Chándēng shìpǔ 禪燈世譜
Generational Genealogy of the Lamp of Chán
edited by 道忞 (Dàomín / Mùchén 木陳, 1596–1674, 編修); collected by 吳侗 (Wú Tóng, fl. early 17th c., 集)
About the work
A 9-juan late-Míng Chán transmission-genealogy (shì-pǔ 世譜) edited by Mù-chén Dào-mín 木陳道忞 (1596–1674), the great Línjì master and dharma-heir of Mì-yún Yuán-wù 密雲圓悟 (1566–1642), with materials collected by his lay-disciple and Fú-jiàn jūshì Wú Tóng 吳侗 of Fú-qīng 福清. The principal preface is by Huáng Duān-bó 黃端伯 (later martyred for the Míng) and is dated Chóng-zhēn 5 / 3 / 上巳日 = early April 1632. The collected materials cover the Chán lineage from Mahākāśyapa through to the compiler’s own teacher Mì-yún Yuán-wù and his Cáo-dòng counterpart Wén-běi Yuán-chéng 雲門圓澄 (1561–1626) — at the 33rd Chinese-Chán generation.
The dating bracket is ca. 1625 – 1632 — composition presumably in the years immediately preceding the 1632 preface.
Abstract
The work is structured as a tabular genealogy, with each generation’s masters and dharma-heirs listed in tree-form rather than narrated in prose. Its principal innovation, relative to the Chuándēnglù genre, is that it traces both the Línjì and Cáodòng lines forward from the late Sòng through to the early-17th-century revival — covering the Yuán and Míng generations that the canonical Sòng chuándēng texts could not.
The work systematically traces:
- The 28 Indian patriarchs through to Bodhidharma;
- The 6 Chinese patriarchs through Huìnéng;
- The split into Nányuè and Qīngyuán lines;
- The Nányuè line’s flowering through Mǎzǔ → Bǎizhàng → Huángbò → Línjì → Yángqí → Báiyún → Wǔzǔ → Yuánwù Kèqín → Dàhuì Zōnggǎo and onward to Mìyún Yuánwù at the 33rd generation (the compiler’s own teacher);
- The Qīng-yuán-line revival through Tóuzǐ → Fúróng → Tiāntóng → Chéngtiān and onward to the early-17th-century Cáodòng revival under Wúmíng Huìjīng 無明慧經 (1548–1618), Yúnmén Yuánchéng 雲門圓澄 (1561–1626), and others.
Huáng Duānbó’s 1632 preface attaches particular significance to the demonstration that the early-17th-century Cáodòng revival depends on Línjì-line transmissions — through the Tóuzǐ Yìqīng 投子義青 → Fúshān Fǎyuǎn 浮山法遠 transmission — and to the convergence of the two principal lines in the figure of Shòuchāng Huìjīng 壽昌慧經, who serves as a teacher-figure to Wúmíng Huìjīng 無明慧經. The work is therefore a deliberate Línjì-side argument for the unity (and, implicitly, the Línjì-priority) of the early-17th-century Chán revival.
The work is one of the principal late-Míng Chán genealogical compilations and a major source for the lineage-history of Mìyún Yuánwù’s own line.
Translations and research
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) — discusses the Chán-dēng shì-pǔ in the context of Mù-chén Dào-mín’s lineage-political efforts.
- Wing-cheuk Chan and other studies on Mù-chén Dào-mín and the Mì-yún line.
Other points of interest
The preface-author Huáng Duānbó 黃端伯 (1585–1645) was a senior Míng official and Buddhist literatus who would later refuse to surrender to the Manchu forces at the fall of Nanjing in 1645 and was executed for his fidelity to the Míng — a martyr-figure of the MíngQīng transition.
Links
- CBETA: X86n1601