the late-Yuán imperial Buddhist establishment, given the title Fózhēn Wényì 佛真文懿 by YuánShùndì 順帝). The work was therefore composed during the late-Yuán / early-Míng transition; the dating bracket given here is 1357 – 1373 (the year of the author’s death).
Abstract
The work is structured in two juan. Juan 1 opens with two prefaces — one by Fāngzhōu wàishǐ 芳洲外史 (a literary-mode “external historian’s” preface, written in pseudo-rude monastic voice) and one by an unnamed second author titled the “Bùdài lǎosēng xiǎoxù” 布袋老僧小序. The body of juan 1 then assembles the canonical stock biographical material on Bùdài: his appearance in Fènghuà 奉化, the iconic hempen bag (布袋), the eccentric public-display behaviour, the sub-biographies of the eighteen children he was said to lead about, and the standard miracle-narratives.
Juan 2 assembles Bùdài’s verse-output — the canonical jì 偈 attributed to him. These include:
- “Just this mind: mind, mind, mind is the Buddha; in the ten directions the most numinous thing is the Buddha-mind” (祇箇心心心是佛 …)
- “Right and wrong, hate and love, the world has plenty of them; thinking deeply, what can they do to me?” (是非憎愛世偏多 子細思量奈我何 …)
- “I have a hempen bag, empty space without obstruction; opened up, it covers the ten directions; entered into, it is guānzìzài” (吾有一布袋 …)
- “I have a single Buddha, none of the world recognises him; not moulded, not painted; not carved, not chiseled” (吾有一軀佛 世人皆不識 …)
- The famous final death-verse at Yuèlínsì 岳林寺 in Liáng Zhēnmíng 3 / 3: “Maitreya, true Maitreya, divides his body into hundreds of millions of forms; from time to time he shows himself to people of the time, but the people of the time do not know him themselves” (彌勒真彌勒 分身千百億 時時示時人 時人自不識).
The closing note records that “after [his death] he reappeared in other regions, still bearing the hempen bag; the four assemblies competed to draw his likeness” — explaining the subsequent iconographic standardisation of the smiling Maitreya.
The work is one of the principal YuánMíng compilation sources for the Bùdài hagiography. Its value is documentary rather than historical-critical: it preserves the post-canonical SòngYuán accretion to the Bùdài tradition that had developed since the figure’s first canonical biography in the Sòng gāosēng zhuàn 宋高僧傳, j. 21.
Translations and research
- Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) — discusses the Bù-dài / Hotei figure in its East-Asian iconographic context.
- 蔡日新, “布袋和尚研究” (variant articles on the historicity and iconography of Bù-dài).
- The work is also a principal source for studies on Maitreya in Chinese popular Buddhism (e.g., works by Daniel Stevenson and Stephen F. Teiser).
Other points of interest
The work effectively canonises the iconographic Maitreya: by collecting and preserving Bùdài’s death-verse alongside the standardised hagiographic narrative, Tánè gave the fat, smiling, sack-carrying Maitreya its definitive textual warrant. From the YuánMíng forward, Buddhist temples across East Asia represent Maitreya in this Bùdài form — a direct outcome of the canonisation that this zhuàn effects.
Links
- CBETA: X86n1597