Liángjīng sì jì 梁京寺記
Records of the Monasteries of the Liáng Capital (Jiànkāng)
(anonymous; Tang)
About the work
A 1-juan anonymous compilation on the Liáng-dynasty capital Jiànkāng 建業 (= Nánjīng) and its principal Buddhist monasteries. The text is undated; per its style and references it is a late Six-Dynasties or early Tang compilation drawing on lost earlier gazetteers of Jiànkāng. The dating bracket given here is 547 – 750 — bracketed by the Liáng dynasty’s end (Wǔdīng 5 = 547) and the early-Tang scholarship of Cháng’ān at which the work could plausibly have been excerpted. Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2094.
Abstract
The work is a brief catalogue of Liáng-dynasty Jiànkāng Buddhist monasteries, organised by monastery name, with brief notes on each:
- Xiǎozhuāngyánsì 小莊嚴寺 — at Dìngyīnlǐ 定陰里 in Jiànkāng; originally the residence of the Jìn Línglíngwáng 零陵王.
- Chángyúsì 長于寺 — established at the start of the Liáng on a hill 5 lǐ south of Jiànkāng.
- Bǎozhì 寶志 / Língyǐnsì anecdotes — including the famous Liáng Wǔdì 武帝 / Bǎozhì meeting at the temple-hill in Tiānjiān 天監 era, when the master indicated that a monastery should be established at the site.
The text is one of the principal residual sources for Liáng-period Jiànkāng Buddhist topography — a topography that was largely effaced by the Hóu Jǐng 侯景 disaster of 549 (which destroyed the great monastic infrastructure of the Liáng capital and led to the dynasty’s fall).
The relationship of the Liángjīng sì jì to the older Six-Dynasties Jiànkāng gazetteer tradition — the lost Jiànkāng shílù 建康實錄 and the related works — is unclear; it may be a Tang excerpt from those lost works, or an independent compilation drawing on the same materials.
Translations and research
- 朱偰, 《金陵古蹟圖考》 (1936) — covers the Six-Dynasties Jiànkāng monastic topography, drawing on the Liáng-jīng sì jì among other sources.
- 賀云翱, 南京六朝佛寺研究 — the principal modern Chinese-language treatment.
- The work also appears in standard surveys of medieval Jiànkāng (e.g., works by Charles Holcombe and Hilde De Weerdt).
Other points of interest
The work is one of the principal late-Tang documentary witnesses to the Liáng Wǔdì 梁武帝 (r. 502–549) Buddhist establishment — the largest pre-Tang Buddhist establishment in southern China, which famously left Wǔdì himself to die abandoned in a Buddhist monastery in 549 after the HóuJǐng rebellion.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2094