Shìjiā fāngzhì 釋迦方志
Geographical Treatise on the Lands of Śākyamuni
written by 道宣 (Dàoxuān, 596–667, 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan early-Tang Buddhist geographical-ethnographical treatise on the Indian subcontinent and the Western Regions, written by the great Nánshānlǜ patriarch 道宣 Dàoxuān 道宣. The autographic colophon dates the work to Yǒnghuī 永徽 元年歲維庚戌 = 650, written at Fēngdésì 豐德寺 on the southern Tàiyī (Zhōngnán) mountain. The work is described in the colophon as having been compiled from “witness materials of the translation bureau” and from the canonical pilgrim-witness texts (“**at the side of translating the canonical scriptures, [I] consulted other transmissions; the texts being broad and difficult to research, [I] briefly excerpted their main points; refined them in colour and brought them into category-form together”). The work is therefore a scholarly compilation of the pilgrim-witness data available at the date of composition. Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2088.
Abstract
The work follows the principle of KR6r0121 DàTáng xīyù jì (Xuánzàng / Biànjī, 646) — the work that immediately precedes it in the Taishō ordering — but extends and supplements that geography by incorporating the older Chinese pilgrim-witness materials as well, especially the Gāosēng Fǎxiǎn zhuàn (KR6r0119) and the older zhìguài / Buddhist-miracle materials. The structure is geographical, with the regions arranged in a logical itinerary from China westward through Central Asia and into India, and within each region the principal Buddhist sites and their associated narratives.
The work was composed during the period when Dàoxuān was actively engaged with the Xuánzàng translation bureau (Xuánzàng had returned from India in 645 and was at the height of his translation career; Dàoxuān served as one of his synthesist scholars documenting the bureau’s work). The Shìjiā fāngzhì is therefore best understood as a synthesist-supplement to the Xīyù jì, drawing on Xuánzàng’s first-hand materials but incorporating the broader canonical-historical witness as well.
The closing materials of juan 2 include a Chinese-Buddhist self-historical section, recapping the introduction of Buddhism into China from the 1st c. through the early Táng, presented as the eastward continuation of the geographical narrative.
Translations and research
- Robert Companya and Jonathan Silk treatments in the broader scholarship on Tang Buddhist historiography.
- The work is treated in 大島亮一, 道宣の著作と思想 and related Japanese-language Dào-xuān studies.
- Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China — uses the Shì-jiā fāng-zhì in the bibliographical-historical sections.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the less-studied of Dàoxuān’s compositions, partly because the Xīyù jì of his contemporary Xuánzàng is so much more substantial and partly because Dàoxuān’s primary fame rests on his vinaya scholarship. It is, however, a valuable witness to the synthesist-bibliographical mode of Tang Buddhist scholarship, and demonstrates the close documentary collaboration between the Xuánzàng translation bureau and the Nánshānlǜ vinaya circle in the late 640s.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2088