遊方記抄

Yóufāng jì chāo 遊方記抄

Excerpts from Various Pilgrimage Records

(composite anthology) — recorded by 慧超 (Hye Cho / Huìchāo, ca. 700 – ca. 780, 記) and others, compiled by 圓照 (Yuánzhào, late 8th c., 等撰)

About the work

A composite 1-juan compilation in Taishō 51 (T2089) gathering excerpts from four to five separate Tang-period Buddhist pilgrimage records, the principal item of which is the otherwise-lost 《往五天竺國傳》 Wǎngwǔ Tiānzhúguó zhuàn by the Silla 新羅 monk Hye Cho 慧超 (ca. 700–780). The compilation is conventionally attributed to the late-Táng compiler Yuánzhào 圓照 (fl. ca. 780–800, recorder for the Cháng’ān translation bureau and compiler of the 《貞元新定釋教目錄》 Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù of 800).

The component texts were composed at different dates between ca. 727 (Hye-Cho’s Wǎngwǔ Tiānzhúguó zhuàn, the colophon-internal date being Kāiyuán 15 = 727) and 794 (the Zhēnyuán compilation period). The dating bracket given here is therefore 727 – 794.

Abstract

The compendium is structured as a sequence of titled excerpts:

1. 《往五天竺國傳》 Wǎngwǔ Tiānzhúguó zhuàn — the great Silla pilgrim Hye Cho’s account of his Indian pilgrimage and return through Central Asia, ca. 723–727. The full text was lost in China but a partial fragment was discovered in the Dūnhuáng caves (Pelliot 3532, surveyed and published by Pelliot in 1908). The Taishō recension preserves what circulated in the Tang canonical literature, supplemented by the Dūnhuáng find.

2. 《悟空入竺記》 Wùkōng rù Zhú jì — record of the Tang monk Wùkōng 悟空 (ca. 731–812), who travelled to Kashmir and India 751–790 and returned with manuscripts. The most important Tang-period pilgrim after Xuánzàng (645) and Yìjìng (695).

3. 《繼業西域行程》 Jìyè xīyù xíngchéng — Sòng-period travel record (ca. late 10th c., by Jìyè 繼業) of the famous Buddhist embassy of 156 monks dispatched by Sòng Tàizǔ 太祖 in Qiándé 乾德 4 = 966 (Jìyè returned in Tàipíng xīngguó 7 = 982). Anomalously included in the Tang-attributed compendium — incorporated by a later editor.

4. 《梵僧指空傳考》 Fàn-sēng Zhǐ-kōng zhuàn kǎo — biographical notice on the Indian monk Śūnyadiśya (Zhǐ-kōng 指空, ca. 1300–1361), who travelled through Yuán China to Korea.

5. 《唐常愍遊天竺記逸文》 Táng Chángmǐn yóu Tiānzhú jì yìwén — fragments of the lost Tang pilgrim record by Chángmǐn 常愍, preserved in KR6r0118 Sānbǎo gǎnyīng yàolüè lù.

The compilation is one of the principal late-Táng pilgrimage anthology documents and the principal Chinese textual witness to Hye Cho’s otherwise-lost Wǎng-wǔ Tiān-zhú-guó zhuàn. Hye Cho’s witness is particularly valuable as one of the very few 8th-century documentary records of Indian and Central-Asian Buddhism, post-dating Xuán-zàng (629–645) and Yì-jìng (671–695) and thus capturing the early-8th-c. state of the Indian Buddhist saṅgha shortly before the Arab and Tibetan disruptions.

Translations and research

• W. F. Fuchs, “Huei-ch’ao’s Pilgerreise durch Nordwest-Indien und Zentral-Asien um 726,” Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1938) — the classic German philological treatment of the Hye Cho fragment.
• Han-sung Yang et al., The Hye Ch’o Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1984) — the principal English translation, with Korean philological apparatus.
• Sylvain Lévi, “Wang Hiuen-ts’e et Kanyakubja,” Journal Asiatique (1900) — covers the broader Tang-Indian diplomatic context.
• 桑山正進, “韓國僧 慧超 ボン文 経典 雷音 寺 殘碑 と 入 竺 五 諸 國 史 跡,” in various publications.
• 任繼愈 et al., 中國佛教史 — covers the late-Tang pilgrimage corpus.

Other points of interest

The Dūnhuáng manuscript Pelliot 3532, identified by Paul Pelliot in 1908 as a partial copy of Hye Cho’s Wǎngwǔ Tiānzhúguó zhuàn, is one of the most consequential textual rediscoveries of early-20th-century Buddhological scholarship. The Taishō (Yóufāng jì chāo) recension preserves what was transmitted in the canonical Tang literature; the Dūnhuáng find expands this dramatically and allows the reconstruction of substantial sections of the original.

Links

• CBETA: T51n2089